As with the train derailment that dumped toxic chemicals into the ground and water supply of East Palestine, Ohio, last month, some prominent Democrats are blaming the current banking crisis on Trump-era deregulation in an apparent effort to shield the Biden administration from culpability.
For her part, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) took a swing at the former president while expressing her frustration with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell in a pair of interviews over the weekend.
“Donald Trump ran for president saying he would lighten the regulations on these banks,” she said during an appearance on CBS. “And then Jerome Powell just literally took a flamethrower to these regulations in order to make them less and less effective.”
“We need accountability for our regulators who clearly fell down on the job,” @SenWarren tells @margbrennan on the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, adding that it “starts with” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who she says “was a dangerous man to have in this position.” pic.twitter.com/B2VYr0uZYM
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) March 19, 2023
Calling him a “dangerous man to have in this position” and reiterating the fact that she opposed his nomination, Warren added: “Jerome Powell has said that all he wants to do is lighten regulations on the banks.
As for her proposed solution, Warren unsurprisingly called for enhanced government regulations that far exceed those in place even before Trump took office. Among other things, she called for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to increase its level of protection from $250,000 to as high as $10 million.
“Small businesses need to be able to count on getting their money to make payroll, to pay the utility bills,” she said. “Nonprofits need to be able to do that. These are not folks who can investigate the safety and soundness of their individual banks. That’s the job the regulators are supposed to do.”
Without mentioning the role that President Joe Biden’s big-spending policies have had in ushering in the highest inflation rate in generations, she denounced Powell’s plan to bring consumer prices down.
“He has a dual mandate,” she told NBC News host Chuck Todd in a separate interview. “Yes, he is responsible for dealing with inflation, but he is also responsible for employment.”
Warren concluded that Powell’s push to slow the economy — resulting in a corresponding spike in the unemployment rate — “is not what the chair of the Federal Reserve should be doing.”
She went on to double down on previous assertions that Powell should not be in charge of the nation’s central bank, adding: “My views on Jay Powell are well known at this point. He has had two jobs. One is to deal with monetary policy; one is to deal with regulation. He has failed at both.”
