01 Aug “Stupid Butt Things”
Image by Ansgar Scheffold from Pixabay
In the words of Aretha Franklin, “Who’s zoomin’ who?” Are you allowing yourself to be zoomed by someone else who may very well be full of 💩?
Back in March, Dave Ramsey published “The Great News About SVB’s Collapse! – Dave Ramsey Rant,” which you can find here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_PavcYPcmc.
At the very beginning, he states that he was not planning to talk about this topic, but “people are doing stupid butt things,” so he felt compelled. Oh boy. Goody gumdrops.
What was the topic he intended to avoid but was causing people to act stupidly? The collapse of SVB. According to him, “Granny’s CD was not over at this bank.” He repeatedly tells us that SVB was comprised of “playas” and it simply wasn’t a place where grandma had her money or little Timmy had his paper route money. At the 1:47 mark, he point blank says, “This does not affect your local bank at all. It has almost nothing to do with your local bank.” At 2:11, he enlightens us that “your bank is safe. Calm your butt down.”
Uh, yeah, OK. His pearls of wisdom didn’t make me feel any calmer.
On March 20th, I published the podcast episode “Bonus Episode: Grifters are gonna grift 🤷🏻♀️,” which you can find here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1125110/12445439. From said episode:
He describes the depositors of SVB as having large sums of money way beyond the 250k that’s supposedly insured by the FDIC. He describes them as “players.” And he says, “They done got caught,” which, OK, I suppose what he’s referring to there is they’re playing the system, they’re playing the odds, and the odds didn’t go in their favor. And so when he says “they done got caught,” I assume that’s what he means. He goes on to reiterate, “This does not affect your local bank at all. It has nothing to do with your local bank.” This is just Silicon Valley. It’s hedge funds, its investors, but it has nothing to do with your local bank. Look at how many times in this video he has to keep reiterating that. I mean to me, it really does seem like NLP programming. It would only be better if instead of kind of being shouty and haughty and proudful, it would be better if he were wearing pastel colors and speaking in a gentle, more hypnotic tone. … He also very bluntly says, “Your bank is safe, calm your butt down.” That is an exact verbatim quote – go watch the video for yourself. “Your bank is safe, calm your butt down.” I really want to see how well this advice ages.
I also discuss in that episode that Dave doesn’t know the solvency of every bank in America, nor does he know whether or not there are “playas” at your bank. How the hell can he know whether your bank is full of grandmas’ CDs and little kids’ paper route cash or if it’s full of VC money used to game the system? Let’s get real here.
Oh yeah, and on that note:
The banking turmoil of 2023 arrived in small-town America on Friday night when a tiny four-branch bank in Kansas failed, becoming the fourth lender to be seized by regulators this year and the fifth to fold altogether.
The Heartland Tri-State Bank, of Elkhart, Kan., is the smallest to go under in 2023 by far. It had $139 million in assets when it went down Friday, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
Image made by me using Canva.
Please be careful about who you choose to listen to. I’m never going to tell you to turn off the news. I’m never going to tell you to not think critically. Please think for yourself and if you get advice from somebody who, it sounds to you like they’re probably a grifter, it sounds to you like they’re probably a paid corporate shill that is being paid to push a very particular narrative and to encourage you to not think for yourself – I want you to think for yourself about that!
–https://www.buzzsprout.com/1125110/12445439
Let’s also not forget this gem: “JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon says we are ‘near the end’ of the banking crisis” https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jpmorgan-chase-ceo-jamie-dimon-160258927.html published on April 7, 2023.
Oh really? Near the end, huh? So let’s see. You’re supposed to think your local bank is totally safe because SVB was an anomaly and the banking crisis was near the end by April anyway. Yeah, uh-uh, mmkay, sure.
It is not yet entirely clear why Heartland went down. The Kansas Office of the State Banking Commissioner said in a release that Bank Commissioner David Herndon “determined that Heartland Tri-State Bank was insolvent” and that it “became insolvent due to an isolated event.”
“Overall, the Kansas banking industry is unaffected by this event and Kansas banks remain strong,” the release stated.
Heartland is one of thousands of small community banks that serve local areas across the US. Most banks in this country are more like Heartland than they are like industry giant JPMorgan Chase, which has thousands of branches and more than $3 trillion in assets.
Heartland’s headquarters city of Elkhart has a population of less than 2,000 people, according to 2021 US Census records, and is located in the southwest corner of the state.
-Yahoo Finance, Ibid. emphasis mine
Yuh-uh. An “isolated incident.”
Several points to ponder here:
+ Is it really an isolated incident? If you think so, you better be damn sure.
+ Now we have a tangible example of a small town bank – the kind that ole Dave told you not to worry about and not to be a “stupid butt” over – having a banking crisis and being seized by regulators. Who looks a 🤡 now, I wonder.
+ Was the banking crisis really over back in April? Again, if you think so, you better be damn sure.
+ It happened on a Friday night – just as we were told. (https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2023/03/14/ideally-on-friday-night/)
+ As the article points out, Elkart isn’t exactly Manhattan and this bank wasn’t JPMorgan Chase. This is Midwest, small town America. Hell, the bank itself had the world heartland in the title. If most banks in the US are more like the one that failed than the ones deemed “too big to fail,” what does that tell you?
One thing it tells me is that you have to be careful and conscientious about who you are listening to and for what reason.
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