Norquist to Newsmax: Taxpayers Suffer in Bank Bailouts

Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank should not have been bailed out by American taxpayers after their collapses, Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, said Wednesday on Newsmax.

"There was no reason to take taxpayer money, the fees that are demanded by the government to cover for these contingencies from people who have invested less than $250,000 a year," Norquist said on Newsmax's "American Agenda." "It is very wrong to take money from the average citizens in all 50 states [who] will be paying for this because their fees will go up when they put money into a bank."

Part of the issue was that Silicon Valley Bank had invested in Treasury bonds that paid 1% or 2%, and with inflation, "those bonds weren't worth what they used to be" because of President Joe Biden's inflation of the nation's currency, said Norquist.

That undermined the bank's backup capital, he said.

"The regulators knew that but they didn't do anything about it," said Norquist, adding that the law that requires regulators also requires companies to have a risk officer.

"This company didn't have a risk officer for eight months," he added. "It is a highly politicized bank, used by Gov. [Gavin] Newsom with all sorts of his money and his efforts and some of his wife's efforts financed through this bank. It is a clearinghouse evidently for Democratic activists as well as for investors."

Meanwhile, the markets are watching Credit Suisse carefully, after its biggest backer, Saudi National Bank, said it will not provide financial help, and Norquist said he's not surprised that banks are having trouble, considering what the government has done to energy prices and the regulatory burden.

"When you pass expensive regulations, you have no idea how badly they're going to hit," he said, adding that investors are "badly damaged" by the complicated tax increases President Joe Biden has pushed through.

"This is going to pop up in different places," Norquist added. "The answer was too much government. Too many regulations. Too much taxes. Too much inflation. This is not healthy for banks."

Norquist said he's also concerned about the danger of advocates of Big Government stepping in and demanding more regulations after the bank collapses.

"When Barney Frank spits back at them and said, 'No, that wouldn't have solved anything,'" that's "brutal honesty," Norquist said. "I grew up in his congressional districts. I'm pleasantly surprised."

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