Preventing the Next Bank Crash

Financial Stability Requires Deposit Insurance Reform

This past March, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank triggered further bank failures, real fears of a financial crisis, and some urgent questions for policymakers: Is federal deposit insurance (FDI), in its current form, still capable of protecting financial stability?

More broadly: Who is our banking system for?

In a recent brief, Roosevelt’s Emily DiVito explored various FDI proposals experts have outlined in the months since, and how they speak to those bigger questions. And this week, she laid out that research at a Senate Banking Committee hearing: “Perspectives on Deposit Insurance Reform after Recent Bank Failures.”

“The precipitous failures of SVB, Signature, and FRB [First Republic Bank] shook the US banking industry—as well as the millions of depositors that hold money in the wider financial sector—and unearthed questions about who FDI serves and why,” she said in written testimony.

“[P]olicymakers would do well to wrestle with questions about the current system’s purpose and efficacy—and the implications that each potential reform carries.”

Learn more about three options for deposit insurance reform in DiVito’s testimony and in the full brief.

Why the US and EU’s Green Steel Negotiations Matter

There’s some history-making potential in the US and EU’s current steel and aluminum trade talks: If successful, these negotiations could produce the world’s first sectoral trade deal to lower carbon emissions.

They could also offer a promising precedent for rewriting the rules of trade in a post-neoliberal, pro-worker, pro-environment direction for other sectors of the global economy.

In this new series of essays, experts take stock of the ongoing talks, highlighting important considerations as both sides try to land a finished deal by October.

Read them all now:

• “Responding to Critics of the Global Arrangement on Sustainable Steel and Aluminum” by Todd N. Tucker and Timothy Meyer
• “Bold Climate Action Means Seizing WTO Law’s ‘Policy Space’” by J. Benton Heath and Timothy Meyer
• “The Development Promise of a Green Steel Deal” by Maha Rafi Atal

What We’re Reading

“Bidenomics” vs. “Reaganomics” [by Roosevelt’s Mike Konczal] – The Nation

America’s Deadly Heat Isn’t (Officially) a Major Disaster [by Roosevelt Fellow Kate Aronoff] – The New Republic

President Biden’s Most Powerful Student Loan Tool – The American Prospect

DOJ and FTC Release New Draft Merger Guidelines – Axios

Don’t Let Inflation Bury the Memory of a Government Triumph – New York Times