There are reports about the White House being open to a short-term debt ceiling increase, and I actually don’t doubt the White House would do that, or even that they may be willing to give up some energy permitting reform as a trade-off to getting that done. What I am skeptical about is whether or not the Republicans would agree to that (it is possible, but not assured) and then whether or not Democrats would agree to the energy side of that (I consider that improbable). We shall see.

43 Senate Republicans signed a letter over the weekend supporting the House measure for some spending restraints tied to a debt ceiling hike, so even apart from House blockage, if a clean hike is put forward, it faces a filibuster in the Senate. More and more Democrats are wanting some negotiations to take place. A lot of eyes are on what may or may not happen with FDIC coverage in light of the current regional bank saga:

Congress sets the statutory limit on FDIC deposit coverage, not the executive branch and not the FDIC itself. The key word here is “statutory.” There is not a lot of Congressional momentum for broadly increasing FDIC limits, though there probably would be if some legislation came forward with nuances (i.e., company payroll accounts, etc.) The FDIC has the authority to name a bank a “systemic risk” and therefore ensure all of its deposits (as they recently did with Signature Bank and Silicon Valley Bank two months ago, but did not need to do with the First Republic since JP Morgan took over)

“Big” banks already have systemic risk classifications (and received various increased regulations out of the Dodd-Frank legislation because of the SIFI classification). The aforementioned labeling of SVB and Signature as “systemic risks” happened ad hoc

Links mentioned in this episode: TheDCToday.com DividendCafe.com TheBahnsenGroup.com

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