Just ten days before the bank's collapse, Rep. Patrick McHenry, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, was there collecting fat checks from their executives. Pretty much a case study for everything that is wrong with congressional politics. McHenry is now in charge of finding out which of his buddies screwed up and caused the bank to fail. Here's a hint: all of them.
Source: Bloomberg
(Bloomberg) -- Ten days before Signature Bank collapsed, the House Republican overseeing an inquiry into the bank’s failure was inside its boardroom on New York’s Fifth Avenue.
Patrick McHenry was there to raise thousands of dollars from bank executives.
The mood inside the Signature boardroom at the March 2 fundraiser was calm, according to a person who was at the event and asked for anonymity to discuss the private affair. There was no overt anxiety or tension, the person said; instead there were questions about the debt ceiling.
McHenry’s campaign decided last week it won’t process any of the contributions from the event, according to a spokesperson.
Donors were invited to the fundraiser for the North Carolina Republican by Signature co-founder and chairman Scott Shay. Attending cost $1,000, sponsoring the event went for $2,900, and hosting duties were sold for $5,800, according to the invitation. The money supported Team McHenry, a joint fundraising committee backing his congressional campaign, his Innovation PAC, and the National Republican Congressional Committee. Shay declined to comment.
McHenry is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, which has announced a bipartisan hearing into the collapse of Signature and Silicon Valley Bank next week, “the first of multiple.” On Monday, McHenry and Senator Tim Scott, the top Republican on the Banking Committee, demanded the Federal Reserve and FDIC provide information on their oversight of the two failed banks for the last two years and save all records.
Bloomberg noted that McHenry is by far the biggest recipient of Signature cash, $188,000 from their employees alone, about triple what anyone else in congress received.
No doubt when McHenry and his committee issue their report on what happened (Signature is said to have invested heavily in crypto currencies), we''ll hear a similar indignant speech from him as we heard from Captain Renault in Casablanca.
