During the Senate Banking Committee hearing on Tuesday, Senator John Fetterman, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, drew lots of unwanted attention with his fragmented and occasionally perplexing line of questioning. Fetterman, who was the final senator to engage in questioning during the hearing addressing the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, seemed to encounter difficulties as he delivered his opening statement. Fetterman said executives “went to go to Hawaiis (sic) after there was a crash of your bank” and that he “couldn’t believe it.” “So, I went up on the Internet, and it’s like, it did happen. It did happen. It did happen,” he said. “And it’s in Fortune, the second-biggest bank in U.S. history collapsed and chose to go to Hawaii on that,” he continued. “You know, I’ve never been to Hawaii and neither has my family. I guess I’ve never cranked, excuse me, crashed a bank.” Fetterman later responded to the witness saying he didn’t believe it was a “running joke” in the banking industry that you can do whatever you want because the federal government will just bail you out. “Really? Because every bank you seemingly that crashed, it’s like, ‘We can bail him out. This one crashed, we’ll bail them out,’” Fetterman said. “So far, everything’s been true. So, doesn’t it feel that now if a bank really believed that they wouldn’t be bailed out, now after bailing them out, these couple of bailouts, they are going to.” “Do you believe that that is not outrageous that, no matter how deplorable your performance is, you are made as whole and all by … taxpapers (sic),” he continued. “So what do yous (sic) believe?” “Is it staggering? Is it a staggering … it’s a responsibility that the head of a bank could literally, could literally crash our economy.” “It’s astonishing. That’s like if you have, I mean like, and they also realize is that now they have … a guaranteed way to be saved by, again, by no matter, by how?” Fetterman said. “Isn’t it appropriate that this kind of control should be more stricter to prevent this kind of thing from going, or should we go on start bailing and sailing whoever bank regardless of how … their conduct is?” He then attempted to attack Republicans over SNAP benefits. “Because they seem more preoccupied when then SNAP requirements for works for hungry people but not about protecting the taxpapers (sic) that will bail no matter whatever does about a bank to crash it,” he said. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)