Creedence Clearwater Revival fans may want to make a stop at Los Angeles’ Rockaway Records. The store has just acquired what they say is the “world’s largest collection” of CCR memorabilia.
The items in the collection include more than 500 concert posters and hundreds of concert tickets, as well as thousands of LPs, 45s, autographed items and more. There’s also a 1967 yellow label 45 under the band’s previous name, The Golliwogs — one of only six known copies.
There’s also a John Fogerty-signed Fender Stratocaster, as well as RIAA Platinum and Gold plaques.
“What an amazing collection,” Rockaway Records’ Wayne Jonson shares, “especially the pre-Creedence stuff like a 1966 Golliwogs concert flyer and a Tom Fogerty & the Blue Velvets 45 from 1961!”
More information on the CCR collection can be found at rockaway.com.
(WASHINGTON) — The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank is putting deregulatory reforms implemented under former President Donald Trump back in the spotlight.
The abrupt implosion of the country’s 16th-largest bank last week resulted in swift finger-pointing in Washington.
President Joe Biden and many progressive Democrats have blamed, in part, a 2018 law that rolled back some of the Dodd-Frank Act — a series of federal regulations passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Republicans, on the other hand, are decrying so-called “woke” practices at the bank as well as government spending and inflation as the culprits.
Though there’s more to learn about the bank’s downfall, several experts told ABC News it was a failure of regulation and supervision.
“The Federal Reserve completely missed major classic red flags at Silicon Valley Bank,” said Aaron Klein, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Here’s what you need to know as the political fallout continues.
What is the Dodd-Frank Act?
In response to the worst recession since the Great Depression, Congress passed a sprawling law in 2010 overhauling federal financial regulation.
One of its major provisions was designating any bank with more than $50 billion in assets a “systemically important” financial institution — or “too big to fail” — and thus subject to enhanced prudential standards, such as “stress tests” and certain capital planning and liquidity requirements.
“Dodd-Frank massively empowered the Federal Reserve to more forcefully regulate banks, including those where it wasn’t the direct bank regulator,” Klein said.
What did Trump do?
The Dodd-Frank Act was met with animosity from the industry, which argued the regulations were burdensome and only necessary for the largest banks. Silicon Valley Bank’s CEO Gregory Becker was among those calling for lighter regulations.
After years of political pressure, Congress passed a law that rolled back some of those rules for smaller and mid-tier banks.
Among the biggest changes was raising the asset threshold for “systemically important” institutions from $50 billion to $250 billion. Under the law, the Federal Reserve still had the right to apply the Dodd-Frank regulations to banks with at least $100 billion in assets if they chose to do so.
Trump signed it into law in May 2018, calling it “big deal for our country.” The push to alter Dodd-Frank split the Democratic Party, and ultimately more than a dozen Senate Democrats joined Republicans to support the deregulations.
“It reduced stress testing, it reduced collateral calculations, it reduced the supervisory stress test and it enabled them not to publicly conduct or report their own company-run stress tests,” Dennis Kelleher, the president & CEO of the nonprofit Better Markets, said of the 2018 law. “It blew a hole in several of the key financial stability protection rules.”
Debate rages over 2018 law amid SVB’s collapse
Critics, including Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, have said the law’s softening of regulations contributed to Silicon Valley Bank’s demise.
Democratic Rep. Barney Frank, co-author of the Dodd-Frank Act and a board member of the recently shutdown Signature Bank, told Bloomberg he didn’t think the 2018 changes had an impact. Trump, too, defended it, claiming banks were getting “eaten alive” by regulations.
And some Democrats who backed the law are defending it. Sen. Mark Warner told “This Week” on Sunday he thought it “put in place an appropriate level of regulation on mid-sized banks.” Sen. Tim Kaine said regional and community banks “really needed” the relief at the time, and that “solutions should wait until there’s an analysis of causes.”
Amid the debate, experts told ABC News stress tests and other financial-safety requirements may have caught problems at the institution earlier but there were warning signs Federal Reserve supervisors should’ve seen regardless.
“This was a failure of supervision … the red flags that were going on at SVB, you didn’t need enhanced prudential standards to catch that,” Klein said.
Those concerns included the bank’s explosive asset growth, its reliance on uninsured deposits and the impact of high interest rates on its long-term bonds.
“Those deregulatory reforms may well have contributed to laxer rather than stricter oversight,” Lawrence Baxter, a law professor at Duke University and former executive at Wachovia, said of the 2018 law. “Having said that, I don’t think the regulators are entirely off the hook because they still have power to take action when they observe rapid deterioration. And we’ll have to find out why they didn’t.”
What’s next?
Biden on Monday specifically cited the Trump-era rollbacks as he addressed the banking system, vowing to work for more regulation.
“I’m going to ask Congress and the banking regulators to strengthen the rules for banks to make it less likely that this kind of bank failure will happen again and to protect American jobs and small businesses,” the president said.
Warren and Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., have already unveiled legislation to repeal the 2018 rollbacks.
Republicans, so far, have expressed no interest in revisiting the law. Rep. Patrick McHenry, a North Carolina Republican who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, said he has “confidence in our financial regulators and the protections already in place to ensure the safety and soundness of our financial system.” Sen. Mike Crapo, an Idaho Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, told Fox News that “nothing in the Dodd-Frank reforms we put together did anything with regard to this crisis.”
Meanwhile, the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating the Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse, two people familiar with the situation confirmed to ABC News. The Federal Reserve Board is also reviewing the supervision and regulation of the bank, which is set to be released by May 1.
Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, right greets fugitive Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui before introducing him at a news conference, Nov. 20, 2018, in New York. — Don Emmert/AFP via Getty Images, FILE
(NEW YORK) — Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese billionaire with business ties to Steve Bannon, has been arrested on federal charges out of New York.
Guo owned the 152-foot-long yacht Lady May on which Bannon was arrested in August 2020.
Guo and Bannon have been under investigation in connection with GTV Media Group, which the Securities and Exchange Commission previously accused of violating securities laws.
The FBI arrested Guo, also known as Ho Wan Kwok, Wednesday morning in New York on charges he orchestrated a $1 billion fraud.
“Kwok is charged with lining his pockets with the money he stole, including buying himself, and his close relatives, a 50,000 square foot mansion, a $3.5 million Ferrari and even two $36,000 mattresses, and financing a $37 million luxury yacht,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said.
The SEC filed civil charges Wednesday that accused Guo and his financial adviser, Kin Ming Je, of “multiple offering frauds” that targeted retail investors through online and social media posts and videos.
“Since in or about April 2020, Guo has conducted fraudulent securities offerings that have collectively raised at least hundreds of millions of dollars from investors in the United States and around the world. Unbeknownst to those investors, Guo and his financial adviser, Je, misappropriated a large portion of the funds raised from certain of the Subject Offerings in order to enrich themselves and their family members,” the SEC complaint said.
Guo, 54, pitched three unregistered securities offerings to investors as a means of obtaining shares in GTV and a fourth offering as a means to obtain a crypto asset security called “H-Coin” that he falsely claimed was backed by gold reserves, the SEC said.
The FBI’s New York field office is also working to determine whether a two-alarm fire at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel is linked to the arrest of Guo, multiple law enforcement sources told ABC News. FBI agents were still inside Guo’s apartment at the time the fire broke out at 12:02 p.m., sources told ABC News.
Guo was arrested at 6 a.m. at his $32 million apartment in the building. Agents were forced to evacuate when the fire broke out six hours later.
Firefighters were called just after noon for a fire on the 18th floor, according to the FDNY. There was significant damage to Guo’s 15-room penthouse, sources said.
No one was injured in the fire.
Guo, a critic of the Chinese government, fled China in 2014 and is viewed as a fugitive by the PRC. He appeared on Forbes’ Billionaires List in 2015, worth an estimated $1.1 billion, but declared bankruptcy in February 2022.
Bannon helped Guo found GTV, but has not been charged.
Bannon is currently being prosecuted by the Manhattan district attorney for defrauding donors to the We Build the Wall online fundraising campaign.
On Wednesday, Peacock revealed it is reviewing the beloved soap opera Days of Our Lives for two more seasons, meaning it will run through its 60th.
The series, which the NBCUniversal-owned streaming service called “one of television’s most iconic and trailblazing” dramas, made the switch from terrestrial to streaming last September and has continued to be a strong performer for Peacock since.
Days celebrated its 14,000th episode in 2020, making it NBC’s longest-running drama at the time, before it switched to Peacock.
In its run, the Corday Productions/Sony Pictures Television mainstay has earned some 61 Emmy Awards, most recently earning the Outstanding Writing for a Daytime Drama trophy in 2022.
(NEW YORK) — A 16-year-old softball player with cerebral palsy has gained thousands of social media followers sharing her recovery efforts after a major leg surgery.
Throughout her life, Charlie Duffy has had over 20 surgeries to help correct pain and walking issues affecting the left side of her body — a subtype of the condition known as hemiplegic cerebral palsy.
Cerebral palsy can affect a person’s ability to move and maintain balance and posture. It’s the most common motor disability among children, according to the Centers for Disease Control. It’s estimated that 1 in 345 children in the United States have been diagnosed with the development disorder.
“There’s always that, ‘What if I might not be able to walk or do things on my own?’ And I kind of beat the odds,” Duffy told “GMA3.”
For the teen, playing softball has been a source of motivation. She said feels a “rush of adrenaline” whenever she makes a play or gets a hit.
She was in PE class one day when she noticed that her foot was turning in again as she walked, which would require another surgery to correct. In May, surgeons cut Duffy’s femur in half, rotated it and secured it with a plate.
Before the surgery, Duffy’s Instagram posts were about her softball workouts. Now, she needed something new to post about.
“I just posted a video of me getting out of bed after my surgery, just so people can who are following my softball journey know that softball is not the only part of my life. And that kind of blew up unexpectedly,” Duffy said.
Duffy now has over 100,000 followers on Instagram, where she shares snippets of her life and recovery progress. The mental aspect has been almost hard as the physical, she said.
“You’re competing with yourself and your thoughts. And I think so many people dealing with injuries don’t take that into account,” Duffy said.
Symptoms of cerebral palsy vary from person to person, depending on which parts of the brain have been affected, and may even change over a person’s lifetime, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
“I just hope that one person can realize they’re going through this battle with a whole community rallying around them,” Duffy said.
When Duffy was cleared to do certain softball-related exercises after surgery, she said she felt like her true self again. She’s looking forward to getting back on the field.
“I hope to continue to grow my platform to get the word out to people. And I hope to be back playing softball soon and really doing what I love,” Duffy said.
(NEW YORK) — Moments after a bomb explosion by a Russian drone in Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine, Benjamin Hall found himself on the ground covered in his own blood, his right leg barely hanging from his body. His colleagues were similarly injured, lying nearby and close to death.
Despite the chaos, instinct kicked in and Hall, a war correspondent for Fox News, fumbled to find his phone to film a video.
“In one sense, it’s inherent” in all journalists to report the news, he told ABC News.
“SAVED: A War Reporter’s Mission to Make it Home,” a book Hall later wrote to document his experience, is a continuation of that instinct. It’s been 12 months since the explosion that claimed the lives of his colleagues and left 17% of his body burned. The book, he said, became part of his personal catharsis to confront what had happened to him.
“I knew I had to face it,” he said. “Writing the book was part of the recovery.”
The book began in the form of voice notes he made on his phone while hospitalized and undergoing major surgery. Ten percent of his burns are third degree and his right leg required amputation. He lost his left foot and sight in one eye. Eventually, Hill required prosthetics for both legs and would need to learn to walk again.
Up to that point, being close enough to danger to report on it with accuracy had become a way of life. He covered conflicts all over the world between 2007 and 2015 when he joined Fox News as a correspondent out of the network’s London bureau. He began to feel less comfortable at home than being in the field.
“No other work really felt satisfying or really important,” he said.
It wasn’t until marriage and children forced him to balance the two worlds. “The work of covering wars is very important. I do understand the need to keep doing it and I also understand the need to stay home and be safe,” he said.
Fox offered him a respite from the battlefield in 2021 when he became the channel’s U.S. State Department correspondent and moved to Washington. In February 2022, at the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he said he felt called to report from the field.
“It was a decision I made quickly,” he said. “I never had a moment of regret making that decision to go.”
Journalists becoming targets
The war in Ukraine has proven deadly for journalists. According to a 2022 report by Reporters Without Borders, an international nonprofit, about 1,700 journalists have been killed globally over the last 20 years, an average of more than 80 a year. Eight journalists were killed last year alone in Ukraine, compared with 12 deaths in that country over the last two decades. After Russia, the organization ranks Ukraine as the most dangerous country in Europe for journalists, followed by Turkey.
According to international law, the intentional killing of civilians, which includes journalists, is considered a war crime. Hall, however, said the “press is targeted more than the way it used to be.”
He also said the number of journalists covering conflicts has increased, raising the likelihood of danger. Over his career, at least six of his colleagues have died in their work, which includes Fox cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski and producer Oleksandra “Sasha” Kuvshynova who were with him on the day of the attack. Zakrzewski was a kind of mentor, he said.
“You can only work in those parts of the world if you totally, 100% trust each other and we developed a relationship that was incredibly deep. You have conversations you might not have with anyone else,” he said. “[Pierre] was someone who wanted to explore as many cultures and societies as much as he could. I learned that from him.”
This week Fox Corp CEO Lachlan Murdoch announced a $1 million donation to the American Red Cross to support ongoing global Ukrainian relief efforts.
Finding optimism
Today, while based in London, Hall is dealing with daily medical care, upcoming operations and learning “to live with a bit of pain.” It remains a struggle to walk and serious burns cover the bottom half of his body. Despite those challenges, he said he is driven to “find my own optimism” and to “pass it on to those who don’t have it.”
“I try to enjoy the small things in life: sunlight, a beautiful walk, great music. Maybe the attack made me realize the many things I once thought were problems don’t feel like problems anymore,” he said. “Nothing else matters. That’s what I want every day.”
Bebe Rexha‘s fans are feeling good and not at all blue after hearing her latest announcement. She finally confirmed her third studio album, and we won’t have to wait that long to hear it.
The hitmaker revealed on Instagram Wednesday, “My third studio album BEBE is out april 28!!!!!”
Bebe also shared what appeared to be the album’s official artwork, which is a glamorous headshot of her and the big hair she’s recently been rocking. The image is given a rose-gold tint.
The announcement comes shortly after the singer unleashed the new song “Heart Wants What It Wants,” which fans felt was the introduction to a new music era. She then raised expectations by announcing a 20-date summer tour, which starts May 31. Fans can buy tickets now on her website.
Bebe began dropping hints about her third studio effort last month and recently revealed it’ll include a duet with her icon, Dolly Parton.
She told People last week, “I have this beautiful song (‘Seasons’) that I really love. I was like, ‘Oh my God, Dolly Parton would be so iconic on this.'”
Bebe sent the song over to the legendary country star and got a response. “She heard it and sent me a verse that she put together a week later, and it’s coming out! So, that’s epic,” the pop star raved.
She said Dolly’s verse made her cry, and explained the upcoming new song symbolized the changing of the seasons and the personal desire to change, as well.
BEBE follows her 2021 effort, Better Mistakes. Her team previously teased in a press release that it will be her “most ambitious and intoxicating body of work yet.”
My Morning Jacket has announced a U.S. headlining tour.
The outing begins May 14 in Mobile, Alabama, and concludes with a two-show stand at Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre on August 25 and 26.
Tickets go on sale Friday, March 24. Members of MMJ’s One Big Family fan club will have access to a presale. For the full list of dates and all ticket info, visit MyMorningJacket.com.
MMJ will also be playing a number of festivals this year, including Bonnaroo, and will play a trio of California dates alongside Fleet Foxes in August.
The most recent My Morning Jacket album is 2021’s self-titled release.
Willow‘s adventures won’t continue on Disney+. Deadline reports the streaming service owned by ABC News’ parent company has reportedly not renewed the series, which was a continuation of the 1988 Ron Howard film that shared its name.
Warwick Davis reprised the title role as Willow Ufgood in a series set in a world of swords and sorcery. The show also starred Rogue One and Falcon and the Winter Soldier‘s Erin Kellyman, as well as Spider-Man franchise vet Tony Revolori and Aladdin live-action movie vet Amar Chadha-Patel.
Although not a hit in terms of streaming numbers, Willow scored an average 83% with critics on the ratings aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, though its audience score sits at 66%. Incidentally, the original film, which also starred Val Kilmer, rated just 46% with critics, but 79% with audiences.
The trade notes that the Willow universe is still “important” to Disney-owned Lucasfilm, and the property may be revisited in the future.
The Ronnie James Dio Stand Up and Shout Cancer Fund has announced the Rock for Ronnie benefit concert in memory of the late Dio frontman.
The event will take place May 7 at Los Encinos State Historic Park in Los Angeles. It will include performances by bands including Dio Disciples, which features former Dio members; Steamroller, featuring former Whitesnake members; and the Van Halen cover band The Atomic Punks, before ending with an “all star band jam full of surprise appearances.”
Dio passed away in 2010 from stomach cancer at age 67. The Stand Up and Shout Cancer Fund was founded in his honor and also raises money for cancer research through the annual Bowl for Ronnie charity bowling tournament.
