There's not a single, solitary example that signing the bill to end Glass-Steagall had anything to do with the financial crash.
Recently, activists have shown up at Hillary Clintons campaign events to urge her to bring back Glass-Steagall. What is Glass-Steagall? Its the Depression-era bank regulation that kept different types of financial institutions separate; then-President Bill Clinton signed legislation reversing it in 1999. Some Glass-Steagall supporters argue that its demiseled to the 2007 financial crisis, and some Democrats have put a good amount of effort into restoring it -- such as presidential candidates Martin OMalley and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. But Hillary Clintonwon't pledge to reinstateGlass-Steagall if she becomes president. And Bill Clinton says criticism over the laws repeal is unfounded. Look at all the grief I got for signing the bill that ended Glass-Steagall, Bill Clinton said in an interview with Inc. magazinefor its September issue.There's not a single, solitary example that it had anything to do with the financial crash. Given the significant attention on Glass-Steagall among Democrats, we wondered if its true that it didnt have anything to do with the financial crash. Our research shows the laws demise was part of a broad deregulatory push that greatly contributed to the financial crisis. But Clinton has a point that a direct line from the 1999 repeal to the market crash in 2007-08 is hard to identify. Too big to fail Congress passed Glass-Steagall in 1933, in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash that led to the Great Depression. The law kept commercial banks (where customers deposit money and take out loans) separate from investment firms (which hold securities and make investments) -- more colloquially, the law separated Main Street from Wall Street. Some experts and lawmakers want to keep these kinds of activities separate, because theyre worried that merging them could put the publics money at risk. Heres a simple hypothetical: A bank merges with an investment firm to create a massive company. The investment side makes a huge bet on an investment that fails big time, so the commercial bank sides money -- money individuals have deposited for safe-keeping -- could be at risk. Because those deposits are federally insured, it might require a government bailout. (Think too-big-to-fail.) Supporters of the law say keeping these activities separate prevents this kind of domino effect. Is this what caused the most recent financial crisis? Theres plenty of room for debate here, given that thereisnt a single what-caused-the-crisis narrativethat every economist accepts. Its safe to say, though, that there is not a prominent group of economists who argue but for the 1999 repeal of Glass-Steagall, the crisis would not have happened. Lawrence White, an economist at New York University, doesnt see Glass-Steagall playing any role in the financial crisis whatsoever. He pointed to the crisis biggest culprits: firms such as Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs and AIG, to name a few. He added that much of the crisis hinged on activity by these institutions that would have been possible with or without Glass-Steagall, such as mass investment in notoriously bad mortgage loans. (Clintons staff linked us to commentary by several other experts who share Whites view.) We also contacted Barry Ritholtz, a wealth management expert and commentator, whosaidGlass-Steagall would have done nothing to stop the financial crisis, but not having it made the crisis worse. It encouraged banks to get bigger and to take on riskier investments, so the ripple effects of the crisis were bigger than they would have been otherwise, he said, adding that itwasnt just the headline-making banksthat struggled. The extent over Glass-Steagalls effect on the financial crisis is a topic on which reasonable people can disagree. More so in Clintons favor is the fact that Glass-Steagall was a shadow of its former self by the time 1999 rolled around. Deregulating like its 1999 A few decades out from the Depression, starting in earnest in the 1970s, there was a push to roll back financial regulations that continued throughout the administrations of former presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. As part of that movement, banks and lawmakers steadily chipped away at Glass-Steagall and took advantage of loopholes. Banks were engaging in the kinds of activity Glass-Steagall was intended to stop even though the law was still on the books. By the time Clinton signed the Financial Services Modernization Act, commonly known as Gramm-Leach-Bliley, repealing the key components of Glass-Steagall in 1999, the regulation was nearly toothless. The law was simply catching up to what the market had already accomplished in the previous 10 to 15 years, said Kathleen Day, a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University and an expert in financial crises. Take for example the poster child of the end of Glass-Steagall: The merger of Citicorp, a bank, and Travelers Group, a financial conglomerate, was announced in 1998 before Glass-Steagall was repealed. Even though this was the exact type of merger Glass-Steagall was intended to halt, the financial industrydid not see many obstaclesfor the creation ofCitigroup. Citigroup and others wanted and got the repeal of Glass-Steagall in order to validate what they had already been allowed to do, said Simon Johnson, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. So the overall, decades-in-the-making decline of Glass-Steagall might have contributed to the financial crisis and its fallout, as it was part of the deregulatory push. But Clinton putting pen-to-paper on the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999 probably didnt make any meaningful difference. But Clintons hands arent clean of the financial crisis, because his administration played no small part in the longer term deregulatory trend. Clinton and his administration did not make an earnest attempt to maintain oversight over the big, hybrid banks created by the demise of Glass-Steagall, Day said. Additionally, the administrations firm decision not to regulate other aspects of the financial market played a meaningful role in the crisis -- for example, the absence of regulations regarding over-the-counter derivatives, which were becoming increasingly prevalent,despite internal warnings. Clintons claim might be technically true, but its a sin of omission, Day said. Our ruling Clinton said, There's not a single, solitary example that signing the bill to end Glass-Steagall had anything to do with the financial crash. By focusing on the bill that officially repealed Glass-Steagall, Clinton's statement ignores the fact that the demise of Glass-Steagall took place over decades, amid a deregulatory push in which the Clinton administration played a role. By the time the law to repeal hit his desk, Glass-Steagall had been whittled down so much that it wasnt very meaningful. It's a matter of debate how much of a role the overall demise of Glass-Steagall had in causing the financial crisis, but we couldn't find any economists who argue that the regulation was the sole linchpin keeping the financial system stable until its official repeal in 1999. Overall, we rate Clintons claim Mostly True.
In March 2020, as the outbreak of the novel coronavirus grew into a global pandemic, worried citizens of the world took to the internet in search of information about the disease caused by the virus, COVID-19. They turned to organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to get an accurate picture of how fast the disease was spreading, where cases were being reported, and what they should do to keep themselves (and their communities) safe. CDC WHO Johns Hopkins University also provided a valuable resource in the form of a real-time map that showed how the disease was spreading around the globe. At the time of this writing, the map from Hopkins' Coronavirus Research Center shows 137,445 total confirmed cases that have resulted in just over 5,000 deaths.    This is a genuine map from Johns Hopkins that is safe to access here. here Unfortunately, malicious actors saw the heightened concerns about COVID-19 as an opportunity to start spreading misinformation and malware. On March 9, 2020, Reason Security released a report stating that maps similar to the one above were being used to trick people into downloading malware:  report As global awareness of a Coronavirus pandemic gradually gives way to full out panic, and as governments begin ramping up their efforts to combat the virus and protect its citizens, global news agencies find themselves racing to answer the publics demand for accurate information about new Corona related infections, deaths, transmissions, etc. This demand creates a vulnerability that malicious actors have quickly taken advantage of by spreading malware disguised as a Coronavirus map. Reason Labs cybersecurity researcher, Shai Alfasi, found and analyzed this malware that had weaponized coronavirus map applications in order to steal credentials such as user names, passwords, credit card numbers and other sensitive information that is stored in the users browser. Attackers can use this information for many other operations as well, such as selling it on the deep web or for gaining access to bank accounts or social media. Hacker News explained that this malware attack targets people who are searching for any maps about COVID-19 and tricks them into downloading a map with a file that runs a malicious application on the user's computer. Once downloaded, the map appears similar to the legitimate map from Johns Hopkins shown above, but the software will actually compromise the computer and attempt to steal personal information, such as passwords and credit card information.  explained The malware attack specifically aims to target those who are looking for cartographic presentations of the spread of COVID-19 on the Internet, and tricks them to download and run a malicious application that, on its front-end, shows a map loaded from a legit online source but in the background compromises the computer. The real map from Johns Hopkins is viewable online and does not require you to download any software to use it. You can access the real-time tracking map by visiting this website. This is the official URL from Johns Hopkins, and no indication exists that this site is unsafe or infected with malware.  website ESRI, the company that provided the geographic information system (GIS) software to create Johns Hopkins' real-time coronavirus tracking map, attempted to clear up some of the confusion in a blog post. The company explained that the real online map found on Johns Hopkins' site "does NOT contain any malware (and NEVER contained malware)." The reports from Hacker News and the like are referring to a scam that uses an impostor version of the Hopkins map to trick users into downloading malware.  ESRI writes (emphasis ours): writes An increasing number of articles have been published on the Internet with unclear and sometimes misleading information concerning one of the primary dashboards for awareness concerning the spread of the Coronavirus. To be clear, the online map posted by Johns Hopkins University at https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html does NOT contain any malware (and NEVER contained malware). This popular dashboard web application is hosted by Esri as part of our ArcGIS Online offering. The confusion comes from an issue where a malicious person created a downloadable Windows-based application containing malware whose display is practically identical to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus browser-based dashboard (see comparison figure below). Whomever posted the malicious downloadable app is attempting to take advantage of the hype around the Coronavirus, but it requires the user to either download the app executable, or it could be distributed by email for the user to then install onto their local Windows system. The malicious app once downloaded and installed deploys malware called AZORult which is designed to steal credentials in the background (among other activities). To make the user think they are getting a Coronavirus map viewer, the app calls the URL of the Johns Hopkins dashboard and displays the results inside the application window. Bottom-line, you are fine browsing the Coronavirus dashboard on the web with your browser as no software needs to be downloaded. If you come across someone offering a Coronavirus dashboard where you need to download software to view it, dont use it! In summary, a real-time map that tracks the spread of COVID-19 around the globe is available to view on the Johns Hopkins University website. This map is safe to use and does not require you to download any software. If you encounter an email or social media post that asks you to download a similar map, be cautious. It's likely someone is attempting to trick you into downloading a piece of malware.  website Sullivan, Mark.  "Cybercrooks See the Coronavirus as an Opportunity to Steal From You."
  Fast Company.  12 March 2020. Reason Blog.  "COVID-19, Info Stealer & the Map of Threats  Threat Analysis Report."
  9 March 2020. Wei, Wang.  "Beware of 'Coronavirus Maps'  It's a Malware Infecting PCs to Steal Passwords."
  Hacker News.  11 March 2020. Young, Michael.  "Coronavirus Downloadable Malware Map App Clarification."
  ESRI.  12 March 2020. Frost, Natasha.  "This Interactive Map From Johns Hopkins University Shows the Effects of Coronavirus in Real Time."
  Quartz.  7 March 2020. In November 2016, a photograph purportedly showing a young Mike Pence with his chest exposed was circulated on social media along with the claim that it documented the vice president's "gay past": circulated  The man pictured on the right above is not Vice President Mike Pence, nor does the person depicted particularly resemble him. The individual seen in the right-hand photo is Brad Patton, a porn actor, and the original image was shared on MySpace by acolleague, Martin Mazza: MySpace  Several stories have also appeared concerning Mike Pence and his support of "conversion therapy" for gay people. These are somewhat inaccurate: while Pence did once support the use of federal funding to treat people "seeking to change their sexual behavior," he did not support electroshocktherapy, nor did hecredit conversiontherapy for having savedhis marriage. conversion therapy therapy therapy On 28 August 2016, the web site The Burning Platform published an image purportedly showing what the electoral map would look like if only taxpayers had been allowed to vote during the 2012 election:   However, the map displayed here was stolen from Buzzfeed, then republished alongside extremely inaccurate and misleading misinformation. According to the blog post, the data in this image comes from CNN's 2012 presidential race election poll (as noted in the bottom right-hand corner of this image). poll However, by going to polling page itself, it's clear that no one was asked if they were taxpayers  or if they were asked, that answer was not factored into the CNN map. So where did the data actually come from? On 9 November 2012, Buzzfeed published an article featuring several electoral maps representing what the 2012 election would have looked like without universal suffrage. The map, therefore, is a doctored version of Buzzfeed's map for 1920, which showed the results of the 2012 election if only white people (both men and women) had been allowed to vote:  Buzzfeed   President Barack Obama has been elected twice by a coalition that reflects the diversity of America. Republicans have struggled to win with ever-higher percentages of the shrinking share of the population that is white men  a Mad Men party in a Modern Family world, in the words of one strategist. But at Americas founding, only white men could vote, and the franchise has only slowly expanded to include people of color, women, and  during the Vietnam War  people under 21. These maps show how American politics would have looked in that undemocratic past. [...] While womens suffrage passed in 1920, there were still huge impediments to minorities to vote during that period, for instance in the form of poll taxes (only finally outlawed by the 24th Amendment in 1964). So heres a version of the map that shows only white voters, men and women. Other maps published in the same article used different metrics for comparison's sake such as how the 2012 election would have looked like  for example  if only white men could vote, if only men (not just white men, but no women) could vote, if only people over age 24 could vote, and finally, how the 2012 election actually played out.   Buzzfeed.  "What The 2012 Election Would Have Looked Like Without Universal Suffrage."
  9 November 2012. Claim:  Alabama mom's Obamacare horror story gives America a glimpse of government run healthcare. CORRECTLY ATTRIBUTED Example:  [Collected on the Internet, December 2013] My family's journey with securing our new insurance under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) started on October 1, 2013.   I have decided to write this letter to let the American people know what it has been like for us.   We are a family of four, with two little boys' ages seven years old and three years old.   My husband and I have had full time jobs for 6 years and 13 years respectively.  We have been with the same two companies for those years.  We are a middle class family; we own our three bedroom two bath house, we own two cars, and previously provided our own insurance for the four of us.  We have coverage through Individual Blue from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama until 12/31/13. Our premiums have been $380.00 a month, which also included dental coverage for all four of us.  On October, 1, 2013 we received our letters like other Alabamians about our new premiums and plans for 2014 from Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of Alabama.  When I opened our letter to say I had sticker shock was an understatement.  Our premiums for the Blue Saver Silver would now be $753.26. This included the ACA tax but did not include the additional $75.00 we would need to pay in order to keep dental for me and my husband.  So we would need to pay total $828.26 to keep health and dental insurance for the four of us.  This payment is roughly $64.00 less than what we pay for our mortgage each month.  I was outraged that anyone thought we could afford this.  Sure we have some savings, but with that price tag we would whittle it down to almost nothing very quickly.  I consider savings as a rainy day fund, a start to saving for the kids college, our retirement, etc.  I never dreamed in a million years we would need to use it to pay our insurance premiums each month  how in the world could this help the economy too?  [Rest of article here.] here Origins:  The item referenced above, an open detailing one Alabama woman's extreme difficulty and frustration in obtaining ACA-compliant health insurance coverage for her family (including her 7-year-old son with ADHD) was posted under the name of Karri Kinder on 23 December 2013 as the sole entry in a blog and was republished (without additional comment) by the Independent Journal Review on 31 December 2013. blog republished Certainly her experience is not unique in kind, as many residents of Alabama covered by Blue Cross and Blue Shield (BCBS) of Alabama (an insurer who has an 88% share of the state's health insurance market) found out at the end of 2013 that they would be paying much higher premiums for ACA-compliant coverage through BCBS: Doug Hoffman, who works statewide to help people sign up for benefits through the Affordable Care Act, just received a Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama notice in the mail to find health insurance rates for his family have doubled. And  he's mad  at Blue Cross. "I just got my benefits renewal from Blue Cross for next year and they doubled my rate!" he wrote AL.com in an email. "I was paying $675 for a family premium (2 adults, one 22 yo dependent) with a $1,500 deducible. The new rate for a comparable plan is $1,360 with a $3,000 deductible. Basically they have doubled my costs." "It appears as though Blue Cross is taking advantage of the ACA by hiking rates big time," said Hoffman, who is based in Birmingham with Enroll Alabama. Others, who have received the notices from the state's dominant health insurer are mad as well  at Obamacare. "Obama thinks that he is making insurance affordable," wrote one reader to the Mobile Press Register Sound Off feature. "I just got a letter from my Blue Cross Blue Shield that if I want to keep their insurance it's going to cost me $300 more a month. I already pay $300 a month now and they're wanting right at $600 a month for this Affordable Care Act." Blue Cross posted an explanation for the rate hikes to its Facebook page, maintaining that several reasons are behind the increased premiums: more taxes and fees, a requirement to rate family members individually, and the elimination of health underwriting and waiting periods for preexisting conditions: explanation The new law requires all health insurance companies in the individual and small group markets to use a consistent rating method called "member level rating." For the individual market, this means each person on an insurance policy will now be rated based on age, whether he or she uses tobacco, and the county in which the policy holder lives. In the past Blue Cross was able to offer one family premium, no matter the size.  For family plans, most family members will now be rated individually. Once each person has been rated, the amounts are added together to get a family's premium cost. For children age 20 and younger, the oldest three children will be individually rated and included in the family premium amount.   As a result, larger families may experience higher premiums. As Mike Oliver noted in an article for AL.com, the elimination of health underwriting may have a substantial effect on health insurance premiums in that state: article "Alabama has allowed medical underwriting  you're going to be quoted a high premium if you have something wrong with you," said Michael Morrisey, director of the University of Alabama at Birmingham Lister Hill Center for Health Policy. "The Affordable Care Act abolishes medical underwriting." This means that those with expensive health problems will likely now jump in and buy coverage because it will be less expensive for them  or if they already have coverage  their rates will go down. But that also means rates will go up for everyone else as the insurer spreads that new cost around. "The thing that happens when you eliminate underwriting is that you lump dissimilar people together," Morrisey said. "When you combine groups, one group is better off and the other group is worse off"  in terms of premium prices. As a policy, the elimination of medical underwriting and preexisting condition clauses helps broaden access to health care coverage and that was the aim of its inclusion in the Affordable Care Act. Reformers say it eliminates insurers from "cherry-picking" and reduces uncompensated care. Karri Kinder subsequently posted followups to her original blog entry about her insurance issue, the update of 4 January 2014 stating that: Karri Kinder blog entry I do have some good news.  Because I decided to write my letter and speak out, people stepped up and helped us.  We were contacted on January 1, 2014 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.  I was told by the woman I spoke with that she had read my letter and wanted to get her team involved and see what they could do to help us.  I recounted to her what was happening and that I had been advised to go ahead and sign me and my husband up for a plan on healthcare.gov.  We went with a lower cost plan because it was going to just be the two of us.  We had no idea what it was going to cost for the children once we got some answers.  So we went with BCBS Blue Value Saver plan.  The cost of the plan is $459.19.  We qualified for $255.00 in subsidies so the final cost of the plan to us is $204.19 each month.  I told the lady that I would cancel that plan if I needed to.  What we wanted was to have all of us on one plan like we always have been.  She said, "If the kids qualify for All Kids then I am pretty sure they have to go that route or you will have to buy them a plan at the normal rate."  So again we were told more than likely we will have to go through All Kids.  She took the rest of our information down and said she was getting her team to work on it and would either call us back or All Kids would contact us. Last updated:  4 January 2014    Oliver, Mike.   "Blue Cross in Alabama: We Didn't 'Cancel' Health Policies."   AL.com.  2 December 2013.    Walsh, Alex.   "Obamacare, Big Blue, and You."   AL.com.  31 December 2013. Amid national debates about income inequality and tax cuts for the ultra-rich, one talking point is frequently highlighted in online memes and by political figures such as Bernie Sanders is that online retailing giant Amazon.com, despite taking in $5.6 billion in profit in 2017, paid no federal corporate income taxes for that year: Bernie Sanders   (With respect to the claim about Amazon employees on welfare, see our fact check on that topic here.) here In regards to U.S. federal income taxes, the claim that Amazon paid none in 2017 is almost certainly factual. While Amazons tax filings are not public, their SEC filing for the year 2017 illustrates that the company used the tax code expertly (and legally) to their advantage, so well that the company anticipated a $137 million tax refund from the federal government (numbers are in millions of dollars): SEC filing   Amazon did pay taxes to individual U.S. states ($211 million) and to international jurisdictions ($724 million), but their federal income tax burden was (less than) zero. The filings indicate that two factors provided the lion share of Amazons reduced federal tax liability: $220 million worth of tax credits, and $917 million in tax-deductible executive pay derived from the sale of stocks:   The third negative item in the SEC filing, $789 million in reduced tax burden as a result of the 2017 Tax Act, will be applied to future tax years, according to a report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. report SEC filings do not require a company to list the specific credits they utilize, but there are several avenues Amazon would likely have pursued. Annette Nellen, a professor and director of the Master of Science in Taxation program at San Jose University, said that Amazons write-offs likely include credits for research and development, domestic production, and equipment depreciation. And according to a report from the Economic Policy Institute, Amazon receives myriad tax incentives from state and local governments as well: said report The expansion of Amazons physical distribution network has coincided with a strategic business plan of negotiating millions in tax abatements, credits, exemptions, and infrastructure assistance from state and local governments in the name of regional economic development. By the end of 2016, Amazon had likely received over $1 billion in state and local subsidies for its facilities, which would include not only fulfillment centers but sortation centers that only sort packages, mailing centers, and other facilities. Publicly-traded corporations can list the stock options they grant to employees as a business cost in their accounting, and if an option-receiving employee makes over $1 million a year in salary, the profits from the sale of those stocks can be then counted as a federal income tax deduction for the corporation (primarily due to a Clinton-era compromise over how to cap executive pay). Stock options allow an employee to purchase stock in their employers company at a set price, regardless of its current market value: list Options give executives and investors the right to buy shares of a company at a later date and at specific prices. For example, if a chief executive joins a media company when its stock is trading at $55 a share, but years later, the share price has skyrocketed to $100, that chief executive can still buy the shares at $55, pocketing the massive difference. In the cases of their highest paid employees, Amazon and other companies are able to deduct the massive difference employees make when they sell that stock at a profit. According to the Center for Tax Justice, because companies typically low-ball the estimated values, they usually end up with much bigger tax write-offs than the amounts they deduct as a 'cost' in computing the profits they report to shareholders. The $917 million in stock-based compensation listed in Amazon's SEC filing likely stems from their top employees' cashing in on their stock options for a large profit. deduct While it is impossible to know the exact amount of money Amazon did or did not pay to the federal government in 2017, their own accounting suggests that they expected their federal corporate income tax burden to be negative that year.  U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.  Amazon.com Inc. Form 10-K"
  2 February 2018.
 Gardner, Mathew.  "Amazon Inc. Paid Zero in Federal Taxes in 2017, Gets $789 Million Windfall from New Tax Law."
  Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.  13 February 2018.
 Tobias, Manuela.  "Bernie Sanders Says Amazon Paid No Federal Income Tax in 2017. He's Right."
  Politifact.  3 May 2018. 
 Jones, Janell and Ben Zipperer.  "Unfulfilled Promises."
  Economic Policy Institute.  1 February 2018. 
 Gunjan, Banerji.  "Potential Loser in Tax Overhaul: Executive Stock Options."
  The Wall Street Journal.  19 December 2017.
 Citizens for Tax Justice.  Fortune 500 Corporations Used Stock Option Loophole to Avoid $64.6 Billion in Taxes Over the Past Five Years."
  9 June 2016. As memes of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders wearing hand-crafted mittens at Joe Biden's presidential inauguration plastered the Internet in early 2021, rumors surfaced alleging that the creator of the mittens had stopped selling recycled wool products because of high federal taxes. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders Snopes received numerous inquiries to investigate the validity of the claim, which attempted to expose hypocrisy of people who support the Vermont senator's goals of imposing new taxes to pay for various proposals, including free universal health care. imposing new taxes   Here's some background: Jen Ellis, a Vermont elementary school teacher, said she made the mittens out of discarded wool sweaters and gifted them to the senator after he lost the Democratic presidential nomination to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race. "I sent him these mittens kind of as a shoutout to who he is, and I put a note in that said something to the effect of, 'I hope you run again,'" she told Slate. Hillary Clinton Slate  (Photo by JONATHAN ERNST/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)  The viral image of Sanders wearing Ellis' gift and sitting with his arms and legs crossed made the teacher famous by the viral standards of 2021. She gave multiple interviews to news outlets including NPR and Slate in which she discussed her support for Sanders and reaction to the memes; social media users and other websites republished those comments, in part to harness the virality of the moment. teacher famous NPR Slate republished those comments Among the latter group was The Federalist, an online hub of articles with a conservative bent. Two days after the inauguration, the website published a page with the headline, "Woman Behind Bernie Sanders' Iconic Mittens Quit Making Them Because High Taxes Killed Her Business," reading: page The Vermont school teacher who made Bernie Sanders mittens, featured in the most recent viral meme, said she had to stop making them after the federal government taxed her too much. viral meme To support the claim, The Federalist cited a portion of Ellis' interview with Slate. According to a transcribed version of that conversation, which Slate published on Jan. 21, the elementary school teacher indeed told writer Rachelle Hampton: interview with Slate Hampton: Speaking of bittersweet, you supported Bernie. How did you feel about watching Biden be sworn in as president? Ellis: Oh my gosh, I cried. Im 42 and Ive waited four decades of my life  Im tearing up just thinking about it to see a woman be vice president. I wish that she was president, although I think Biden is pretty great. [...] And then there was this little side nagging thing of every five minutes I was getting several hundred more emails about the mittens. A year ago, when Bernie was on the campaign trail, he was wearing those mittens and Twitter buzzed about it then. Im not really on TwitterI have an account, but I dont really participate  but a lot of my younger colleagues do and they were like, 'Youve gotta check this out.' [...] So I put it out there that I made the mittens, they were a gift, and theyre not knitted, theyre sewn from repurposed and up-cycled sweaters. At that time, I had 30 or 40 mittens for sale and being a little nave about Twitter, I put my Gmail account on that, which someone picked up yesterday and retweeted it. People have been contacting me thinking that they can get mittens, and actually they cant. I dont have any more, and I dont have much of a mitten business anymore because it really wasnt worth it. Independent crafters get really taken for a ride by the federal government. We get taxed to the nth degree, and it wasnt really worth it pursuing that as a business, even as a side hustle. I mostly just make them as gifts. 30 or 40 mittens for sale In other words, Ellis said she did not "have much of a mitten business anymore," or that she previously sold the handmade items for a price and then mostly stopped. She implied that federal taxes were a leading factor in her decision to make that change. On Jan. 20, as social media lit up with the memes following the inauguration, she confirmed on Twitter that she was not selling mittens like the senator's. confirmed on Twitter   Snopes reached out to Ellis to learn more about her history of trying to sell mittens for profit and paying federal taxes as a self-described independent crafter. We have not yet received a response, but we'll update this report when or if we do. All of that said, the size of Ellis' former business was unknown, as well as how long or via what methods she sold the handmade mittens. U.S. tax code requires all independent contractors  no matter if they use online marketplaces such as Etsy to sell handmade products  to pay local and federal taxes based on net profits. U.S. tax code Etsy Also, we should note here: Sanders' proposed changes to the country's tax system would repeal aspects of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act so that taxpayers who earn between about $9,500 and $250,000 would pay about 4% more, and taxes on the country's top earners would generate the majority of revenue. Additionally, he wants to impose a new payroll on businesses that earn more than $2 million annually, a change that intends to protect ventures like Ellis' from paying more. (See here for a detailed breakdown of Sanders' tax proposal by Forbes.) 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act here So while it was true that taxes played a role in Ellis' decision to stop charging people money for mittens prior to her viral fame, it was false to claim that she "quit" making them all together, like The Federalist headline alleged. Between Jan. 23 and 24, she said in a series of tweets that she made three more pairs of "Bernie mittens," two of which she donated to Passion 4 Paws Vermont and Outright Vermont for fundraising and one that she was auctioning off to benefit her daughters college fund. Passion 4 Paws Vermont Outright Vermont daughters college fund   After that, Sanders' official campaign began selling merchandise with the senator's meme-worthy image that Ellis made possible. The so-called "Chairman Sanders" sweatshirts, T-shirts, stickers, etc. helped raise $1.8 million for charitable organizations in Vermont over the course of five days, The Associated Press reported. The Associated Press reported On Jan. 24, Ellis tweeted that the senator called her to tell her that "the mitten frenzy" had raised "an enormous amount of money" for the charities. Besides that evidence, it was unclear how, or to what extent, the teacher was involved in the making or selling of the campaign-official products featuring her mittens. tweeted campaign-official products   As further proof to debunk claims that she had ceased all mitten-making, the teacher on Jan. 27 announced that she had partnered with entities including Darn Tough Socks to make socks inspired by the viral mittens, and the following day she said she was in the process of another project "to get Bernie Mittens for ALL." announced Darn Tough Socks she was "Im not opening a mitten factory or quitting my job as a second grade teacher! However, I am going to choose a new adventure on the side," Ellis said on her official website and GoFundMe page. "Never fear  I will make more mittens, but I won't be selling them for myself. I will be donating them to Vermont Charities to help them fundraise and make up for the funds lost due to the pandemic." official website GoFundMe page In sum, while it was true that, prior to her viral fame, Ellis mostly stopped charging people for handmade mittens due to costs including federal taxes, she was still creating the recycled wool products and people were spending money on them, as of this writing. For those reasons, we rate this claim a "Mixture" of truthful and misleading information. In late February 2022, a rumor went viral on TikTok and Twitter that said Russia's largest bank, Sberbank, had imposed a cash withdrawal limit that would be equivalent to $20 in the U.S. The rumor began to spread just after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. TikTok Twitter Russia Russia invasion Ukraine On Feb. 25, the person behind the @bantg Twitter account tweeted: "Sberbank, Russian largest bank, has limited cash withdrawals to $20." tweeted  The tweet cited no sources.  Another tweet posted on Feb. 26 claimed: "JUST IN: Sberbank, the largest bank in Russia, has limited cash withdrawals for its customers to $20 ? #PutinWillFeelThePainSoon." The hashtag referred to Russian President Vladimir Putin. tweet Vladimir Putin  Replies under the tweet asked for a source for the information, but @nick82gh did not respond to them.  While this second tweet didn't receive many engagements, it was shared the same day to TikTok as a screenshot. Within 48 hours of being posted, that TikTok video received 80,000 likes and was viewed more than 1.4 million times. The person speaking in the video said: "The bank run has started. Russia is going bankrupt. This is the end of [the] Russian economy completely." video   Here are the facts: It's true that Sberbank is Russia's largest bank by its amount of assets, according to The Wall Street Journal. However, at the time, we found no reporting or evidence of any kind that backed up the claim that the Sberbank had limited cash withdrawals to $20. We also found no data about anything related to Sberbank causing the entire country of Russia to go bankrupt, as mentioned in the TikTok video. The Wall Street Journal By email, a spokesperson for Sberbank told us: "This information contradicts reality. Sberbank continues to fulfill all of its obligations in full, including the withdrawal of funds from accounts. All funds are available to customers at any time." On Feb. 28, ABC News and The Associated Press reported that Sberbank had been hit with "tough U.S. sanctions," leading to some limits on cash withdrawals: ABC News Associated Press Sberbank and VTB banks are Russias two largest state-run banks and own roughly half of the assets in the Russian banking system. They were targeted last week by tough U.S. sanctions aimed at limiting their businesses internationally and over the weekend barred from the international SWIFT payment system. SWIFT In both Slovenia and Croatia, Sberbank temporarily closed its branches or limited cash withdrawals following a rush by its clients last week. In Croatia, the banks clients will be allowed to withdraw a maximum of about 1,000 euros per day over the next two days. In Slovenia, the branches will be closed for the next two days and then the withdrawals will be limited to 400 euros per day. At the time that this news was published, 1000 euros was equivalent to $1,121, while 400 euros converted to $448. Neither of these figures was anywhere close to a $20 limit. We asked Sberbank for information on cash withdrawal limits for other countries but did not receive a response before this story was published. While we found no evidence regarding Sberbank branches having a $20 cash withdrawal limit, the conflict in Ukraine did lead to fears that the bank could fail, according to a report from Reuters, which cited a warning from the European Central Bank. Ukraine report Also, on a similar subject, The National Bank of Ukraine imposed cash withdrawal limits after the invasion began, according to The Wall Street Journal. However, again, those limits were reported to be nowhere near $20. Instead, the reporting said the limit was "100,000 Ukrainian hryvnia a day, equivalent to about $3,339.13." according to The Wall Street Journal This story will be updated if we receive further information. Finally, a point where Republicans and at least one prominent Democrat agree.LikePresident Barack Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, Austins U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul says corporate tax rates are too high.To a recentvoters guidequestion on how to combat unemployment, McCaul -- a Republican seeking another term representing the 10th Congressional District -- gave responses that included lowering Americas corporate tax rate, highest in the world at 35 percent.A decrease to 25 percent would stop driving American businesses overseas, McCaul said in the guide, produced by the Austin and Texas chapters of the League of Women Voters and theAustin American-Statesman. McCaul faces Tawana Cadien (Democrat) and Richard Priest (Libertarian) on Nov. 6.PolitiFact has recently checked corporate tax rate claims with a different figure, so we decided to compare this statement.McCaul spokesman Mike Rosen told us by email that 35 percent is the top statutory rate for U.S. corporate taxes, citing an April 5, 2012,backgrounderfrom the Council on Foreign Relations.The council, an independent, nonpartisan think-tank, said the U.S. had the highest corporate tax rate in the world by two measures: Excluding state and local taxes, the rate was 35 percent. With those sub-national taxes, the rate was 39.2 percent.Most news stories we read while researching this fact-check used the latter rate -- combining federal, state and local. Thats the yardstick used in related PolitiFact articles, and its also the statistic that made headlines when an April 1, 2012, rate cut took effect in Japan and moved the U.S. into first place. The rest of the top five are France, Belgium and Germany, according to a September 2011reportby the Washington-based Tax Foundation that gave 2012 federal-plus-state/local rates, weighted to reflect the economies sizes so that small countries would not have a disproportional effect on the average. OECD statutory corporate tax rates, 2012  Source: Tax Foundation 2011report The foundations 2011 report and most of the news articles we read for this story limited their comparisons to advanced industrialized countries -- often citing the34 membersof the global Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. We asked foundation spokesman Richard Morrison for help tracking down country-by-country rates that did not include taxes below the federal level, to make an apples-to-apples comparison with McCauls 35 percent.Morrison pointed us, via email, to anOECD web pagewith achartshowing those numbers for 2012.The U.S. rate of 35 percent is the highest on the chart, with the other OECD nations averaging 23.6 percent (figures that, unlike the statistics cited above, are not weighted to reflect size of national economies).So McCauls statement holds true for federal-level-only corporate tax rates as well as for the state/local-plus-federal rate.Butrecent PolitiFact itemshave also taken into account the rate corporations pay after deductions and exemptions, called the effective rate.In anAug. 27, 2012, Truth-O-Meter article, PolitiFact New Jersey wrote, When you factor in various tax breaks, the rate actually paid by U.S. businesses has been among the highest in the world, but not in first place, studies show.The 2011 foundationreportsummarized 13 studies of effective corporate tax rates across the world, which used different methodologies and were not limited to the OECD roster. The smallest study compared 10 countries; the largest, 183.Those studies found the U.S. effective tax rate ranging from 23 percent to 34.9 percent, which often placed it in the top five, but never No. 1.But the U.S. hit the top spot in a more recent report. Morrison told us the latest such comparison was made in September 2012 for the libertarian Cato Institute. Thatreportcalculated the U.S. effective rate at 35.6 percent and ranked it highest among OECD nations but fourth among all 90 nations it examined.How did U.S. rates get to be among the highest? Actually, other countries dropped theirs, we learned by phone from Jonathan Masters, author of the Council on Foreign Relations piece.We found succinct descriptions of the history in Time magazine and The Hill, a Washington, D.C. newspaper. An April 2, 2012, Timeblog postsays that while the U.S. rate stayed steady for two decades, the trend internationally has been towards lower corporate tax rates. The Hills Aug. 27, 2012blog postsays that in 1986, the OECD nations average corporate tax was 50 percent, but today, its 25 percent for those countries -- it has fallen in half. Meanwhile, the U.S. rate, which fell from 46 percent to 34 percent as a result of tax reform in 1986, is now stuck at 35 percent.Our rulingMcCaul said the U.S. corporate tax rate is the highest in the world at 35 percent.The rate set by federal statute is the highest, both by itself and when considering the federal rate plus state and local taxes.However, theres much less consensus about effective corporate tax rates -- the rates corporations actually pay. Studies dont even agree on what the U.S. effective rate is, pegging it between 23 percent and 35.6 percent. Older studies put the U.S. near the top; a recent study says the U.S. is No. 1 among OECD nations.We rate McCauls statement as Mostly True. Assupply chain issuesmount, some Facebook users are sharing an image that purports to show a turkey for sale at Target for an eye-popping price: $123,199, and $9,999.99 per pound. No Turkey for Thanksgiving this year, said one suchFacebook postuploaded Oct. 12. The post was flagged as part of Facebooks efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about ourpartnership with Facebook.) Some Facebook users who reacted to the post blamed President Joe Biden for the crazy cost the viral image showed, leaving comments such as inflation is killing us and thanks Joe. An Oct. 12 Facebook post falsely claimed this old photo was this year. But while supply chain backlogscould affectthe cost and availability of Thanksgiving turkeys, the photo of a $123,000 bird at Target is several years old  and its nowhere near reflective of the true cost of a frozen turkey at the retail and grocery giant, which is many times lower. PolitiFact found the same photo posted in November 2015 onRedditand the image sharing serviceImgur. The price tag in the photo also includes an expiration date of April 15, 2016. The price tag lists a Target store at the Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis as the location of the photo, and PolitiFact confirmed that the pricing was an error at a single store in 2015. The Reddit user who appears to have first uploaded the image in November of that year wrote on the forum that he brought the turkey to a cashier, but the ticket didnt have a barcode to scan. The $123,000 price is exponentially higher than the cost of a frozen turkey at Target  or at other U.S. grocery stores, according torecent datafrom theU.S. Department of Agriculture. Targets websitecurrently showsthat similarly sized frozen turkeys are going for a max price of about $23 at the same location in Minneapolis, and $1.39 per pound. We rate this Facebook post False. Voting in the 2020 U.S. Election may be over, but the misinformation keeps on ticking. Never stop fact-checking. Follow our post-election coverage here. here Throughout the 2020 presidential campaign, U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has frequently referred to his roots in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Some social media users questioned whether this was the same "Scranton" from the U.S. sitcom "The Office" (and whether Scranton was indeed a real American city). Meanwhile, Biden's political rival, U.S. President Donald Trump, accused Biden of exaggerating his connections to the small Pennsylvania city.  This topic came up once again during the final presidential debate of 2020. Twice during the debate, Biden mentioned his small-town roots while talking about middle-class families. Here are transcripts from these two moments: mentioned Where I come from, in Scranton and Claymont, the people don't live off of the stock market. This isn't about me. There's a reason why he's bringing up all this malarkey. There's a reason for it. He doesn't want to talk about the substantive issues. It's not about his family and my family. It's about your family, and your family's hurting badly. If you're making less than, if you're a middle class family, you're getting hurt badly right now. You're sitting at the kitchen table this morning deciding, well, we can't get new tires, theyre bald, because we have to wait another month. Or, so are we going to be able to pay the mortgage? Who's going to tell her, she can't go back to community college? They're the decisions you're making in the middle class families like I grew up in Scranton and Claymont. They're in trouble. We should be talking about your families but that's the last thing he wants to talk about. Later in the debate, Trump disputed Biden's connections to Scranton: And he doesn't come from Scranton. That's like, what -- he lived there for a short period of time before he even knew -- And he left. And the people of Pennsylvania will tell you that. In the past, Trump has pushed an exaggerated version of this claim, saying that Biden "wasn't born here" in Scranton. wasn't born here The president is wrong. Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Here's a November 1942 newspaper clipping of Biden's birth announcement from The Tribune, a local Scranton newspaper: https://www.newspapers.com/clip/61652359/ For fans of "The Office," this is the same Scranton that serves as the home of the fictional paper company Dunder Mifflin.  Scranton Biden lived in Scranton until he was 10 years old. His father struggled to find work and eventually landed a job cleaning boilers in Wilmington, Delaware. Biden's father made the two-hour commute for a time, but in 1953 he moved the family to Claymont to be closer to work. The New York Times reported: reported Though Scranton was sharing in the postwar economic boom, Joe Sr. had trouble finding steady work, and nothing that measured up to his previous success. For a time, he commuted to Wilmington to clean boilers for a heating and cooling company. In 1953, he moved the family there. [...] After a few years in a drab apartment in Claymont, Del., the Bidens moved to a nondescript split-level home on Wilson Road in Wilmington, where they stayed until the children were grown. While the Bidens moved out of Scranton when he was 10 years old, the family maintained some connections to his hometown. In 1987, Jean Finnegan Biden, the former vice president's mother, told the Scrantonian Tribune, "Scranton's our hometown... we have fond memories of it." In 2008, Delaware's The News Journal published an article about Biden's hometown friends and his authentic connection to the city: Scrantonian Tribune  Mon, Sep 1, 2008  Page 10  The News Journal (Wilmington, Delaware)  Newspapers.com  Mon, Sep 1, 2008  Page 10  The News Journal (Wilmington, Delaware)  Newspapers.com In an interview with GQ, Biden talked about his childhood in Scranton and noted that his family spent most holidays and summers visiting friends in Scranton until he was about 16 years old. Biden also said that a few of his friends from Scranton were in his wedding: GQ I go back [to Scranton] lot. For the last thirty-five years, any time Scranton needs something I don't know how to say no to them. For real. I really don't. You know, it's still home. I moved outta there when I was 11 years old, but probably till I was 16, we spent every holiday up there. And almost every summer. And when I got married, to Neilia, my deceased wife, there were six, seven guys in the wedding and three of them were from Scranton. In short: 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in November 1942. This is the same Scranton that is featured in the show "The Office." Biden lived in Scranton for about 10 years until his father moved the family a few hours away to Clayton after getting a job in Delaware.  The Associated Press.  "The Office sheds light on Scranton, Pa."
  3 March 2006. Tavernise, Sabrina.  "Biden Says He Gets Places Like Scranton. Some in Town Arent So Sure."
  The New York Times.  23 Otober 2020. Calefati, Jessica.  "Fact-Checking Trumps Frequent Claim That Joe Biden Abandoned Scranton.'"
  PolitiFact.  29 August 2020. Depaulo, Lisa.  "$#!% Joe Biden Says."
  GQ.  19 November 2010. Solender, Andrew.  "He Wasnt Born Here: Trump Birthers Biden Near Scranton Ahead Of DNC Acceptance Speech."
  Forbes.  20 August 2020. Broder, John.  "Fathers Tough Life an Inspiration for Biden."
  The New York Times.  23 October 2008. USA Today.  "Debate Transcript: Trump, Biden Final Presidential Debate Moderated by Kristen Welker."
  23 October 2020.