Posted originally on the CTH on March 13, 2023 | Sundance
The CNN panel was jaw-agape as Kevin O’Leary appeared earlier today to inform them the decision by Joe Biden to guarantee every deposit in U.S. regional banks is akin to “Joe Biden just nationalized the U.S. banking system.”
O’Leary is correct, and anyone who is holding assets like stocks or bonds in U.S. banks now needs to reconsider the disappeared line between government and the bank assets. If the government can assume, control and backstop every single account balance within the bank, the government can assume and control all activity of the bank. WATCH:
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Downstream…. think about the consequences. Remember the frozen bank accounts in Canada as a result of defining truck protest supporting Canadian citizens as domestic extremists?
Now think about the government no longer needing to ask the bank to take action, the govt has a regulatory ability to demand the bank to take action. This takes “debanking” to an entire new level. People are wondering why cryptocurrencies went up in value today. There’s your answer.
Comrade citizens, at the end of this rainbow of bank nudges, we will find ourselves at the footsteps of a government controlled central bank digital currency.
Posted originally on the CTH on March 13, 2023 | Sundance
Thousands of protesters took to the streets in Moldova yesterday, wanting to express their opinion that NATO escalating hostilities against Russia is only going to mean further regional crisis, conflict and likely bloodshed.
There is a significant amount of support for Russia within the country of Moldova, but that presents a problem for the western alliance, specifically NATO, as the peace demand runs against their interests. As a result, Russia is blamed for inspiring the street protests against NATO escalation.
When the U.S. activates NGOs in European countries (Moldova, Hungary, Georgia) the media call it “spreading democracy.” However, when the people who live in the country organically rise up in the opposite direction against the government outcomes from the NGO pressure, the media call it “Russian interference.” NBC pushes the NATO message:
(Via NBC) – Police in Moldova said they foiled a plot by groups of Russia-backed actors who were trained to cause mass unrest during a Sunday protest against the country’s new pro-Western government.
The head of Moldova’s police, Viorel Cernauteanu, said in a news conference that an undercover agent had infiltrated groups of “diversionists,” some Russian citizens, who allegedly were promised $10,000 to organize “mass disorder” during the protest in the capital, Chisinau. Seven people were detained, he said.
Separately, police said they arrested 54 protesters, including 21 minors, who exhibited “questionable behavior” or were found to be carrying prohibited items, including at least one knife.
The protest Sunday is one of several held in recent weeks organized by a group calling itself Movement for the People, which is backed by Moldova’s Russia-friendly Shor Party, which holds six seats in the country’s 101-seat legislature.
The demonstrators are demanding that the government fully cover the costs of winter energy bills and to “not involve the country in war.” They have repeatedly called on President Maia Sandu to step down.
[…] Moldova’s border police also said Sunday that 182 foreign nationals in the last week have been denied entry into Moldova, including a “possible representative” of Russia’s Wagner Group, the private military company that is fighting in Ukraine, Moldova’s war-torn neighbor.
The police announcement Sunday comes just days after U.S. intelligence officials said they have determined that actors with ties to Russian intelligence are planning to use protests in Moldova, a European Union candidate since last June, as a basis to foment an insurrection against the country’s government. (read more)
The installed occupant of the White House said something today that is just brutally false on its face.
From the words typed into the teleprompter of Joe Biden you hear, “No losses will be borne by the taxpayers. Instead, the money will come from the fees that banks pay into the Deposit Insurance Fund.” Who the hell does Biden think are paying those “fees”? Those fees paid into banks, and then out of banks, from all around the nation are paid by the people using the bank, that’s taxpayers.
The United States government does not create a single dollar of revenue. They transfer revenue from people to processes and systems of government. Charles Payne has a good perspective on this entire dynamic. {Direct Rumble Link} WATCH:
China has maintained neutrality throughout the 13-month conflict between Russia and Ukraine/the West. Yet, Western powers continue to threaten China and allege they are conspiring to send aid to Russia. The heightened attacks on China make one question if Western powers are deliberately instigating a fight. CIA Director William Burns said he is “confident” China is CONSPIRING to send military aid to Russia, although there is no evidence of “actual shipments of lethal equipment.”
White House National Security Advisor and Neocon Jake Sullivan has had harsh words for China in recent appearances. Sullivan boldly stated that aiding Russia would be “a bad mistake” for China, and that the US plans to send China “a strong message.” Again, China has done nothing wrong. There is no evidence of China supplying aid to Russia, and even if they did, that is not a crime, as Ukraine is not a NATO member.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told the US that China would not heed to coercion. “On the Ukraine issue, China has been actively promoting peace talks and promoting the political settlement of the crisis. The US is in no position to point fingers at China-Russia relations.We do not accept coercion or pressure from the US,” Mao said. China will not support the West’s proxy war with Russia, but it seems that they are insisting China proves its innocence by ostracizing Russia.
This conflict could have been completely avoided had the Minsk Agreements been based on good faith. The war is a deliberate plot to usher in a new world order to eliminate energy-rich Russia from the global economy. The Kiel Institute for the World Economy in Germany estimated that $152.7 billion was provided to Ukraine as of January 15. The US has sent more aid than any other country but accuses its top trading partner of flaming the fires of international war. This is why there are no true diplomatic discussions with the current failing crop of politicians. The current agenda is to demonize Beijing as they did with Moscow to force it out of neutrality.
COMMENT: Marty; Two former Merrill Lynch traders were each sentenced to a year and a day in prison Thursday for manipulating the precious metals markets, the US Department of Justice announced. Of course, —- —–, which is forever bullish metals, claims they moved the metals in the “direction they wanted from 2008 to 2014.” It just seems that people claim it is always manipulation when they have been wrong. They only look at gold in dollars as you have said it’s a global market. They would have to manipulate all the currencies as well.
This latest affair of so-called manipulating trades during the day proves what you have been saying. They have always been gunning for stops during the day, but they cannot manipulate the trend between a bull or bear market. Do you think people will ever understand this is a global economy?
HD
ANSWER: I know. Unless people have actually been a trader, they will never understand the market. They will blame people like this to pretend they were not wrong. The problem is that this nonsense of manipulation is driving a stake through the heart of the market. Trading is like a poker game. Do you reveal your hand before everyone starts to bet? Sometimes you bluff, but the point is if you are bluffing, you have to stand behind your bet.
The mere fact that someone is blaming this type of “manipulation” for being the reason they have been wrong demonstrates that they know nothing about investing no less trading. The DOJ is now big on calling placing large “spoof” orders as manipulation. That is absurd and it is no more than bluffing in a poker game. This is the way all the markets have always functioned. Everyone would know where the stops were anyway. Sometimes they traded ahead of them using the stops as your risk point to exit the trade, and other times they would sell or buy to push the market through the stops when it was obvious that was even possible.
When I was trading in precious metals back in the ’90s, the biggest “local” dealer on the floor was Oni Morrison. He would do “spoof” orders all the time which I called “flash” bids or offers. The difference was he was good for it if hit. I was long one time in gold and I wanted out for the computer projected a crash was coming. But if you offer a thousand lots and the market was heading lower, everyone will read that and jump in front of you. That is how the Hunts went bankrupt. The Hunts did not know how to trade. Just as in poker, you cannot show your hand and expect to trade.
Oni would do “flash” bids or offers. I told my broker not to offer anything. I told him just to watch Oni and as soon as he would do a 1,000 flash to buy – say done! Sure enough, Oni was trying to push the market back up and he did one of his famous flash bids for 1,000 lots. My broker, Emerald Trading, instantly said “DONE!” Oni did it again, and they said “DONE!” Again he did a fash for 1,000 and again they said “DONE!” That was it. Oni was full and everyone began selling as the metals tumbled.
That is the way you have to trade SIZE. This is the very foundation of trading all markets for everything is just a poker game. To now call a “spoof” trade manipulation is just wrong. It is totally different when you do not have the backing. Now that would be a fraud and trying to manipulate the market for that moment – not changing the overall trend. But when you have the backing to honor your “spoof” it is just a “flash” bid or offer that you must stand behind when hit. That is just trading.
It is total BS to pretend that these guys manipulated the entire market. That is just absurd. Not even the central bank can manipulate the economy. You cannot “manipulate” a market against the trend for everything is connected. That caused the Panic of 1893 when the Silver Democrats overpriced silver. The Europeans hit the arbitrage and dumped silver in the US and took the gold back to Europe. That led J.P. Morgan to have to arrange a $100 million gold loan to bail out the treasury. That alone proved that you CANNOT manipulate ANY market against its trend for it will be arbitraged internationally – plain & simple.
Gold trading around the world in different exchanges is arbitraged. You cannot have gold $20 high in one market v another. It will be arbitraged instantly. Those who claim this as “proof” that the metals have been manipulated so that is why they have not rallied and why they have been wrong are fools who have been separated from the money. They will never understand the markets no less be able to see beyond the end of their nose. It will be instantly arbitraged.
The collapse of the Soloman Brothers was precisely that. They were putting in bids at the Treasury Auction using other people’s names to goose the market. They got caught and the firm was taken down. I know PhiBro from the ’70s and ’80s. They took over Solomon Brothers and brought that style of trading from the commodity pits to Wall Street.
This excuse by goldbugs that the metals were actually “manipulated” in their long-term trend, shows their hopeless ignorance of the markets and how they even trade. There is NOBODY who could possibly do such a thing for everything connected. As soon as the dollar would rise, the metals in terms of foreign currency would be so overvalued they would all sell and they will end up broke the same as the Silver Democrats bankrupted the country by overvaluing silver.
Trading internationally, with clients in all currencies, we have to look at each market in terms of their currency for that will determine if they made a profit or loss. Anyone who claims the metals have been manipulated and that is why they have not rallied is obviously oblivious to the world around them.
Gold does NOT rise with inflation – that is the sales pitch of a used car salesman. Gold rises in times of UNCERTAINTY with respect to the government. In times of war, it rises because it is NEUTRAL and you are not betting on who will win.
All we hear is that the debt is rising and therefore gold will explode. Once again, they offer no proof of their sophistry because there is no such proof. Gold declined for 19 years while the national debt climbed endlessly.
Then there is the myth about interest rates and gold that higher rates are bearish and lower rates are bullish. Well, interest rates peaked in 1981 and declined in 1994 before they began to rise marginally into 1995. Yet then contrast that myth with the performance of the dollar. There the greenback rose to a record high in 1985 but then declined for 10 years into 1995 all the while gold declined into 1999.
OK, so now let’s look at gold between 1980 and 200 in terms of Swiss francs and British pounds. We can instantly see that gold bottomed in 1985 in terms of the Swiss franc. In terms of British pounds, gold did not bottom until 1999.
People come up with theories all the time. However, they always try to reduce everything to a single cause and effect. They are doing that with climate change. They are telling the world it is CO2 that has changed the climate without ever addressing anything else.
The world we live in is not only complex, but it is also so dynamic it appears that no human can correctly forecast the future with an “I think” scenario. Sometimes they will be right, and others they will be wrong. Typically, they fail because they try to reduce the world to a single cause and effect.
Gold Rises with UNCERTAINTY with respect to the question of will the government survive its own madness.
The Biden Administration is responding to the panic phone calls that their Marxist philosophy will bring down the entire financial system. My ear is red as can be. I have had enough of the phone calls today to last the balance of the month. Trying just to do the right thing! Three banks have effectively gone down in the week of March 6th, which our computer was targeting. There have been Silicon Vally Bank, Signature Bank, and Silvergat Bank.
The Regulators perhaps saw the handwriting on the wall. This NO BAILOUT claiming that no taxpayer money will be used for a bailout of their hated rich, how about just using the taxpayer’s money you are throwing down the train in Ukraine? Depositors in Signature and SVB they are now saying would be made whole. If they do not cover ALL deposits, the monumental banking failure will be catastrophic.
Our forecast for a Banking Crisis is by NO MEANS confined to the United States. It will be far worse in Europe. We can see our computer not only targeted 2023 for a key turning point with a Directional Change but a Panic Cycle next year in bank stocks, but interest rates will be rising higher as also the risk of banks and governments escalated especially when they insist on waging war against Russia.
The yield curve is critical and we must understand that this insane war against Russia, even economically, will be a major financial disaster not much different from Vietnam which brought down Bretton Woods and forced Nixon to close the gold window on August 15th, 1971. It was that unrestrained spending directed by the Neocons. Then too, it was all about Russia they assumed was behind Vietnam.
Once more, the reckless spending on war promoted by the Neocons is undermining the entire economy. They have lost every war they have promoted – Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, proposed Syria, Libya regime change, and now Ukraine. These people are never held accountable for all the devastation and the lives lost.
War is the primary driver of inflation and the central banks will not even address it for they do not want to “criticize” the Neocons. They might wake up with their dog’s head in the bed as in the Godfather. The central banks will NOT be able to contain this inflation or ever reach their 2% target regardless if the economy turns down just as what happened during Vietnam.
This is a warning to all small banks. Understand the REAL trend or you will NOT survive. Major capital is fleeing the long-term and rising into the short-term because they see rates are rising and any long-term bond investment during a period of war is going to be a major losing trade. Do not get trapped by the yield curve and understand that this trend is in play into 2025.
This Banking Crisis has been caused by Governments who artificially kept interest rates too low since 2008 and in the process, this banking crisis is unfolding because too many banks are UNSOPHISTICATED in forecasting and have been listening to the talking heads on TV and the desperate hope that inflation will decline while ignoring Ukraine entirely. Get that wrong – and you will NOT survive.
I strongly urge small banks to take our business services for access to real forecasting that is not biased or tarnished by human opinion with the two most dangerous words in forecasting:
COMMENT #1: Marty; Thank you so much for your warning at the WEC that we would now face a banking crisis with rising rates into 2024. You are always so far ahead of the pack. Live forever – please!
KQ
REPLY #1: Thank you, but that would sentence me to perpetual taxation indefinitely. No thanks.
COMMENT #2: Hello. I read your FREE blog because I am poor. Would you please stop posting PRIVATE stuff and post stuff that us peons can read?
Thank you kindly.
Ms. Terri
REPLY #2: My concern is since we forecast this last year, they will only blame me. That blog is only $15 a month, but it is blocked by Google so it is more free speech if you get my drift. I simple MUST be guarded in what I say publicly because they simply always view me as having too much influence.
I will offer this recommendation (publicly) for my ear is turning red from all the phone calls. As for the Biden Administration, if they DO NOT heed my warning, our forecast will be devastating. The Biden Administration MUST stand behind ALL deposits – not the $250,000 FDIC limit. If they do not, small businesses will pul; excess cash from banks, switch to 30-day T-Bills at a brokerage house, and say screw the FDIC and the Biden Administration’s anti-rich (small business which employs 70% of the workforce).
The compromise here is that we need a shotgun wedding where a larger bank takes over SVB at the raw price of the deposits. The shareholder loses, but ALL depositors are covered. Any value of the shares should be attributed to tangible assets only, not goodwill. You will penalize your “hated rich” and even the small businesses will be saved. If not, you will wipe out numerous businesses that cannot even pay employees. That will set off a contagion as you try to uphold your hatred of the “rich” while you pour money into the most corrupt government in the world at the real expense of taxpayers.
Of course, SVB can simply declare they “identify” as a Ukrainian Bank and then everything would be covered right down to the pensions of the CEO.
Posted originally on the CTH on March 12, 2023 | Sundance
BREAKING NEWS – The U.S. Treasury, Federal Reserve Board, FDIC and Joe Biden collectively announce that *all* depositors with Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) will have access to their funds – regardless of amount deposited. Also, all senior bank management has been terminated.
This announced action appears to cover those under FDIC protection ($250k or less) and those above FDIC protection (deposits greater than $250k). The only vulnerability is that SVB “shareholders and certain unsecured debtholders will not be protected.”
WASHINGTON DC – The following statement was released by Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen, Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome H. Powell, and FDIC Chairman Martin J. Gruenberg:
Today we are taking decisive actions to protect the U.S. economy by strengthening public confidence in our banking system. This step will ensure that the U.S. banking system continues to perform its vital roles of protecting deposits and providing access to credit to households and businesses in a manner that promotes strong and sustainable economic growth.
After receiving a recommendation from the boards of the FDIC and the Federal Reserve, and consulting with the President, Secretary Yellen approved actions enabling the FDIC to complete its resolution of Silicon Valley Bank, Santa Clara, California, in a manner that fully protects all depositors. Depositors will have access to all of their money starting Monday, March 13. No losses associated with the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank will be borne by the taxpayer.
We are also announcing a similar systemic risk exception for Signature Bank, New York, New York, which was closed today by its state chartering authority. All depositors of this institution will be made whole. As with the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank, no losses will be borne by the taxpayer.
Shareholders and certain unsecured debtholders will not be protected. Senior management has also been removed. Any losses to the Deposit Insurance Fund to support uninsured depositors will be recovered by a special assessment on banks, as required by law.
Finally, the Federal Reserve Board on Sunday announced it will make available additional funding to eligible depository institutions to help assure banks have the ability to meet the needs of all their depositors.
The U.S. banking system remains resilient and on a solid foundation, in large part due to reforms that were made after the financial crisis that ensured better safeguards for the banking industry. Those reforms combined with today’s actions demonstrate our commitment to take the necessary steps to ensure that depositors’ savings remain safe. (LINK)
Will this action help stop any contagion related to California’s largest bank?
…The odds are, yes.
Despite Friday’s action to stop trading of FRB, with this action, I doubt First Republic Bank (FRB) is now at risk.
Posted originally on the CTH on March 11, 2023 | Sundance
In his weekly monologue, U.K pundit Neil Oliver takes the occasion of the 2023 Hollywood Oscar film awards to overlay the current state of theatrical horsepucky from the professionally political.
As the COVID-19 narrative collapses around them, the rulers who justified their fiats under false pretenses are naked to the sunlight of truth. The people are awake; the lies are easy to see; the gig is up; the bloom is off the ruse… We are watching, and the elites are not comfortable now. WATCH:
[Transcript] – Brace yourselves for the latest from La-La-Land. It’s the Oscars this weekend, another ceremony I used to care about in the world of before.
But for those who feel like we’ve been trapped for the past three years watching a bad movie with an unbelievable script, full of gaping plot holes and bad actors, I can tell you we’ve at least reached a good bit. Not the end, by any means, but perhaps a foretaste of comeuppance yet to be.
After the opening sequence the introduction of the characters establishing who were to be the goodies and baddies, after the setup and then the jeopardy and the darkness when all seems lost we’ve got to one of those bits where the audience leans forward in their seats in expectation of some payback, however slight and however brief. Anything to lift the mood.
I knew we had reached a good bit when I started hearing people talk about “limited hangout”. Have you noticed that term, yet? Limited hangout is more jargon, of course, spy talk this time, from the CIA and the rest of the secret squirrels, for what baddies try and do when they know, as we say in Scotland, that the game’s a bogey means the game is up and those fraudsters and tricksters and over-acting villains inside their hollowed-out volcanoes realise they might well have been rumbled and so start reaching for the back-up plan.
Limited hangout is a short-term fix when the baddies realise their trousers are starting to fall down. They’re not quite around their ankles but some stuff is definitely exposed and so those chancers are forced into buying some time while they try to pull themselves back together and keep going without falling over completely.
What we’ve been handed this past week or so all the high-excitement newspaper revelations are obviously what the baddies regard as the least damaging truth about what they’ve been up to, mere tidbits really, embarrassing but still the least of it. What’s been made visible to us now on account of the baddies’ zips being down, is therefore a limited hangout.
I will come back to the movie analogy in a minute but let me digress.
Billionaire financier Warren Buffet is credited with saying that it’s when the tide goes out that you get to see who’s been swimming naked. Ain’t that the truth?
Well, the tide is quite far out now not all the way but already we can see plenty of bare bottoms. We see you, Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer we see you MSM loudmouths and the rest of the ringleaders, in politics and elsewhere making a run for the sand dunes with your bits out. We see you. You can bleat and whine all you want about how hard you found the last three years and how much pressure you were under trying to keep up with an evolving situation, but you said what you said, and you did what you did and so much of it was wrong and lies and caused incalculable harm to millions.
What we are glimpsing now – even in the midst of the so-called limited hangout – is what we’ve known all along and that is the way the truth does, in the end, what the truth always does. Which is to say, the truth comes out.
There’s been a line out there on social media from the beginning, a meme, which has it that the truth is like a lion, the truth, like the lion, needs no protecting all that is required is for the lion of truth to be set free from its cage and then that lion takes care of itself.
The truth has a partner along for the ride, and that partner is trust. You can’t have the one without the other. What our so-called leaders and their henchmen in the media did over the past three years was abuse our trust to the point where it’s gone now.
As I’ve said before, trust is like a fragile vase. If you break it, you might manage to glue it back together, but you’d never again dream of putting water and flowers in it.
I started by talking about the movies, and movies are all about stories. An old story is The Boy Who Cried Wolf and we’ve all heard it … and we all remember it … because it’s true. It reminds us of what happens when foolish people sound the alarm without good reason. Out of a desire to attract attention and so further their own ends, foolish dangerous people cry wolf when there is no wolf. Everyone around them is briefly alarmed, fearing for their lives. But sooner or later they realise they’ve been had.
One day, of course, a wolf comes a real wolf and when that same fool cries wolf again no one comes to help. The fool is eaten by the wolf and why? Because they lied, and lied again, until the people who might have helped them had no reason to believe them, far less trust them.
Boris Johnson pushed nonsense about the danger of Covid. So did Rishi Sunak. So did Michael Gove. So did Jeremy Hunt. So did Keir Starmer and scores of others. They pushed nonsense about how to handle it as well, nonsense about Scotch eggs and stickers in the aisles of supermarkets, hand washing, face masks, social distancing and the rule of six. They pushed nonsense when they knew it was nonsense while they partied together, drank together and danced together and laughed up their sleeves together about what a bunch of mugs we were.
They cried wolf. Now there’s talk about pushing more mRNA jabs … next time for TB and smallpox and diphtheria and the rest. But what happens when billions of people have no trust whatever in that science, in those products from Big Pharma? What happens when the trust is gone?
More and more people around the world have stopped listening to scientists and stopped trusting scientists. They have also stopped listening to the cries of wolf. If a real wolf comes in the future – and there are more wolves out there than just invisible viruses – millions of people will refuse to listen to the alarm.
And now that the trust is gone, for so many people, more and more are questioning everything else they’ve been told by the same characters about what’s going on in the world. More and more people look at the lies and manipulative propaganda they were fed for the past three years about ONE THING, and rightly wonder if they are actually being told the truth about anything else about the war in Ukraine about the climate about immigration about the EU about food shortages about what’s being done to farmers all over the world about the real motivation behind the push for electric vehicles about the imposition of 15-minute cities.
Our so-called leaders knowingly talked nonsense that destroyed lives and turned society upside down and inside out. We know that … the people responsible are wildly exposed and cannot convincingly deny any of it. Why I ask, would anyone trust them about anything else? Liars lie, it’s what they do.
For now though, let’s, by all means, notice that it’s a good bit in the movie and we might allow ourselves to enjoy it.
It’s like when the money-grubbing lawyer in the first Jurassic Park movie tries to hide in the bamboo toilet stall only to have the T-Rex bite him in half. He’s strictly a minor character but he has put his own needs ahead of the helpless children in the movie, so it’s satisfying to watch him get caught, exposed by his cowardly nature, and gobbled up.
This is the bit when Alan Rickman’s baddie in Die Hard realises Bruce Willis is running loose with a machine gun.
This is the bit when Indiana Jones realises the big guy only has a sword, while he’s got a revolver full of bullets.
It’s important to remember the movie has a way to go yet. More clumsy twists for sure … more bad acting in the world of politics which, as we are regularly informed, is only showbiz for ugly people.
Here’s the thing: I sincerely believe that now the truth is partially revealed, if we can only find the strength to keep pushing … then the really, really good bits of this movie lie ahead. Like the bit in A Few Good Men – when Jack Nicolson plays the colonel in the dock and Tom Cruise is the underdog attorney.
Jack’s colonel does not like one bit being challenged by upstart Tom’s character about how Jack chooses to do what Jack does. Jack is angry enough to kick a puppy through a fan
When Tom finally demands to hear the truth about how a young soldier died under Jack’s watch. Jack finally loses it completely.
“You can’t handle the truth!” he roars and he evidently believes what he has just bellowed. He actually believes that Tom and the rest of the general population lack the mental circuitry to contemplate, far less to deal with, what he does down there in the darkness out of sight.
But it’s the best bit in the movie and Jack is caught out and his ass is grass and we know it.
When you get right down to it, his undoing has been no more complicated than that he has been caught lying.
Of course, the other thing we learn from watching movies is that it’s never, never safe to take your eyes off the adversary the first time they go down … the first time they seem to be finished.
We have to stay sharp and be ready for the bit when Glenn Close’s character is lying quietly in the bath in Fatal Attraction, eyes wide open and no bubbles coming out of her mouth.
Right when we think we’re safe, she’ll sit back up again with her yelling and her knife. We must pay attention.
More and more I think about the disaster movies – and if this isn’t a manmade disaster, we’re living through right now then I don’t know what it is.
I think about when the survivors step blinking out of the smoke and darkness to confront a ruined White House and a toppled Statue of Liberty … or a burning Big Ben and a flattened GCHQ. They realise, those survivors, that what they thought mattered was, in the end, just a house, just a lifeless lump of copper and steel, just a bell tower, just an office block.
Those survivors look around at the devastation, the receding flood waters of the tsunami, and realise they were caring about stuff that didn’t amount to a hill of beans. They get ready to start again with all that really matters, which is people they can trust, which is each other. If we have that, then we have all that we will need. Pass the popcorn.
Posted originally on the CTH on March 11, 2023 | Sundance
The 44-hour collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) is having some reverberations amid the tech sector as companies who carried unsecured deposits with the bank are facing an uncertain future.
Tech company Roku streaming services holds $487 million in cash reserves at SVB representing 26% of their liquid holdings. Those unsecured funds are now tenuous, depending on what steps are taken next. Additionally, Etsy an online brokering retailer for mostly independent sellers, has also run into a snag with processing disbursement payments to those same sellers. Etsy used SVB as a depository and payment transfer provider to the merchant accounts.
According to Axios, “Circle’s usd coin (USDC), the second largest stablecoin in the world” is also in a tough position “because a portion of its cash reserves were held at SVB, which the U.S. government took control of on Friday.” These and other ancillary issues are now part of a larger conversation about whether SVB is representative of a weakness that may impact other banks. However, current consensus is that a contagion effect is not expected.
SVB was exclusively a tech sector bank. Small to mid-size tech companies who relied on SVB may have some immediate issues; but the larger banking sector seems much more solid and less exposed to the long-term treasuries that SVB was holding. “People are used to having zero interest rates and easy money, and it’s gone. And there are people who will manage that well and people who will not,” former Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Holtz-Eakin said during an interview on “Cavuto Coast-to-Coast” Friday. {link}
Meanwhile, congress is meeting with treasury and FDIC officials to discuss if taxpayer intervention is needed. {insert eyeroll here}:
March 11 (Reuters) – U.S. lawmakers met with the Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation on Friday to discuss the collapse of SVB Financial Group (SIVB.O), Coindesk reported on Saturday citing a source.
Democratic U.S. Representative Maxine Waters held briefings with officials from the two regulators and the Treasury Department, hours after the startup-focused SVB’s collapse, the report said.
[…] Separately, Representative Ro Khanna said in a tweet on Friday that he reached out to both the White House and the Treasury Department to discuss the situation with the bank.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Friday met with banking regulators on the collapse of SVB, as she and the White House expressed confidence in their abilities to respond to the bank failure. (more)
Nothing makes the Nope Meterpeg with greater emphasis than hearing the name Maxine Waters and bank bailout in the same sentence.
The tech sector has a tremendous amount of capital at hand. Let the tech companies who used SVB as a launch vehicle sell some of their own stock holdings and backstop the bank as an investment mechanism. There is no need for the U.S. taxpayer to get involved.
I am more concerned about this failure being used as a tool to initiate a conversation about digital currencies. The ‘never let a crisis go to waste‘ team, are likely chomping at the proverbial bit….
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