Spot Gold 1972 US 2 Year Yield 3.94 +0.18
Coronavirus
Cases 01/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,103
Coronavirus Cases 28/03/23 World 683,394,870
Deaths 6,827,490
“When you
combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results.”
Yesterday banksterism got a break. No new banking problems had arisen over the weekend. But for how long?
The stock casinos nervously began stabilising, but I suspect there’s very little reason to think the banking sector crisis is over. Over for now, perhaps, but how long is “for now?”
In cryptoland, the world’s biggest crypto exchange came under attack from Uncle Sam. How long does it have before deposit flight sets in? How long before some key insiders start playing FTX rollover?
But does Binance, unlike FTX, pose a financial
risk beyond cryptoland?
Asia markets
trade higher as investor fears on banking turmoil ease
UPDATED TUE, MAR 28 2023 12:34 AM
EDT
Asia-Pacific markets were largely higher on
Tuesday as investor fears over the recent banking turmoil continued to show
signs of easing.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 rose
1.1%. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was
up fractionally, while the Topix saw a larger gain of 0.28%. South Korea’s Kospi rose 0.45%,
and the Kosdaq was also up marginally.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was
0.4% up and the Hang Seng Tech index was 0.35% up, while in mainland China, the Shanghai Composite was
marginally down, and the Shenzhen
Component lost 0.33%.
Overnight in the U.S., stocks on Wall Street
ended higher – bank stocks broadly rose as investors attempted to move on from
the turmoil after First
Citizens BancShares agreed
to buy large parts of Silicon Valley Bank, according to the
U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained
almost 200 points, or 0.6% higher, and the S&P 500 was up
0.2%. However, the Nasdaq
Composite finished lower by 0.5% at 11,768.84.
Asia
markets trade higher as investor fears on banking turmoil ease (cnbc.com)
European markets
head for higher open as investors hope volatility has passed
UPDATED TUE, MAR 28 2023 12:22 AM EDT
European
markets are heading for a positive open on Tuesday, continuing positive
momentum as investors in the region hope that recent market volatility has come
to an end.
European stocks were higher at
the start of the new trading week, with cautious optimism returning after a
sharp loss in last Friday’s session.
Overnight, Asia-Pacific
markets were largely positive on Tuesday as investor fears over
recent banking sector turmoil continued to show signs of easing. U.S.
stock futures inched higher in overnight trading after the
S&P 500 posted its third
positive session in a row Monday.
European
markets live updates: stocks, news, earnings and data (cnbc.com)
In other
news.
Your
Evening Briefing: Schwab’s $7 Trillion Empire Shows a Few Cracks
27 March 2023 at 23:12 BST
On the surface, Charles Schwab being
swept up in the wave of recent financial meltdowns makes little sense. The
firm, a half-century mainstay in the brokerage industry, isn’t overexposed to
crypto, startups or venture capital. Fewer than 20% of Schwab’s depositors
exceed the FDIC’s $250,000 insurance cap, compared with about 90% at the now-defunct
Silicon Valley Bank. And with 34 million accounts, an army of financial
advisers and more than $7 trillion of assets, it towers over regional
institutions.
And yet, there are some questions. Investors are starting to unearth some
risks that have been hiding in plain sight. Unrealized losses on a balance
sheet loaded with long-dated bonds ballooned to more than $29 billion
last year. At the same time, higher interest rates are encouraging customers to
move their cash out of the very accounts that underpin Schwab’s business.
Schwab shares have lost more than a quarter of their value since
March 8. It’s all another indication that the US Federal Reserve’s effort to
arrest inflation has caught the financial world flat-footed.
----First Citizens agreed to buy the remains of Silicon
Valley Bank. The deal to settle SVB’s fate could help further tamp
down the banking turmoil of the past few weeks. Shares of regional banks
rallied on the news, with First Citizens up 44%. But the fallout isn’t over
yet: Ammar Al Khudairy, the chairman of Credit Suisse’s largest shareholder, has
resigned just days after his
comments helped trigger the spiral in stocks and bonds that
ultimately lead to the Credit Suisse takeover by UBS.
Bank customers shifted their deposits to large US financial institutions
amid the banking upheaval of the past few weeks. Weekly data collected by the
Federal Reserve showed that large
banks gained $120 billion in deposits while their smaller
counterparts lost $109 billion.
Gains in financial shares lifted US stocks Monday while Treasuries
retreated, a potential signal that fears of broader contagion may have eased.
Tech shares slumped. Here’s your markets
wrap.
More
Bloomberg
Evening Briefing: Schwab’s $7 Trillion Empire Is Showing Cracks - Bloomberg
Binance and
founder Changpeng Zhao violated compliance rules to attract U.S. users, CFTC
alleges
The Commodity Futures
and Trading Commission filed a complaint against crypto exchange Binance, its
co-founder, Changpeng Zhao, and its former chief compliance officer,
Samuel Lim, alleging that Binance actively solicited U.S. users and
subverted the exchanges own “ineffective compliance program,” according to a
filing in Illinois federal court Monday.
The filing has the potential
to upend the exchange’s operations and is potentially just the first salvo in a
regulatory crackdown on the world’s largest crypto exchange. Beyond
disgorgement and any monetary costs, the CFTC filing asked the court to impose
further relief, including trading and registration bans.
The regulator alleged
that Binance, Zhao, and Lim violated eight core provisions of the Commodity
Exchange Act, including laws that require controls “designed to prevent and
detect money laundering and terrorism financing.”
Just days prior to the CFTC filing, CNBC reported on
how Binance employees worked to subvert the exchange’s compliance controls in
China, using some of the same techniques that the CFTC alleges Binance to
solicit U.S. users.
Zhao and Lim allegedly “actively
cultivated lucrative and commercially important ‘VIP’ customers, including
institutional customers, located in the United States,” the complaint said.
---- Binance and Zhao took steps to purposefully
obscure where the exchange’s subsidiaries were located, the regulator said.
This was part of a larger strategy that Zhao said was an effort to “keep
countries clean,” the regulator alleged in the filing.
A key part of
Binance’s alleged effort to generate fees and solicit U.S. users was the
exchange’s VIP program, for high net worth individuals, the CFTC filing said.
“Binance is aware of
its VIPs’ identities and geographic locations because Binance monitors its
sources of transaction volume and fee-based revenue as a matter of course in
conducting its operations,” the CFTC complaint alleges.
Binance’s VIPs were
offered special privileges when law enforcement agencies pursued them or froze
their assets, the CFTC alleged, claiming Binance gave VIPs a heads up or
suggested they take their assets off the platform.
More
CFTC:
Binance and CZ violated compliance rules to solicit U.S. users (cnbc.com)
Finally, in banksterism news, is HSBC about
to split. Will the CS board who crashed CS and Switzerland’s reputation, pay a
cost? But first SVB.
Fed
official: SVB itself was main cause of bank’s failure
March
27, 2023
WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation’s top financial regulator is
asserting that Silicon Valley Bank’s own management was largely to blame for the bank’s failure
earlier this month and says the Federal Reserve will review
whether a 2018 law that
weakened stricter bank rules also contributed to its collapse.
“SVB’s failure is a textbook case
of mismanagement,” Michael Barr, the Fed’s vice chair for supervision, said in
written testimony that will be delivered Tuesday at a hearing of the Senate
Banking Committee.
Barr pointed to the bank’s
“concentrated business model,” in which its customers were overwhelmingly
venture capital and high-tech firms in Silicon Valley. He also contends that
the bank failed to manage the risk of its bond holdings, which lost value as
the Fed raised interest rates.
Silicon Valley was seized by the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on March 10 in the second-largest bank failure
in U.S. history. Late Sunday, the FDIC said that First Citizens Bank, based in
Raleigh, North Carolina, had agreed to buy
about one third of Silicon Valley’s assets — about $72 billion
— at a discount of about $16.5 billion. The FDIC said its deposit insurance
fund would take a $20 billion hit from its rescue of SVB, a record amount, in
part because it agreed to backstop all deposits at the bank, including those
above a $250,000 cap.
More
Fed
official: SVB itself was main cause of bank's failure | AP News
HSBC bows to Hong Kong shareholder pressure and tables Asia
breakup vote
March 26, 2023
Britain’s largest bank HSBC has bowed to pressure from a group of shareholders in Hong Kong and will table a vote on a proposal to revamp the business, including carving out its Asia arm.
First reported
by The Sunday Times, the lender revealed the vote on Friday in an update to
investors.
The poll was
requested by Ken Lui, a shareholder who spearheads the group calling to
spin-off its Asian business.
HSBC has also
approved a vote on whether it should re-up its dividend to pre-Covid levels of
no less than $0.51, paid every quarter.
The bank has
told shareholders to throw out both proposals.
“The board
recommends all shareholders vote against these two resolutions because they are
not in the best interest of the company or its shareholders,” a spokesperson
for the bank told City A.M.
“We remain clear that our current strategy is the fastest,
safest and most value enhancing way to deliver returns. It is already
delivering attractive and sustainable returns and dividends for shareholders,
as was evident from our recent 2022 annual results announcement,” they added.
HSBC has been
under pressure from shareholders in Hong Kong and its largest investor, Chinese
insurer Ping An, to break off the Asian arm – which generates most of its
profit – to ensure it is not dragged down by comparatively underperforming
separate parts of the sprawling bank.
The calls
gathered momentum after British regulators prevented banks from handing out dividends
during the pandemic to ensure money was retained in the banking system to
cushion the economic crisis caused by the virus.
That decision
starved Asian shareholders of dividends, provoking a backlash from retail
investors in Hong Kong.
HSBC’s roots
are in Asia, where it was founded in 1865. It gained its main foothold in
Britain after acquiring Midland Bank in the early 1990s.
HSBC bows to Hong
Kong shareholder pressure and tables Asia breakup vote (msn.com)
Swiss
sight deposits jump, suggesting Credit Suisse, UBS took emergency liquidity
March
27, 2023 10:16 AM GMT+1
ZURICH, March 27
(Reuters) - Sight deposits held by the Swiss National Bank (SNB) jumped last
week, data showed on Monday, suggesting that both Credit Suisse (CSGN.S) and
UBS (UBSG.S) may have taken big chunks of emergency liquidity to
secure their merger.
Sight deposits -
cash held by the SNB for commercial banks overnight - jumped to 567 billion
Swiss francs ($619 billion) from 515 billion francs a week earlier.
The 52 billion
franc increase was the second-highest on record, just behind a 52.4 billion
franc leap in August 2011 when the SNB was selling huge amounts of francs to
relieve pressure on the safe-haven currency.
Last week's rise
indicates that both UBS and Credit Suisse may have used some of the 200 billion
francs in extra liquidity
offered by the SNB as part of a state-sponsored rescue of
Credit Suisse.
UBS agreed to buy
Credit Suisse for 3 billion Swiss francs in stock in a merger engineered to
avoid more market-shaking turmoil in global banking.
Credit Suisse
had already said
it would take 50 billion francs from the SNB under its emergency liquidity assistance
(ELA) facility before the UBS takeover.
As part of the
rescue, another 100 billion francs was offered by the central bank to both UBS
and Credit Suisse under an extended version of the ELA scheme, while Credit
Suisse also had access to 100 billion francs under a public liquidity backstop.
The SNB declined
to comment on Monday on the use of the facilities. Credit Suisse and UBS also
both declined to comment.
More
Swiss sight deposits jump, suggesting Credit Suisse,
UBS took emergency liquidity | Reuters
Swiss regulator mulls
Credit Suisse disciplinary action after emergency rescue
March 26, 2023
Swiss financial regulator Finma is probing how to hold bosses at Credit Suisse to account following its emergency takeover by rival UBS, a media report said on Sunday.
"We are not a penal authority but we are exploring the corresponding possibilities," said Finma chair Marlene Amstad was quoted as saying in an interview with NZZ am Sonntag weekly.
Switzerland, whose vibrant banking scene is a key part of the country's culture, has been shocked to the core by the enforced merger of Credit Suisse with UBS at the government's behest.
A number of observers have
voiced fears the new entity emerging from the shotgun marriage will be not so
much too big to fail as too large to succeed -- even though the SNB central
bank maintains the merger avoided triggering a wider banking crisis.
Amstad -- who noted the new
entity's capital and liquidity demands would need to grow progressively in
accordance with its new size -- did not hold back on criticism of the culture
which had led to its predicament.
The upheaval adds to wide
banking turbulence caused by the recent collapse of three US banks.
"The problems were not
limited to a sole part of the business but spread across various sectors of the
group and an expression of an all round inadequate culture of risk,"
Amstad added.
More
Swiss regulator mulls Credit Suisse disciplinary
action after emergency rescue (msn.com)
The market, like the Lord, helps those who help themselves. But, unlike the Lord, the market does not forgive those who know not what they do.
Warren Buffett.
Off topic, but shouldn’t Wall Street and the bailed out banksters be putting together a rescue package for those tornado victims in Mississippi? It’s not only a job for State and Central Government and churches.
If banks can have a Bank Term Funding Program, put into
effect almost overnight, how about they must use part of their BTFP borrowings
to fund a MS reconstruction, rehabilitation and rescue program.
Mississippi
tornado recovery tough for low-income residents
March 27, 2023
---- Like many people in this economically struggling area, she faces an uncertain future. Mississippi is one of the poorest states in the U.S., and the majority-Black Delta has long been one of the poorest parts of Mississippi — a place where many people work paycheck to paycheck in jobs tied to agriculture.
Two of the counties walloped by the tornado, Sharkey and Humphreys, are among the most sparsely populated in the state, with only a few thousand residents in communities scattered across wide expanses of cotton, corn and soybean fields.
Sharkey’s poverty rate is 35%, and Humphreys’ is
33%, compared to about 19% for Mississippi and under 12% for the entire United
States.
More
Mississippi tornado recovery tough for low-income residents | AP News
Global Inflation/Stagflation/Recession Watch.
Given
our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians,
inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
Fed’s Kashkari
says stress in banking sector brings the U.S. closer to recession
PUBLISHED MON, MAR 27 2023 1:01
AM EDT
“It definitely brings us closer right now” — that
was Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari’s response to a question, during a
CBS “Face The Nation” interview, on whether the latest turmoil in the banking sector could
bring the U.S. closer to a recession.
“What’s unclear for us is how much of these
banking stresses are leading to a widespread credit crunch. And then that
credit crunch, just as you said, would then slow down the economy,” he said.
Kashkari added that Fed officials are monitoring the impact from
the fallout of the banking sector “very, very closely,” and the current system
has the “full support” of the Federal Reserve.
“The banking system
has a strong capital position and a lot of liquidity and has the full support
of the Federal Reserve and other regulators standing behind it,” he said.
“The U.S. banking
system is resilient, and it’s sound,” said Kashkari, when asked about the
stability of the banking system’s ability to control further risks seen in
California and New York.
----Kashkari said it’s too early to predict what any of this
means for the next Federal Open Market Committee meeting in May. The Fed
raised rates by 25 basis points last
week.
“It’s too soon to make any forecasts about the
next interest rate meeting that we have, the next FOMC meeting,” he said, adding
that the stress in the banking sector would be “the factors that are going to
be most focused on.”
He added that banking problems may make it easier
for the central bank to achieve its goal of controlling inflation.
“On one hand, such strains could then bring down
inflation, so we have to do less work with the federal funds rate to bring the
economy into balance,” he said.
“But right now, it’s unclear how much of an
imprint these banking stresses are going to have on the economy. But it’s
something to watch very carefully,” he added.
‘Safe haven’ Asia
The banking fears in the United States and Europe
seem much less pronounced in the Asia-Pacific region, Mark Mobius, founding
partner of of Mobius Capital Partners, told CNBC.
“The banks here are much, much more cautious, much
more careful, making sure that they have a strong balance sheet,” Mobius said
on CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on
Monday.
More
Fed's Kashkari: Bank stress brings U.S. closer to recession (cnbc.com)
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Epidemic of Sudden Adult Deaths
Finally Made News
Mar 20 2023
Insurance industry
research from 2016 showed that group life policyholders are considerably
healthier than the general U.S. population. They tend to be younger,
well-educated, and employed with Fortune 500 companies. So, what happened in
2021 to turn the tables so dramatically?
Story at-a-Glance
·
Former
BlackRock fund manager Edward Dowd is bringing attention to the surge in deaths
and disability that has occurred since the COVID-19 shot campaign rolled out.
·
Group
life policyholders, who are typically healthier than the general population,
experienced mortality spikes of 40 percent in 2021
·
Disability
numbers among the workforce reached a high of 33.2 million in September 2022,
with numbers still trending up—a highly unusual increase.
·
Central
banks, pharmaceutical companies, Big Tech, and the media all benefited from the
pandemic and have an interest in covering up what Dowd describes as a “large
global murder scene.”
·
Dowd
believes there’s enough alarming data to warrant the COVID-19 shot program
being stopped immediately, as the death and disability from the shots could
easily exceed that from COVID-19.
Former BlackRock analyst and fund
manager Edward Dowd is one of the brave few who have been trying to get the
word out about the dangers of COVID-19 shots. While I’ve interviewed him
twice—once about the mathematical certainty of a financial collapse and a
second time about his book, “Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in
2021 and 2022,“—his information is finally getting mainstream media
attention.
More
Epidemic of Sudden
Adult Deaths Finally Made News (theepochtimes.com)
Some other useful Covid links.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus
resource centre
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Centers for Disease Control
Coronavirus
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html
The
Spectator Covid-19
data tracker (UK)
https://data.spectator.co.uk/city/national
Technology
Update.
With events happening fast in the
development of solar power and graphene, among other things, I’ve added this
section. Updates as they get reported.
$5.2 Billion Graphene Electronics Markets - Global
Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2021-2022 & 2023-2031
Mon, 27 March
2023 at 9:28 am BST
Dublin,
March 27, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Graphene Electronics Market By Product,
By Industry Vertical: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast,
2021-2031" report has been
added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.
Global Graphene Electronics Market,' the global
graphene electronics market was valued at $270.82 million in 2021, and is
estimated to reach $5.2 billion by 2031, growing at a CAGR of 34.2% from 2022
to 2031.
Key factors driving the growth of the
graphene electronics market include the rise in government initiatives to
expand or upgrade transmission & distribution systems paired with the surge
in demand for electric vehicle economies. The graphene electronics market
witnesses several R&D activities, endeavoring to develop improved products
such as high-storage graphene super-capacitors, Moldable graphene batteries,
graphene-based solar cell panels, and more.
There have been struggles in the
market to develop energy storage solutions such as batteries and capacitors
that can keep up with the current rate of electronic component evolution.
Therefore, growing awareness regarding graphene electronics solutions is
propelling the demand for cable joints.
The market also offers growth opportunities to the key players in the market.
Emerging economies such as China, India, and Brazil are engaged in investments
on next-generation semiconductor solutions of remote and rural areas. An
increase in demand for consumer electronics solutions and a surge in
urbanization are the primary factors that increase the need for
electrification, which fuels the demand for power grid infrastructure in these
countries, thereby providing growth opportunities for the stakeholders in the
coming years.
More
“Over the years, Charlie and I have seen all
sorts of bad corporate behavior, both accounting and operational, induced by
the desire of management to meet Wall Street expectations.
What starts as an “innocent” fudge in order to
not disappoint “the Street” — say, trade-loading at quarter-end, turning a
blind eye to rising insurance losses, or drawing down a “cookie-jar” reserve —
can become the first step toward full-fledged fraud.
Playing with the numbers “just this once” may
well be the CEO’s intent; it’s seldom the end result. And if it’s okay for the
boss to cheat a little, it’s easy for subordinates to rationalize similar
behavior.”
Warren Buffett.
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