"Truth is proper and beautiful in all times and in all places.: -- Frederick Douglass
"All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable." -- Henry David Thoreau (1942). "Civil Disobedience"
Deutsche Bank DB –6.74% shares tumbled Friday after the cost of insuring the lender against default rose.
Deutsche Bank (ticker: DB) fell 12% in Frankfurt trading. U.S.-listed shares fell 7.5% in premarket trading. The move followed a spike in the price of the lender’s credit default swaps to a four-year high on Thursday, according to Reuters.
The Fed’s actions to stem the banking crisis are beginning to accelerate the effects of QT, causing money velocity to drop and intensifying the tightening of financial conditions.
In an implicit acknowledgement that policy may have been overtightened, the Fed at its meeting Wednesday hiked rates by 25 bps, but gave the impression it is on the verge of stepping back from further raises.
Having enraged bondholders (who saw their entire AT1 debt tranche wiped out before the equity was fully impaired, violating every conventional liquidation waterfall):
Mark Dowding, chief investment officer at RBC BlueBay, which held Credit Suisse AT1 bonds, said Switzerland was “looking more like a banana republic”
Yesterday, while attention was still focused on the US banking system and the ongoing botched response by the Fed and especially the Treasury's senile Secretary, who more than two weeks after SIVB collapsed, have still not been able to stabilize confidence in banks - thereby assuring the US is about to slam head first into a brutal recession, just as Biden ordered to contain inflation, as US consumer spending is now in freefall - we pointed
Goldman Sachs' traders said they think the pain in European banks is "simply a function of market selling leveraged and opaque business models post CS, with some discomfort on what may roll out of 1Q IB earnings following the spike in rates vol. There’s also 7% of the loan book in CRE (EUR33bn), of which 51% in the US. Total office exposure is 34%, which is the market’s core area of concern, so could say the range for US office is EUR5.5-11bn"
Amazon's palm-reading payment technology was first introduced at numerous Whole Foods locations in California, enabling customers to pay for their groceries by scanning their palms at checkout terminals rather than using cash or a card. Now Panera Bread is experimenting with Amazon's cashless payment system as the war on cash marches on.
While elites around the world – those in political power and in control of top financial institutions – are very much rallying around the plans to introduce central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), in Florida, the state's governor has a different take on where things should be headed.
In fact, radically different – Governor Ron DeSantis thinks CBDCs should be banned.
Chinese President Xi Jinping concluded his Russian visit on Wednesday without much progress on peace in Ukraine. China, however, has pushed for deeper trade and investment links with its northern neighbor using its own currency. That suggests the path of least resistance for yuan internationalization now runs through Moscow instead of London or Singapore.
Oil prices may be trading in a sweet spot for buyers, but it will take years to replenish the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserves, U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said.
Oil tankers are being rerouted to Rotterdam to avoid the French port of Le Havre as intensifying strikes disrupt the industry and protesters block airports and trains and clash with police against presidential plans to raise the pension age.
