"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"
A notorious short-seller has taken aim at Jack Dorsey's payments company Block, releasing a report accusing the firm of misleading investors and embracing a criminal user base.
Hindenburg Research on Thursday disclosed its short position in Block and released findings from a two-year investigation, alleging the company 'misled investors on key metrics, and embraced predatory offerings and compliance worst-practices in order to fuel growth.'
“All crises have involved debt that, in one fashion or another, has become dangerously out of scale in relation to the underlying means of payment.” John K. Galbraith (1908-2006), Canadian-born American economist, (in ‘A Short History of Financial Euphoria’ 1994).
Now, with recent historical and unprecedented flooding, many farmers in California are reporting that they have “lost everything.”
Banks reduced their borrowings only slightly from two Federal Reserve backstop facilities in the most recent week, a sign that institutions are taking advantage of the central bank’s liquidity in the wake of turmoil.
When there is fear in the air, banks start getting really tight with their money, and right now there is lots of fear in the air. A major credit contraction would be a nightmare scenario for the economy, and as you will see below, there is evidence that this is already starting to happen. Hopefully our leaders can find a way to calm things down, because we all remember what happened during the last financial crisis.
More than 1 million people demonstrated across France on Thursday against unpopular pension reforms, and violence erupted in some places as unions called for new nationwide strikes and protests next week, coinciding with King Charles III's planned visit to France.
Loss of confidence in the US Dollar is growing. Saudi Arabia has begun earnestly dumping US Treasuries, with the Oil-rich nation now having fewer US Treasuries than anytime in the past 7 years.
This trend with Saudi Arabia is being mirrored by many other countries which are fearful the US has already over-spent itself (into oblivion) and will NOT be able to actually repay the money it owes.
Other countries have also been unloading US debt notes.
As Simon White writes today, "a full guarantee of all bank deposits would spell the end of moral hazard disciplining banks and mark the final chapter of the dollar’s multi-decade debasement." And yet that's where we are headed, even if with a few hiccups along the way, because as White also notes, with the latest banking crisis in the US, it’s the clean-up that could end up doing far more lasting damage. That's because with the failure of SVB et al prompted the FDIC to guarantee that all depositors will be made whole, whether insured or not
The latest casualty of the ESG implosion is Amazon, with over 9000 layoffs announced this past week, along with cuts being made to various Amazon subsidiaries including the Twitch video streaming service popular with gamers. The San Francisco based company has an extensive and ugly history of EDI (Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) measures that have greatly influenced its hiring practices as well as its censorship practices. The platform is notorious for its crackdown on content that runs cont
Amid the justifiably shocked outcry from Credit Suisse junior debtors, who saw their entire AT1 debt tranche wiped out before the equity was fully impaired, violating every conventional liquidation waterfall, on Thursday Swiss financial regulator Finma has defended its decision to wipe out a huge swath of risky subordinated bonds as part of the Credit Suisse rescue deal even as an army of bondholders is preparing to sue the Swiss government.
