Never murder a man who is committing suicide -- Woodrow Wilson 1916

 He, meteor-like, flames lawless through the void,

Destroying others, by himself destroy'd.

-- Alexander Pope

US Treasury yields have tanked 14% since March 8 amid bank failure fears

The yield curve aggregate averaged 4.674 on March 8. Now it averages 4.017.

Bills yields fell from an average 5.09 to 4.52 in nine days, 11%, after rising 6.5% in the month 2/8 to 3/8.

Notes yields fell from 4.45 to 3.55, a whopping 20%, after rising over 12% in the month after 2/8.

Bonds yields fell from 4.00 to 3.68, 8%, after rising nearly 6% in the month after 2/8.

It's been extremely difficult to trade the volatility. $TLT is up 5.31% ytd., but $AGG is up just 1.99% ytd. It is a fool's errand to invest in bonds when they behave like stocks.

Meanwhile $SPX is up 2.42% ytd.

This is my opinion, not advice.

The stocks of regional banks have taken a beating in the last ten days, but the banks are still standing

 

Today's toxic assets, if you're a bank, are AAA-rated 30-year fixed rate mortgages from 2020-2021, and 10-year and 20-year US Treasuries of the same vintage

A bank would normally keep AAA assets happily, and hold them to maturity in many instances.

Having to sell them in a rising interest rate environment is where all hell can break loose.

No one wants to buy a UST paying 0.89% when T-bills pay 4.5%, so you have to sell it at a loss to raise cash.

A bank without cash is a failed bank.

Be kind to your banker. He's not having a good week. Even if he didn't pay you interest like he should have since 2008.

 

Discount window bailout operations for banks are now officially worse in magnitude than in 2008, though not in scope

We don't have 500 bank failures.

What we do have is Dodd-Frank 2010 limits on deposit insurance not keeping up with 2023 realities.

Unless Congress steps in and helps high depositors, there will be an exodus of high depositor accounts all across the country to money center banks which have too big to fail status and an FDIC put as systemically important enough to backstop.

This would mean many local banks will come under stress and at minimum weaken local economies even if they don't fail.

We do not need the big banks to become any more powerful than they already are.

And we certainly must not weaken local economies.

The reasons in the plumbing don't matter at this point. It's too late for that.

The $250k limit has to change. The authorities at the Fed, Treasury, and FDIC are constrained by that in what it is permissible for them to do.

Call your Senator.

Call your Representative.

 

I've seen a bull market . . . A bull market was a friend of mine . . .

 

Moody's missed not only Signature Bank's problems, but Silicon Valley Bank's as well

On Wednesday March 8, Moody’s still had an A3 rating on SVB Financial, owner of the now defunct Silicon Valley Bank, as it was already collapsing for all to see. Four notches into investment grade – a very respectable rating!

More.

The CNBC oil desk isn't paying attention this morning lol

 Pretty typical over there tbh.

Women are twice as likely to be traitors

 A 2021 McKinsey study found that women leaders, compared with men at their same level, were about twice as likely to spend substantial time on collaborative efforts that fell outside their formal job.

We need less of that, not more, Heidi.

GOP candidate positions on Ukraine demonstrate nothing but groveling to the anti-war right

 And the kernel there is pretending things that are not true, the mark of an unserious country.

Nikki Haley is simply incoherent. She says we have to win this war, but without more financial assistance. 

“I don’t think we need to put money in Ukraine,” Haley said last week before an audience in Iowa. ... “This is not a war about Ukraine, this is a war about freedom—and it’s one that we have to win,” Haley said. “If we win this war, this will send a message to China, it will send a message to Iran, it will send a message to North Korea, it will send a message to Russia. If we lose this war… they said Poland and the Baltics are next, and you’re looking at a world war.”

Ron DeSantis pretends Russia never invaded and simply has a territorial dispute with Ukraine.

“While the U.S. has many vital national interests—securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party—becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them,” DeSantis told Fox News host Tucker Carlson this week.

And The Daily Beast isn't wrong about Donald Trump's position, who to this day touts the myth that he is some great deal-maker who can untie the Gordian Knot:

Former President Donald Trump has said he would have let Russia “take over” parts of Ukraine if he were still in the White House.

It is also the case that there is plenty of pretending on the other side, that the West wasn't responsible for the Ukrainian revolution of 2014 which ultimately provoked the current conflict.

Statesmen tell hard truths to their people. But none of ours seem capable of telling even the simple ones, including Joe Biden.

Inflation remains a big problem in today's Consumer Price Index data

Services inflation is driving inflation now, 7.6% year over year in February. In a primarily service economy that's deeply serious. Wage and salary increases have penetrated deeply into everything, driving up the cost of using the services those people provide.

Electricity inflation is running at 12.9% year over year. 

Food inflation is still running at 9.5% year over year.

Overall core inflation in this data is at 5.5% year over year, more than double than under Trump.

The fools at Moody's have just cut their outlook for American banking to negative, but don't take it too seriously

The story is here.

As recently as the end of January, Moody's had rated Signature Bank, the bank which failed spectacularly over the weekend, investment grade.

Moody's completely missed the problems with Signature.

Their sweeping warnings in the wake of this miss should be taken with a truckload of salt. They're just trying to save face.

 

You remember the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation, right?

 Chickens . . . comin' home . . . to roost!

 

Studies have found the Dodd–Frank Act has improved financial stability . . .  lol

 

Total BS story about deposit flight contains zero evidence for the claim

 

The wizards of smart at Silicon Valley Bank loaded up on mortgage backed securities in the last few years, and when they needed to raise cash recently they had to sell some at a big loss

$1.8 billion.

That sparked the run.

The problems have been known for months by people like Chris Whalen.

This guy below actually tweeted out some particulars in January. This was no surprise.

Except to the federal regulators, who were completely asleep at the switch.

This is what happens when your bond portfolio is full of low-yielding securities. No one wants them when you have to sell them in the new higher interest rate environment. It's not a problem if you will "hold to maturity".

SVB wasn't very smart loading up on this stuff. Apparently they did not even hedge this otherwise foolish over-large position.

Hell, it's probably all California MBS, too. Think the outrageously overpriced homes, refinanced at rock bottom rates, of the very elite who have all their personal and business banking at SVB which is now blowing up. And all the second tier businesses and their employees dependent on them.

It's an inferno devouring their wealth from every side.

And they are screaming like stuck pigs for a bailout.

 

 

The cold-blooded commie symp and baby killer Breitbart's John Nolte recommends we forgive recently recommended murdering pro-lifers on The View

 Watch the clip.

Stuff that's been in the news since March 6th

 Xi Jinpingpong blamed the US for the first time for his domestic failures, according to the Wall Street Journal. He's a commie reactionary with Chinese characteristics. Not a good sign of what's to come.

Some cracker Republican in Florida wants bloggers to register like lobbyists, and Ron DeSantis finally came out against that, thankfully. A little late, though. Newt beat him to it.

Vivek Ramaswamy says CPAC shook him down for $$$$ in exchange for which they'd see to it he did better in the straw poll. There's no report that Matt Schlapp also asked for a reach-around.

LIBOR surpassed 5% for the first time in 15 years on Monday.

Georgia fired up a nuclear power reactor this week. The country now has 93 operating. 67 were never finished after Three Mile Island. 

A dog and her pups were rescued alive and well from a basement in Turkey more than a month after the Feb 6 earthquake. The death toll is up to 52k.

Thousands of Iranian schoolgirls are being systematically poisoned in Iran. There was a similar incident in Afghanistan during the first Obama administration. Rag-headed heathen bastards.

South Africa is going the way of Rhodesia. 

The UST yield curve aggregate made a new high 4.674% Wednesday v Fed Funds Effective Rate 4.57.

The Obama of Big Oil said peak production from 2019 will never be surpassed.

Pundits who predict inflation won't spiral like the 1970s fail to understand that the price of energy inputs is determinative. Unless energy costs come down big, we're in for it.

Cumulative deaths per million from C-19 in the US are 3,285. In Africa just 181. Follow the science.

The tide is turning on the Wuhan Lab Leak Theory of the origin of C-19 in the press.

Anthony Fauci has authored a paper in CELL which calls for better vaccines than the ones we've got, whether experimental or not. No kidding.

Silicon Valley Bank failed today, the first failure since 2020 when there were four. There was a huge flight to safety. Stocks sold off and longer dated Treasuries rallied 3.45%. The yield curve aggregate plunged 230bp, 3.82%.

Full time employment rose a little in Feb to 49.66% of civilian population. The average last year was 50.1%. 

I'm still here, I'm just bored stiff

 

Donald Trump's CPAC is TRANSPAC

 

WaPo ignores that it was Obama's war on coal which impoverished the Ohio River Valley and is now going hungry after the end of COVID-19 food assistance

A mile-long line for free food offers a warning as covid benefits end

 

In Kentucky, a state that has been hit particularly hard by the collapse of the coal industry, entrenched poverty and hunger have been generational problems that state and federal officials have struggled for decades to address. 

More.

 

Obama's war on coal began immediately after his election.

 

 

Some of the power outages in Ohio on today's national map are due to another train derailment, second one in a month there

 A third world shit-hole of problems, problems, problems.

 

US power outages get more ridiculous by the day

 

LOL, DC Mayor and President Biden both oppose DC's soft-on-crime bill, progressive Democrats, but I repeat myself, are outraged

 The crime bill passed the D.C. City Council unanimously in January. After Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) vetoed it, the city council overrode it 12-1. Among other things, the bill would eliminate most mandatory sentences and lower penalties for a number of violent offenses, including carjackings and robberies. It would also expand the requirement for jury trials in most misdemeanor cases. 

More.

Say what you will about Biden or Bowser, these two do not want to become Beetlejuice, who just lost her mayoral re-election bid because 63% of Chicagoans no longer feel safe there.

 

Sounds more and more like Joe is running, doesn't it?

 

His Energy Department last week endorsed the possibility of COVID-19 being a lab leak, followed in short order by the FBI saying the same, which the progressives still call a conspiracy theory.

 

Joe is aligning himself with where the country is on major issues like crime and the pandemic. He's running.

 

 

Perverse AP Obama just lies through its teeth about drag with weasel words, laughably calls the weasels self-policing

Drag does not typically involve nudity or stripping, which are more common in the separate art of burlesque. Explicitly sexual and profane language is common in drag performances, but such content is avoided when children are the target audience. At shows meant for adults, venues or performers generally warn beforehand about age-inappropriate content.

 

More.

 

"typically"

"more common"

"separate"

"avoided"

"generally"

Jews finally achieve complete social penetration in the United States

 

The Rise and Decline of Reform and Conservative Judaism

Danny Schiff Tablet 

 

Cleveland rabbi sentenced to prison for soliciting underage sex...
 

The election was stollen by the gazpacho

 

Michigan hands off power outage leadership to California

 

American Unity Indicator down 4 points in the last year to 60

 

Michigan power outage update: Day 6

 

The difference between then and now is like night and day

 

Michigan power outage update: Day 5

 Over 100k still out in DTE service area in the east, 28k in the Consumers Energy service area in the south.

Pretty shocking multi-day outage, with overnight lows averaging 26F for the last five nights.

Michigan power outage update

 Consumers Energy outages: ~36k still affected (~90k restored overnight).

DTE outages: ~279k still affected (~65k restored overnight).

This evening it will be four days since the power went out for these people.

 

 

California has power outages because it is insane and has weather, Michigan has power outages because it has weather and is insane

 127k of the current Michigan outages belong to Consumers Energy, 344k to DTE in the Detroit area.

Peak outages for Consumers Energy were ~237k at one point in this event.

Progress overnight: Just 12k restored for Consumers Energy.

In the last 20 years Michigan ranks 4th overall for total outages, but California remains the big daddy for outages, followed by Texas and New York.

LOL, guy named Purple says somehow we still ended up back together even after slavery drove us into a brutal civil war

 Back together at the point of a gun isn't back together, Matt.

Abraham Lincoln made America purple.

More.

Breitbart's John Nolte joins Move On, recommends forgiving Hanoi Jane's treason

 They used to hang traitors in the real America.

After 35 years of apologies, isn’t it time to forgive and move on?      

More.

Power outage due to ice storm just gets worse for Consumers Energy customers in Michigan, so they run PR ads on YouTube while it's happening

 Earlier in the day there were 137k without power.

Tonight there are 139k. 

I wouldn't have thought about it again today but for the YouTube ad which interrupted my evening video.

Consumers Energy should spend more money actually helping people instead of running a propaganda operation.

People are freezing their butts down there. It's 25F in the outage area.

DTE in the Detroit area is actually making some progress restoring power. Looks like ~200k have been restored since earlier in the day, but hundreds of thousands remain without power.

 

 

She was between jobs

 

Three years into the pandemic, America is 2.4 times more vaccinated than Africa and 18.3 times more dead

 

Detroit Free Press admits 13 gun reform bills offered by Michigan Democrats would not have stopped MSU killings, and that it doesn't matter

 It's pure emotional posturing which ignores the emotional posturing which caused the tragedy in the first place.

The progressive prosecutor could have charged the future killer with weapons violations which would have prevented him from legally buying the new weapons used in this crime.

Existing laws might indeed have prevented the crime, if only liberals had followed them. But misplaced feelings of white guilt overrode doing what the law demanded.

Republicans better man up because Democrats sure won't.

Here:

If these laws would not have stopped this shooting, well. They might stop the next one.

Biden's daring visit to Kiev had more to do with repairing his own image at home as a bungler than with helping Ukraine

The visit, combined with VP Harris' labeling of Russia guilty of crimes against humanity, has resulted today in Russian suspension of the last nuclear arms treaty remaining.

The Democrats are playing a very dangerous, impetuous, self-serving, unnecessary, game. 

Over the weekend, Vice President Kamala Harris said the U.S. has determined Russian forces have committed “crimes against humanity” in Ukraine.

Putin pulls back from last remaining nuclear arms control pact with the US

"Talk softly and carry a big stick" would be a much better policy right now than this.

The US COVID-19 booster vaccine initiative has flopped so spectacularly we continue almost six months without any new data

In 2023 through 2/14, just 780,000 Americans have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. If that rate keeps up just 7 million will get the jab this year.

In 2022, just 24.31 million received at least one dose.

This drop-off represents a stunning repudiation.

In 2021 238.68 million received at least one dose after 5.56 million did in 2020 (remember the rollout began late in the year).

As of 2/14 229.91 million have completed the initial 2-step protocol, leaving 39.42 million having received just one dose, equaling 269.33 million receiving at least one dose through 2/14/2023.

Meanwhile daily new deaths per million of population have remained buried below 2 for almost 11 consecutive months even as Americans walked away from the vaccines.

Clearly that outcome is not correlated with vaccination, since we know that the rationale for boosters is predicated on the admission by the authorities that the vaccines stop protecting recipients after a few months.

Why aren't more people dying, dammit?!, said someone at Big Pharma.

All data per Our World in Data.

 

Sweden is still the Nordic COVID-19 death leader and has been since the early days of the pandemic

Recent upticks in deaths in both Sweden but especially Finland must have something to do with an influx of refugees from the Russia-Ukraine War.

 

Tests used by hysterical sociologists show conservative Presbyterian who says the church should stay out of politics to be a Christian nationalist

 Like economics, sociology also is not much of a science.

If a conservative Presbyterian who has long argued that the church should stay out of politics tests positive for Christian nationalism, someone could wonder if sociologists need an equivalent to what epidemiologists have in asymptomatic carriers of COVID. Can a class of Christian nationalists exist who have no strong symptoms of this political virus? If so, do they need to be in political isolation?

Story.

Liberal death wish: The Valentine's Eve Massacre at Michigan State University is the fault of a progressive prosecutor who reduced previous charges which allowed the killer to buy weapons again

 The woman on the left, Democrat ex-prosecutor for Ingham County MI Carol Siemon, reduced 2019 felony firearms charges v McRae to misdemeanor for equity reasons, which allowed the Monday MSU killer, who was black, to legally purchase weapons again.

 

 

The purchasing power of the US dollar has fallen 12.6% since Joe Biden was installed two years ago

 Let's go, Brandon.

 

The only Republican who gets it that it's pointless to elect a lame duck and say it is Mike Pompeo

 Trump's delusional Republican base does not understand politics at all.

“We will nominate someone who is decent and serious and thoughtful and ready to crush it for eight years,” Pompeo said on the “Good Morning New Hampshire” radio program.

More.

Michael Savage: Liberalism is a mental disorder

 

Peggy Noonan sees a lot of inauthenticity out there

 But what else would you expect from a nAtIoN oF iMmIgRaNtS?

 

Peggy is nothing if not the quintessential American who hates everything "stuck in the past", creepy or no. "Someone needs to make it new".

 

America’s Longing for Authenticity

Blood and soil nationalism

 A nation properly signifies a great number of families derived from the same blood, born in the same country, and living under the same government.

-- Sir William Temple (1628-1699)

US tracked balloon from Hainan China from the moment it launched like Rush Limbaugh was behind Donald Trump from the moment he stepped down that elevator