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.