Signature Bank is on the market after being shuttered by New York state regulators on Sunday, but any potential buyer reportedly has to agree to a major caveat: no crypto.

Reuters first reported the development on Wednesday evening, citing people familiar with the matter. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said bids for the bank must be submitted by Friday, the report said.

The New York-based bank’s weekend closure came two days after the collapse of another bank, California-based Silicon Valley Bank, and less than a week after the voluntary closure of another California-based bank, Silvergate Bank. All three of the now-defunct banks were considered crypto-friendly financial institutions.

The sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank on Mar.ch10 caused the most serious crisis of confidence in banks since the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, which devastated the global economy and threatened to bring the financial system to its knees. 

The Californian bank had bet on interest rates, by investing in high quality bonds. The problem was that SVB  (SIVB) - Get Free Report bought these bonds and mortgage-backed securities when interest rates were low and did not protect itself in the event that rates rose. The bank simply did not hedge its risk. 

When the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates from the second half of 2021, the bank's bonds began to lose value. This problem coincided with the fact that SVB's clients -- mostly startups and venture capital firms -- could no longer easily find cash to finance their operations and projects, as was the case during the pandemic, a period during which the federal government had printed money in large quantities. 

These startups consequently started to dip into their deposits. SVB had no choice but to sell part of its bond portfolio and other securities to satisfy these withdrawal requests. As a result, the bank had to suffer a net loss of $1.8 billion during these sales and therefore needed to raise $2.25 billion to shore up its liquidity. 

Things between the United States and Russia were already tense, but relations have reached a new low after Russia was accused of downing an American drone in the Black Sea.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is scheduled to visit his best friend, Vladimir Putin, to show the world his support for Russia.

According to NY Post, “Both China and Russia have confirmed the planned visit, with the Kremlin saying that Xi will be staying in Moscow from Monday to Wednesday at Putin’s ‘invitation.’”

The trip to Moscow will be President Xi Jinping’s first visit outside the country since his third term began. It will also be one of his first meetings with Putin since the situation in Ukraine began.

Washed-up actor Billy Baldwin has taken to Twitter to antagonize supporters of former President Donald Trump, saying that any uprising over his arrest will be “over in two Ashli Babbitts.”

Former President Bill Clinton paid Paula Jones a whopping $850,000 to keep her quiet over sexual harassment claims — but was never arrested for it.

Actress Sharon Stone revealed that she lost half of her money in “this banking thing.”

As their audience dwindles and their power wanes, CNN is going on the attack against Fox News.

Fayetteville, Arkansas- Drag queens dressed in bizarre black and white outfits disrupted actor-writer Kirk Cameron’s story time event for families and children at the Fayetteville Public Library on Friday.

Dan Bongino didn’t hold back when discussing the upcoming arrest of Donald Trump.

The Soros-backed Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg isn’t known for his intellectual dexterity. The NY DA’s made-up crimes against President Trump look more like an Andrew Weissmann special.

CNN has been given the green light to report on the Biden Crime family.

The American economy is suffering under Joe Biden.

From the Wall Street Journal – Economists are now estimating that 186 US banks may be prone to the same risks as Silicon Valley Bank. This number is likely higher as the pressures that regional banks are facing are ramping up.

A former federal prosecutor warned Saturday that former President Donald Trump's social media post sharing details of his expected arrest could see him denied bail.

Trump claimed on his Truth Social account that the Manhattan DA's office will arrest him on Tuesday -  and branded the probe 'corrupt and highly political', calling the alleged hush money payment an 'old and fully debunked fairy-tale.' 

Glenn Kirschner, an MSNBC legal analyst, has compared the all-caps rant to his posts leading up to the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021 - and said it could affect the terms of his release.

He speculated that a judge could interpret Trump's post as an attempt to incite a crowd to riot - raising the specter of him being held behind bars to prevent him posting further inflammatory communications ahead of any trial.  

'I would slap a government exhibits sticker on this post and I would introduce it as his criminal trial,' Kirschner explained.

Kari Lake joined Bannon’s War Room this morning to discuss the new poll results from Rasmussen showing that Lake likely beat Katie Hobbs by a landslide in the 2022 Midterm Election, which was stolen from Lake and other Trump-Endorsed candidates in Maricopa County. 

Lake also spoke about her ongoing Arizona Supreme Court battle over the rigged election and the upcoming conference Tuesday, March 21. “At the conference, the Court will decide whether to accept review and schedule an oral argument,” states the Court’s order.

When asked whether she would take her election lawsuit beyond the Arizona Supreme Court to the US Supreme Court if necessary, Lake told The Gateway Pundit, “There’s a very good chance that I would. These bastards stole our election, and I will not let them off the hook.” 

On Friday, Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said she was receiving reports that January 6 detainees were being moved out of DC jails, following a demand from congressional GOP that they be allowed to inspect the condition of the facilities, as reports of "abuse and neglect" had emerged.

"What is the DC Jail trying to hide by moving pretrial J6 defendants out of the jail before we go in?" Greene wrote on Twitter and retweeted American Greatness writer Julie Kelly reporting that "that some J6ers being moved out of DC Gulag in advance of GOP investigation into conditions there."

Everyone is in favor of “doing whatever it takes” to “restore financial stability” when the house of cards starts swaying, but funny things happen on the way to “Restoring Financial Stability.” Whatever “emergency measures” are rushed into service to “stabilize” an inherently unstable system resolve the immediate problem but opens unseen doors to new sources of instability that eventually trigger another round of systemic instability that must be addressed with more “emergency measures.”

These unintended consequences proliferate as policy extremes are pushed to new extremes, and “emergency measures” become permanent sources of the very instability they were supposed to eliminate.

As @concodanomics recently observed on Twitter: “A major flaw of finance is that it nearly always mutates the very instruments meant to protect investors into crisis-inducing time bombs.”

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The University of North Carolina is asking a judge to block the release of documents related to the research of Dr. Ralph Baric, a pioneer in the world of dangerous gain-of-function virus research.

UNC is being sued by U.S. Right To Know, a nonprofit watchdog that works to expose wrongdoing by corporations and governments in the healthcare space, for documents related to Baric’s research while working at the university. While some documents have been turned over during the course of the coronavirus pandemic, UNC filed a motion to dismiss late last week seeking to prevent the release of some documents being sought by USRTK.

USRTK opted to sue after UNC refused to turn over certain documents sought via public records requests, citing a research exception under the Public Records Act. The organization has filed 13 public records requests on the work done by Ralph Baric, Toni Baric and Lishan Su. The university failed to turn over any documents after a February mediation session.

“The University of North Carolina, as an institution of higher learning, should help the public to learn everything that can be learned about the pandemic and its origins, and not try to obscure or bury such lessons,” Gary Ruskin, executive director of USRTK, told the Daily Caller. “We don’t really know why UNC is trying to keep these Baric documents secret, even though there is worldwide interest in them. We do know that Ralph Baric was a close collaborator with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. We also know that Baric was on the DARPA DEFUSE proposal, which in retrospect reads something like a how-to guide for creating SARS-CoV-2.”

Ordinarily, such a charge would be considered a misdemeanor subject to a two-year statute of limitation, meaning Bragg cannot pursue it solely on this basis. Bragg does, however, have the discretion to convert it into a Class E felony, if he can prove that Trump's alleged "intent to defraud involved further criminal intent to either hide the commission of another crime or to assist in the commission of that other crime," according to Saland Law.

In order to meet even the threshhold standard for prosecution, Bragg would therefore need to argue that Trump falsified business records concealing his reported "hush money" payment to Daniels with the intent to conceal another crime.

As a hush money payment to ensure silence about an affair would not be illegal in and of itself, Bragg's case would likely hinge on a possible campaign finance violation. If Cohen's payment to Daniels constituted an illegal campaign contribution, then the falsification of records would have concealed an underlying crime, providing legal predicate for a Class E felony charge of first degree falsifying business records. Trump would face up to four years in prison if convicted on the charge.

Bragg, therefore, needs to demonstrate that the payments occurred specifically with the intent to affect the election, a prospect Turley called "extremely difficult," given the myriad other legitimate reasons Trump might have for wanting to keep an alleged affair out of the spotlight.

Tacopina argues that the payment was not an illegal campaign contribution, both because Trump used his own money and because he would have made the payment regardless of whether he was running for president.

 Group AG has offered to buy rival Credit Suisse CS -6.94%decrease; red down pointing triangle for around $1 billion in a deal engineered by Swiss regulators to restore trust in the banking system, according to people familiar with the matter.

One option would involve buying the entirety of Credit Suisse and then spinning off its local Swiss operations into an independent entity, the people said. UBS would keep Credit Suisse’s valuable wealth-management business. 

 

Add NATO’s military planners to the list of those concerned about having enough shells. 

In the coming months, the alliance will accelerate efforts to stockpile equipment along the alliance’s eastern edge and designate tens of thousands of forces that can rush to allies’ aid on short notice — a move meant to stop Russia from expanding its war beyond Ukraine. 

To make that happen, though, NATO must convince individual countries to contribute various elements: Soldiers, training, better infrastructure — and, most notably, extensive amounts of pricey weapons, equipment and ammunition. 

With countries already worried about their own munitions stockpiles and Ukraine in acute need of more shells and weapons from allies, there is a risk that not all NATO allies will live up to their promises to contribute to the alliance’s new plans. 

There is simply no other option, at this time, for the Federal Reserve.

They will be forced to “provide liquidity” (read: pick your pocket, while shoveling money into large banking institutions who have made poor decision after poor decision) in order to protect the system from collapse. It’s like a “safe and effective” — but for the world of international finance & banking.

Ultimately, this will lead to ownership over the banks by governments — which is called nationalization.

Credit Suisse, as an example, might effectively become a subsidiary of the European Central Bank (ECB).

Republicans and Democrats may quibble over how federal tax dollars might be spent on various social welfare programs like Medicaid and food stamps. But alongside Social Security, there is one area of federal spending that everyone can apparently agree on: military spending. Last year, the Biden administration requested one of the largest peacetime budgets ever, at $813 billion. Congress wanted even more spending and ended up approving a budget of $858 billion. In inflation-adjusted terms, that was well in excess of the military spending we saw during the Cold War under Ronald Reagan. This year, Joe Biden is asking for even more money, with a new budget request that starts at $886 billion. Included in that gargantuan amount—which doesn’t even include veterans spending—is billions for new missile systems for deploying nuclear arms, plus other programs for “modernizing” the United States’ nuclear arsenal.

Indeed, over the past year, the memo has gone out among the usual advocates of endless military spending that the US needs to spend much more on nuclear arms. This is a perennial position at the Heritage Foundation, of course, which has never met a military pork program it didn’t like. Moreover, in recent months, the Wall Street Journal has run several articles demanding more nuclear arms. The New York Post was pushing the same line late last year. Much of the rhetoric centers on the idea that Beijing is increasing its own spending on nuclear arms and thus the United States must “keep up.” For instance, last month, Patty-Jane Geller insisted that the US is in an “arms race” with China. Meanwhile, writers at the foreign-policy site 1945 claimed Congress must “save” the American nuclear arsenal.

The National Toxicology Program (NTP) on Wednesday released a draft report linking prenatal and childhood fluoride exposure to reduced IQ in children, after public health officials tried for almost a year to block its publication.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) initially blocked the NTP from releasing the report, according to emails obtained via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

But a court order stemming from a lawsuit filed by Food and Water Watch against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) forced the report’s release this week.

The NTP, an interagency program run by HHS that researches and reports on environmental toxins, conducted a six-year systematic review to assess scientific studies on fluoride exposure and potential neurodevelopmental and cognitive health effects in humans.

The report, containing a monograph and a meta-analysis, went through two rounds of peer review by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Comments from reviewers and HHS and NTP’s responses also were included in the report released Wednesday.