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Best of the Web: Ellen Brown: The Looming Quadrillion Dollar Derivatives Tsunami

Ellen Brown
Scheerpost
Sun, 12 Mar 2023 00:00 UTC
Sillicon valley bank
On Friday, March 10, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapsed and was taken over by federal regulators. SVB was the 16th largest bank in the country and its bankruptcy was the second largest in U.S. history, following Washington Mutual in 2008. Despite its size, SVB was not a "systemically important financial institution" (SIFI) as defined in the Dodd-Frank Act, which requires insolvent SIFIs to "bail in" the money of their creditors to recapitalize themselves.

Technically, the cutoff for SIFIs is $250 billion in assets. However, the reason they are called "systemically important" is not their asset size but the fact that their failure could bring down the whole financial system. That designation comes chiefly from their exposure to derivatives, the global casino that is so highly interconnected that it is a "house of cards." Pull out one card and the whole house collapses. SVB held $27.7 billion in derivatives, no small sum, but it is only .05% of the $55,387 billion ($55.387 trillion) held by JPMorgan, the largest U.S. derivatives bank.

SVB could be the canary in the coal mine foreshadowing the fate of other over-extended banks, but its collapse is not the sort of "systemic risk" predicted to trigger "contagion." As reported by CNN:
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Putin

Best of the Web: Russia's Putin makes surprise trip to "occupied" (liberated) Mariupol


The Daily Mail
Sun, 19 Mar 2023 21:40 UTC
putin visit mariupol
© Associated PressMarch 19, 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin listens to local residents at their new flat during his visit to Mariupol in Russian-controlled Donetsk region, Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the occupied port city of Mariupol, his first trip to Ukrainian territory that Moscow illegally annexed in September and a show of defiance after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his arrest on war crimes charges.

Putin arrived in Mariupol late Saturday after visiting Crimea, southwest of Mariupol, to mark the ninth anniversary of the Black Sea peninsula´s annexation from Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Sunday. He was shown chatting with Mariupol residents and visiting an art school and a children´s center in Sevastopol, Crimea.

Mariupol became a worldwide symbol of resistance after outgunned and outmanned Ukrainian forces held out in a steel mill there for nearly three months before Moscow finally took control of it in May. Much of the city was pounded to rubble by Russian shelling.


Comment: Note that in less than a year, residents are being moved into new apartments. See above


Comment: RT's less hysterical take:
Putin's trip to Donbass was 'spontaneous'

The Russian president made an unplanned stop in Mariupol where he met with locals and checked on the restoration of the city

Russian President Vladimir Putin's surprise visit to the Donbass region was largely "spontaneous" and effectively turned into a full-fledged "working trip," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov revealed on Sunday.

The overnight trip was the first time Putin has visited Donbass since it broke away from Ukraine in 2014. it was eventually incorporated into Russia following referendums last year.

During Putin's stay in the city of Mariupol, he met locals and visited flats in a newly constructed residential building. The city was the scene of intense fighting early in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and ended up being heavily damaged in the process.

"Initially, the plan was only to visit this residential complex, and, of course, neither meeting the citizens, nor paying them a visit [in their homes] was planned. It was all entirely spontaneous," Peskov told reporters.

The visit turned into a "full-fledged working trip" for the president, Peskov continued, as Putin was briefed by Deputy PM Marat Khusnullin, who accompanied him during the visit, on the restoration process ongoing in the city. In particular, the Russian leader was told about "the development of the urban economy, roads, the restoration of destroyed buildings, how many people are working, how working conditions are provided, how building materials are delivered," the spokesman explained.

After his Mariupol visit, Putin proceeded to the city of Rostov-on-Don, where he met with Russia's top military brass at a command-and-control center in charge of the military operation in Ukraine.

The visit to the command post had not been planned in advance either, Peskov said, adding that the president's arrival was not an issue given that the facility operates around the clock.

"Neither the presidential administration, nor the Ministry of Defense planned it in advance," the spokesman stated. During the trip, Putin "heard reports" from a number of top military commanders, including from the chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov and also gave his own "assessments of the situation," Peskov added.


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Cloud Precipitation

Best of the Web: Cyclone Freddy dumped 6 months worth of rain in 6 days on Malawi - 326 killed, 200 still missing and 500,000 affected

Richard Davies
Floodlist
Fri, 17 Mar 2023 18:36 UTC
Flooding in Nsanje, Malawi, 16 March 2023.
© Malawi Red Cross SocietyFlooding in Nsanje, Malawi, 16 March 2023.
As the full extent of the damage caused by Tropical Cyclone Freddy becomes clear, disaster authorities in Malawi report a steep increase in the number of fatalities, people missing and people displaced from their homes.

Around 500,000 people are estimated to be affected by floods, mudslides and wind damage following the passage of Tropical Cyclone Freddy in southern Malawi. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) in Malawi estimated Cyclone Freddy dumped the equivalent of 6 months of rainfall in 6 days.

Affected areas now include Balaka, Blantyre City and District, Chikwawa, Chiradzulu, Machinga, Mangochi, Mulanje, Mwanza, Neno, Nsanje, Phalombe, Thyolo, and Zomba City and District.

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Stock Down

Best of the Web: BlackRock's tyrannical ESG agenda

John Masko
UnHerd
Thu, 16 Mar 2023 17:40 UTC
larry fink black rock esg policies
© Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/Getty ImagesLarry Fink owes investors an apology.
Is Larry Fink a threat to democracy?

As February turns to March, the finance world is waiting with bated breath for one of its most dubious annual traditions: The Larry Fink Annual Letter to CEOs. Since 2012, when the BlackRock chief executive wrote his first letter, the occasion has come to symbolise the growing threat both to shareholder capitalism and American democracy posed by investment houses' crusade to force the principles of ESG, or "environmental, social, and governance" investing, down the throats of companies, investors, and the public.

ESG first entered the investment and banking mainstream as a survival strategy. In 2009, BlackRock had acquired Barclay's Global Investors Ltd, making it the largest investment firm in the world with almost $3 trillion in assets under management (AUM), a sum larger than the total revenue of the US federal treasury. Politically speaking, BlackRock's emergence as an investment superpower could hardly have come at a worse time. Amid the wreckage of the 2008 Financial Crisis and then the ululations of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, public suspicion of big banks and corporations was at an all-time high. Finance, in particular, became a morality play: financial institutions were the greedy villains, while policymakers played the heroic civic advocates reining them in. For BlackRock, the chances of continuing to grow freely in such a hostile policy climate seemed remote.

Comment: It is heartening to see than within the ever-narrowing parameters of free-choice investing, that common sense is able to prevail. May the trend continue.

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Attention

Best of the Web: Study: More infant vaccines lead to higher infant mortality

Dr. Joseph Mercola
Mercola.com
Tue, 14 Mar 2023 00:00 UTC
baby needle
Do childhood vaccines impact a child's mortality risk? While controversy around this issue continues to swirl, peer-reviewed research suggests the answer is a yes.

In 2011, Neil Miller, Ph.D., and Gary Goldman, Ph.D., published a paper in the journal Human & Experimental Toxicology showing infant mortality rates correlated with childhood vaccination rates, with high-uptake countries having higher child mortality. As detailed in the abstract:1
"The U.S. childhood immunization schedule specifies 26 vaccine doses for infants aged less than 1 year — the most in the world — yet 33 nations have lower IMRs. Using linear regression, the immunization schedules of these 34 nations were examined and a correlation coefficient of r = 0.70 (p < 0.0001) was found between IMRs and the number of vaccine doses routinely given to infants.
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Cloud Lightning

Best of the Web: Records smashed as lightning strikes rain down on France

Hannah Thompson
The Connexion
Wed, 15 Mar 2023 20:07 UTC
mmmmm
More than 9,500 lightning strikes hit France on Monday (March 13), a figure not seen on a single day in March since records began 35 years ago.

Monitoring service Météorage recorded the strikes, which numbered 9,549, beating the previous record of 9,134 in March 2001.

The French storm observatory, Keraunos, said Monday was "the stormiest day of the previous 15 years". A statement on its website read: "The indicator of storm severity was at 19.7 for the day of March 13, 2023, which makes it the stormiest day since the start of our data in 2009."

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Eye 1

Best of the Web: France enters stage 2 of its multi-nation war games - troops staging mock battles on real city streets & amongst civilians in ominous urban warfare training scenario

Emma Helfrich
The Drive
Tue, 14 Mar 2023 15:52 UTC
nato orion
Gunfire echoed down the streets of Cahors as a military exercise provided extremely realistic urban combat training among the populace.
In what was truly a bizarre scene, soldiers belonging to the British Army's Brigade of Gurkhas filled the populated streets of Cahors in southern France. The sound of blank ammunition rounds being fired off echoed down bustling avenues as locals casually strolled by and life went on seemingly as normal as the mock battle unfolded around them.

While it looked like a war was being fought in Cahors, what was really happening was a hyper-realistic training scenario that was part of a much larger set of multi-national exercises that are ongoing in France.

While this may be the most realistic military operations in urban terrain (MOUT) training we have ever seen based on the very un-canned setting, it serves as another reminder that militaries are racing to ready themselves for fighting in huge cities — with all their unique impediments and tactical opportunities — which, according to the Pentagon, is where future wars are likely to take place.

Comment: ORION is just the latest military exercise where Western regions appear to be the focus of a conflict, and there's reason to believe that some of its civilians are who are viewed as the opposition.

As an example, Australia's military recently released a recruitment video which shows their troops train for how to 'control' civilian protesters:


For more examples: The full video of the recruitment advert above:




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Bullseye

Best of the Web: 'Rigorous' Maidan massacre exposé suppressed by top academic journal

Kit Klarenberg
The Grayzone
Sun, 12 Mar 2023 04:14 UTC
ukraine euromaiden maiden snipers
© Reuters/Maks LevinAn anti-government protester aims a rifle during clashes with riot police in Independence Square in Kiev February 20, 2014.
A peer-reviewed paper initially approved and praised by a prestigious academic journal was suddenly rescinded without explanation. Its author, one of the world's top scholars on Ukraine-related issues, had marshaled overwhelming evidence to conclude Maidan protesters were killed by pro-coup snipers.

The massacre by snipers of anti-government activists and police officers in Kiev's Maidan Square in late February 2014 was a defining moment in the US-orchestrated overthrow of Ukraine's elected government. The death of 70 protesters triggered an avalanche of international outrage that made President Viktor Yanukovych's downfall a fait accompli. Yet today these killings remain unsolved.

Enter Ivan Katchanovski, a Ukrainian-Canadian political scientist at the University of Ottawa. For years, he marshaled overwhelming evidence demonstrating that the snipers were not affiliated with Yanukovych's government, but pro-Maidan operatives firing from protester-occupied buildings.

Comment:

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Stock Down

Best of the Web: Federal Reserve announces emergency lending to ALL US banks in attempt to stem contagion from collapse of SVB, Signature Bank

Colby Smith
Financial Times
Mon, 13 Mar 2023 01:26 UTC
federal reserve
US regulators unveiled emergency measures on Sunday to shore up the banking system and took control of another bank, as they moved to stem contagion from the implosion of Silicon Valley Bank.

The Federal Reserve announced a new lending facility aimed at providing additional funding to eligible depository institutions to ensure that "banks have the ability to meet the needs of all their depositors". In a statement, the US central bank added it was "prepared to address any liquidity pressures that may arise".

The facility is part of a broader effort by regulators, including Treasury secretary Janet Yellen, Fed chair Jay Powell and Martin Gruenberg of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, to reassure customers that their money is safe.

Comment: See also: Regulators seize Silicon Valley Bank in the second-biggest bank failure in US history

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Fireball 2

Best of the Web: Boom! Japanese astronomer catches meteorite smashing into the moon on Feb. 23

Erin Clark
Reportdoor.com
Sat, 11 Mar 2023 14:42 UTC
Japanese astronomer Daichi Fujii captured this shot of a meteorite impacting the moon (bright flash at bottom left) on Feb. 23, 2023.
Japanese astronomer Daichi Fujii captured this shot of a meteorite impacting the moon (bright flash at bottom left) on Feb. 23, 2023.
A Japanese astronomer captured the telltale flash of a meteorite impacting the moon, causing a brief flash on our celestial neighbor's nightside.

Daichi Fujii, curator of the Hiratsuka City Museum, recorded the event using cameras set to monitor the moon.

The time of the flash was 20:14:30.8 Japan Standard Time (7:14 a.m. EST, or 1114 GMT) on Feb. 23. The meteorite appears to have struck near Ideler L crater, slightly northwest of Pitiscus crater, Fujii said.

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