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Shotgun marriage: Swiss bank UBS 'is prepared to take over troubled rival Credit Suisse but only for knockdown price'

UBS Swiss bank Credit Suisse
© Associated Press
Swiss bank UBS is prepared to take over troubled rival Credit Suisse but only for a knockdown price, reports said March 19, 2023
Swiss bank UBS is prepared to take over its troubled rival Credit Suisse but only for a knockdown price, reports said today.

It comes amid urgent talks aimed at saving the embattled bank from a bloodbath when the markets reopen.

The two largest banks in the wealthy Alpine nation famed for its banking prominence have been in negotiations with the government throughout the weekend, with the central bank and financial regulators all involved.

The Financial Times, which was the first on Friday to report the prospect of Switzerland's biggest bank swallowing up Credit Suisse, said UBS had offered to buy it for up to $1billion.

The transaction would be worth 25 cents (0.23 Swiss francs) per Credit Suisse share, the FT said.

Comment:


Arrow Down

First Republic Bank executives sold $12 million in stock in months before crash

FirstRepub
© Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
First Republic Bank, San Francisco, CA • March 16, 2023
Top executives of First Republic Bank sold millions of dollars of company stock in the two months before the bank's shares plummeted during the panic over the health of regional lenders.

The bank's chief risk officer sold on March 6, according to government documents. Two days later, Silicon Valley Bank shocked the market and sent other banks into freefall. First Republic was among the worst hit.

Executives had been selling for months, the documents show. Executive Chairman James Herbert II has sold $4.5 million worth of shares since the start of the year. In all, insiders have sold $11.8 million worth of stock so far this year at prices averaging just below $130 a share. The bank's chief credit officer, its president of private wealth management and chief executive together sold $7 million worth of stock.


Comment: Passing 'the buck'? Sudden sell-offs smack of chicanery.


Target

US the greatest threat to Western civilization - Trump

Trump
© Scott Olsen/Getty Images
Former US President Donald Trump
The country has 'never been closer' to nuclear war, the former president claimed, in a video urging a ceasefire in Ukraine...

Former US President Donald Trump slammed "globalists" and the American neoconservative establishment in a video posted to his social media accounts on Thursday, declaring that
"The US and some of the horrible, USA-hating people that represent us are the greatest threat to Western civilization today. These globalists want to squander all of America's strength, blood and treasure, chasing monsters and phantoms overseas while keeping us distracted from the havoc they're creating right here at home. These forces are doing more damage to America than Russia and China could ever have dreamed."


Comment: Worth a listen.


Comment: Trump says compelling words, should his mesmerized country care to hear them. Perhaps in 'not winning' the last election he has gained perspective and resolve...more than showmanship. He was a target then and it remains his choice.


Mr. Potato

Unmoored from reality: Biden denies $1M in payments to family from Hunter associate, despite BANK RECORDS showing them

biden chinese money hunter denial
© Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
President Biden speaks with reporters before departing from the South Lawn of the White House on Marine One on March 17, 2023, in Washington, D.C.
'That's not true,' Biden said, disputing financial records that show Hunter, Jim and Hallie Biden received lucrative payments from one of Hunter's business associates, according to Republicans

President Biden denied that his family received more than $1 million in payments from accounts related to Hunter Biden's business associate Rob Walker and their Chinese business ventures in 2017, even though financial records indicate otherwise.

On Thursday, GOP lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee revealed that they had obtained bank documents showing that Hunter Biden, the president's brother Jim, and Hallie Biden, the widow of his son Beau, received payments from Hunter's business associate Rob Walker and their joint venture with Chinese energy firm CEFC. A spokesperson for Hunter Biden's legal team confirmed the payments Thursday but emphasized that the recipients' accounts "belonged to Hunter, his uncle and Hallie - nobody else."

However, Biden denied that the payments were made when confronted by a reporter on the White House lawn Friday.

Comment: A little more on James Gilliar's role:


Nuke

Late stage bureaucracy

city destruction
© unknown
Perhaps you've heard of "late stage capitalism." While not coined by Karl Marx himself, the term has gained some popularity as a meme attributing much of the insanity of Western modernity to capitalism. An article from theconversation.com describes the providence of the term thus:
It was coined by Werner Sombart, a controversial German historical economist, almost a century ago in his three-volume magnum opus Der Moderne Kapitalismus (published from 1902 through 1927).

Sombart's main contribution was to define three periods of the capitalist economic system: early or proto capitalism, advanced capitalism and late capitalism. In Sombart's analysis, late capitalism referred specifically to economic, political and social deprivations associated with the aftermath of the first world war.
I don't think this conception is useful. Capitalism doesn't exist in the West, and hasn't for some time. Managerial liberalism does, however, and it has progressed to the same final stage converged upon by distinct ideologies in the U.S.S.R. some decades ago and Rome some centuries before that: Late Stage Bureaucracy (LSB).

Arrow Up

Arrest would deliver Trump 2024 election in 'landslide' - Musk

trump
© Scott Olson/Getty Images
Former US President Donald Trump
If former US President Donald Trump is arrested next week, he will win the 2024 election in a "landslide victory," Twitter owner Elon Musk tweeted on Saturday in response to a Fox News clip discussing the possibility of the former president being "handcuffed" and processed through the New York City court system.

"If this happens, Trump will be re-elected in a landslide victory," Musk said in the tweet, a reply to a similar - though less emphatic - prediction from Canadian lawyer @thevivafrei.

The opinion that this scenario might propel the former reality TV star back into the White House is not an uncommon one, and appears to be shared by Trump himself. He alerted his followers to his impending arrest on Truth Social on Saturday, urging them to "protest, take our nation back!" His post highlights that the Manhattan District Attorney's office is discussing security for such an eventuality, perhaps suggesting that the authorities may be wary of the response of Trump's followers.

The predicted indictment of the former president on what are expected to be campaign finance violation charges would be the first of its kind in US history. Even former President Richard Nixon was not prosecuted after he resigned from office following the Watergate scandal.

Comment: Democrats have persistently and manically persecuted Trump as a distraction to cover their tracks. On course to repeat, the stakes are higher and more critical than ever.
Former US President Donald Trump has warned that he will be "arrested on Tuesday," in an all-caps post on his Truth Social platform on Saturday, crediting "illegal leaks from a corrupt & highly political Manhattan district attorney's office" for his advance knowledge.

Trump predicted:
"With no crime able to be proven, & based on an old & fully debunked (by numerous other prosecutors) fairytale, the far & away leading Republican candidate & former president of the United States of America, will be arrested on Tuesday of next week."
When reached for comment by Fox News on Friday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office would neither confirm nor deny whether he was planning to issue an indictment on campaign finance violations for then-candidate Trump's alleged payment of hush money to porn actress Stormy Daniels in 2016.

Trump was invited to testify before a grand jury earlier this month regarding the Stormy Daniels scandal, a move many interpreted as a prelude to an indictment. If so, he would be the first former US president to be criminally indicted, an eventually for which several law enforcement agencies are reportedly discussing "security preparations."

Trump's attorney, Joe Tacopino, excoriated prosecutors for having "completely weaponized" the legal system, pointing out that the crime as alleged - falsifying records - was a misdemeanor and only becomes a felony if prosecutors can prove it was done intentionally and maliciously.

Tacopino added that Trump cannot be prosecuted in the state of New York for a federal election charge, and since Trump's personal funds were used to pay the porn actress, the payment was not a campaign expense at all.



Pumpkin 2

VP Harris booed at alma mater during March Madness game

kamala harris booed howard basketball march madness
© AP Photo/Morry Gash
Vice President Kamala Harris and husband Douglas Emhoff watch during the second half of a first-round men's basketball game between Howard and Kansas in the NCAA Tournament in Des Moines, Iowa, on Thursday, March 16, 2023.
Vice President Kamala Harris had a tough time in Iowa as Howard went down, faced ridicule for speech to Howard players after loss

Vice President Kamala Harris unfortunately witnessed her alma mater, Howard University, lose to defending NCAA men's basketball national champion Kansas on Thursday, 96-68.

Howard and Kansas played at the Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines, Iowa, and when Harris appeared on the video board, she received an icy reception. According to multiple reports, the boos outweighed the cheers from those in attendance.

Comment: YouTube channel Geeks&Gamers didn't hold back in their assessment:

Harris has zero social awareness, but then that's been apparent since she became a national figure. Why is this walking disaster being propped up as Creepy Joe's successor?


Attention

ChatGPT knows U.S. War Criminals

Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Barrack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden. No arrest warrants have been issued by the ICC in The Hague, Netherlands for any of them. Why?
ICC in the Hague
© The Good Citizen
As the Empire of Lies celebrates the International Criminal Court issuing an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin, let's revisit who the ICC really works for.

Watch war criminal John Bolton threaten to arrest ICC judges and go after their finances if they or any organization or company assist the ICC in taking any action against American war criminals:

I asked ChatGPT about the war crimes of American leaders and the following is what it returned...

Arrow Down

'This is a flawed case': Legal expert pours cold water on NY DA's rumored plan to indict Trump as he explains why prosecution would likely fail

Jonathan Turley Alvin Bragg
The case against Donald Trump over hush payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels in the build up to the 2016 presidential election is 'flawed', a legal scholar has said.

Jonathan Turley, a criminal defense attorney and Shapiro Chair of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, said the case by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is unlikely to succeed.

Turley was responding to Trump's claim on Saturday that he'll be arrested on Tuesday next week following a long-running probe by Bragg's office into the $130,000 paid to Daniels.

But Turley also said Trump must 'tap down any inflammatory rhetoric' after the former president issued a call for protests amid the imminent charges. Trump had announced he'd be arrested within days and added 'PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!'

Trump could be charged with falsifying business records in relation to payments to his former attorney, Michael Cohen, who served jail time after pleading guilty to using campaign finances in relation to Daniels. The former president could also face charges linked to violations of election law.

Eye 1

US gov't-linked entity urged Twitter to censor 'true stories' about Covid vaccine side effects - Matt Taibbi

Canadian police
© Scott Olson/Getty Images/AFP SCOTT OLSON / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP
Police begin to break up a protest organized by truck drivers opposing vaccine mandates on February 18, 2022 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
A US government-linked entity recommended an "Orwellian" crackdown on "vaccine disinformation," the journalist reported

A government-linked academic group pushed Twitter to censor factually correct stories about Covid-19 if they risked "fueling hesitancy" about vaccines, according to the latest batch of internal documents released by the platform's new owner, Elon Musk.

Published by journalist Matt Taibbi on Friday, the documents show that from February 2021 onwards, senior Twitter management - including former trust and safety chief Yoel Roth - signed up to a Stanford University initiative that would alert them to the latest "vaccine-related disinformation narratives" spreading on the platform.