Free Republic

Hundreds of loans on office buildings are about to come due at a very bad time.. Loans were taken out in time of low interest rates and are now hard to refinance.. Too many of the loans defaulting could trigger banking crisis and hurt economy ... About $117 billion worth is expected to be due this year and needs to be repaid or refinanced, ... A big chunk of it is at risk of defaulting and costing banks and developers huge sums, sending some into insolvency. Owners of office space around the country took out their loans when interest rates...

Greg Beckett, a 46-year-old executive at Wells Fargo, jumped to his death in an apparent suicide from the office boardroom on the 14th floor at the company’s headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, authorities have revealed. Though Beckett, from Bridgeport, New Jersey, took his own life back in January, new details have been revealed what led up to his death, according to a new report. His family reportedly said Beckett was under immense stress and pressure from his job and had been responsible for safeguarding Wells Fargo's risk exposure, the Daily Mail reported.

US personal savings are being exhausted as The Fed raises rates to fight inflation. I call this phenomenon “low riding” where consumers are being punished by The Federal Reserve and Biden Administration. Meanwhile, large bank loan volumes are shrinking. With money-market fund assets hitting new highs, and banks’ usage of The Fed’s emergency funds facility at record highs, we wonder how much longer The Fed can keep the dream of rising deposits alive (after last week’s massive NSA inflows). On a seasonally-adjusted basis, The Fed says that total deposits dropped $11BN last week (the first decline in 4 weeks). We...

On Wednesday, March 8 of this year, the holding company for the federally-insured Silvergate Bank announced it was winding down the bank. It had little choice but to do so. It was experiencing a bank run and had incinerated its reputation by focusing on deposits from crypto companies, including those majority-owned by indicted crypto kingpin, Sam Bankman-Fried. According to testimony from the Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Martin Gruenberg, before the Senate Banking Committee on March 28, “in the fourth quarter of 2022, Silvergate Bank experienced an outflow of deposits from digital asset customers that, combined with...

New York/London CNN — Another US regional lender caught up in the worst banking crisis since 2008 is looking for help. PacWest Bank (PACW), based in California, confirmed Thursday that it is exploring “all strategic options” after its share price was cut in half in after-hours trading following a Bloomberg report that it was considering a sale. “Exploring strategic options” is Wall Street lingo for “please help.” The last bank to announce it was exploring strategic options was First Republic Bank (FRC). That regional bank failed Monday, and JPMorgan purchased most of its assets. “In accordance with normal practices the...

Regional bank stocks fell sharply Tuesday as the fallout from the third major bank failure this year continued to put pressure on the sector. Shares of PacWest fell more than 39% on Tuesday and was on track for its fourth-straight negative session. The stock was halted for volatility multiple times. The California-based bank was not the only regional lender under pressure. Shares of Western Alliance dropped 20%. The SPDR S&P Regional Banking ETF (KRE) sank 7.6%. The steep declines deepened losses in the sector from Monday. Over the weekend, regulators seized troubled regional bank First Republic and sold it to...

The twin crashes in US commercial real estate and the US bond market have collided with $9 trillion uninsured deposits in the American banking system. Such deposits can vanish in an afternoon in the cyber age. The second and third biggest bank failures in US history have followed in quick succession. The US Treasury and Federal Reserve would like us to believe that they are “idiosyncratic”. That is a dangerous evasion. Almost half of America’s 4,800 banks have already burned through their capital buffers and are running on negative equity. They may not have to mark all losses to market...

Former Assistant Treasury Secretary and Chief Economist of the America First Policy Institute Mike Faulkender warned on Monday that more banks may soon fail amid the collapse of First Republic and blamed industry leadership for failing to prepare for a period of rising interests rates. Speaking on the "Just the News, No Noise" television show, the former Treasury official warned "there are concerns about how many more banks that are potentially out there, because the notion that these three were the only ones that took on interest rate risk during the pandemic, it certainly is not the case." "There were...

It’s obvious things have gotten bad when President Joe Biden’s talking points are being undercut by one of his most ardent lapdog economists. Biden took to the press podium March 13 to congratulate himself on his administration’s wild efforts to secure the deposits at Silicon Valley Bank following its historic collapse. Biden attempted to dismiss any notion that what he was pushing was a government bailout. “No losses will be — and this is an important point — no losses will be borne by the taxpayers. Let me repeat that. No losses will be borne by the taxpayers,” Biden claimed....

A major global outlet funded by leftist billionaire George Soros published scathing criticism by two economists blasting the Federal Reserve’s role in creating the pretext for the bank failures that rocked U.S. markets. Project Syndicate, which dubs itself as the “World’s Opinion Page,” published an op-ed by economists Raghuram Rajan and Viral Acharya headlined: “The Fed’s Role in the Bank Failures.” The authors iterated Silicon Valley Bank’s (SVB) historic collapse isn't merely linked to the fact that 90 percent of its deposits were “uninsured.” The problem, said Rajan and Acharya, “may be more systemic,” and it involves the Fed’s recklessness....

Within days of Silicon Valley Bank’s swift and shocking collapse, a narrative formed that “wokeism” lay at the heart of the California bank’s sudden demise. It began with a Fox News appearance by Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus."I feel bad for all of these people that lost all their money in this woke bank,” Marcus told host Neil Cavuto. “You know, it was more distressing to hear that the bank officials sold off their stock before this happened.”Similar criticism followed from rank-and-files members of the GOP, including House Oversight chairman James Comer, who decried SVB’s “ESG-type policy and investing.”The charges...

Economist Peter Schiff blasted the media aversion to acknowledging that the ongoing banking turmoil is in fact a “financial crisis” that could be worse than 2008. Schiff highlighted America’s record high credit card debt and the failing banks and noted that it wasn’t a coincidence that “both the borrowers and the lenders are broke.” The “reason for that,” said Schiff on the March 21 edition of One America News’ Real America with Dan Ball, “is the Fed. The Fed kept interest rates artificially low for more than a decade, encouraging people to go deeper and deeper into debt and banks...

Peter Schiff appeared on Real America with Dan Ball to talk about the bank bailout, the unfolding financial crisis, the Fed and inflation. He said this is a sequel to 2008 and like all sequels, it’s going to be worse.Dan started the interview by referencing Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s assertion that the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank was caused by “deregulation.” Peter said this deregulation “exists in the fantasy of her mind,” and pointed out that banking is one of the most heavily regulated industries in the world.It would be much safer if it was regulated by free...

Here comes the panic. Bloomberg just reported that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen – who was singlehandedly responsible for stoking and restarting the bank crisis on Wednesday which until that day was easing back, with her comments that nobody in charge was even talking about a uniform deposit insurance, let alone working on one – will convene the heads of top US financial regulators Friday morning for a previously unscheduled meeting of the Financial Stability Oversight Council. The meeting will be closed to the public, the Treasury Department said in a statement. The Treasury didn’t say what time the meeting would...

Reports of a possible share sale, and a second ratings downgrade deeper into 'junk' status, has First Republic trading firmly lower Monday. Frist Republic (FRC) - Get Free Report shares extended declines Monday, and look set to open at an all-time low, following a second credit rating downgrade for troubled San Francisco-based lender over the weekend.

Tucker Carlson went there tonight — Tucker told his audience if people don’t start making lots of noise we’re going to see a government controlled digital currency. Tucker Carlson opened his show on Monday by discussing the banking crisis in the country today. On Monday morning trading was halted on 20 banks as the markets opened. The New York Stock Exchange halted trading at Charles Schwab. Tonight Tucker Carlson went there – pointing out that the federal government gained power after bailing out the Silicon Valley Bank. Tucker also warned that this banking crisis could lead to a national digital...

Shares of embattled bank Credit Suisse on Wednesday hit another all-time low for a second consecutive session, dropping by more than 21% shortly before being halted from trade. Credit Suisse’s largest investor, Saudi National Bank, said it could not provide the Swiss bank with any further financial assistance, according to a Reuters report. “We cannot because we would go above 10%. It’s a regulatory issue,” Saudi National Bank Chairman Ammar Al Khudairy told Reuters Wednesday. Several Italian banks were also subject to automatic trading stoppages after sharp declines, including UniCredit, Finecobank and Monte Dei Paschi. The embattled Swiss lender disclosed...

Democrats led by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are still complaining that bankers did not go to jail for the 2008 banking crisis. That is despite, as previously written about in this column, the crux of the problem was the federal government. Likewise, that is despite the fact the government let well-connected Democrat Jon Corzine slide for actual crimes at MF Global Holdings, also previously written about. Yet they nailed Eric Bloom with highly questionable charges and conduct at trial by the prosecution.After a four-week trial and only three hours of deliberation by the jurors, Eric Bloom, CEO of Sentinel...

Posted 2008 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. Romans 8:35,37 KJV All the outrage over Bernie Madeoff is pretty surprising. Sure he bilked people out of everything they had, putting them in financial disaster and bankruptcy? So he lied to people over decades taking everything they saved in a fraudulent investment Ponzi scheme bankrupting Pension/Charity and College funds. So he was lying to investigators about those cooked books...

n 1986, I was as ready to leave the closet as I would ever be—but how would I do so? Though I was a third term Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, I had lived too long with the burden of “the gay thing” to treat coming out as a political matter alone. For many years, I was ashamed of myself for hiding my membership in a universally despised group. I’d been afraid of exposure, and angry at myself for my self-denial. I’d felt shame as I watched younger gay men and lesbians confront the bigots openly with a courage that I...