March 2023 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

As Senate Banking Committee Convenes Hearing on Exploding Banks, an FDIC Chart Shows the Banking Crisis Is Far from Over
by Gunnar Larson 28 Mar '23

28 Mar '23

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2023/03/as-senate-banking-committee-convenes… By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 28, 2023 ~ Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), the Chair of the Senate Banking Committee, will convene a hearing this morning at 10 a.m. to take testimony from federal bank regulators on why the second and third largest bank failures in U.S. history occurred within two days of each other this month. (A number of other regional banks have seen their share prices plunge this month.) Martin Gruenberg, Chair, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Martin Gruenberg, Chair, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) The two banks that failed and were taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) were Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank. Both had experienced bank runs in March and both had extreme exposure to uninsured deposits. One of the witnesses at today’s hearing, Martin Gruenberg, Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), explains as follows in his written testimony for today’s hearing: “A common thread between the failure of SVB and the failure of Signature Bank was the banks’ heavy reliance on uninsured deposits. As of December 31, 2022, Signature Bank reported that approximately 90 percent of its deposits were uninsured, and SVB reported that 88 percent of its deposits were uninsured. The significant proportion of uninsured deposit balances exacerbated deposit run vulnerabilities and made both banks susceptible to contagion effects from the quickly evolving financial developments. One clear takeaway from recent events is that heavy reliance on uninsured deposits creates liquidity risks that are extremely difficult to manage, particularly in today’s environment where money can flow out of institutions with incredible speed in response to news amplified through social media channels.” Gruenberg has included a chart in his written testimony that is nothing short of stunning. (See chart above.) It shows that the unrealized losses on investment securities at federally-insured U.S. banks during the 2008 financial crisis were less than $75 billion while at the end of the fourth quarter of 2022 they were over $600 billion. You are no doubt asking yourself how 2008 could have been the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression if banks had less than $75 billion in unrealized losses on their investment securities. That’s because the mega banks on Wall Street were highly interconnected, understood how highly-leveraged each one was, and backed away from extending credit as the panic started to spread. The official report from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) reveals the following about the leadup to the 2008 crash: “…as of 2007, the five major investment banks—Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley—were operating with extraordinarily thin capital. By one measure, their leverage ratios were as high as 40 to 1, meaning for every $40 in assets, there was only $1 in capital to cover losses. Less than a 3% drop in asset values could wipe out a firm.” Also, the chart above does not capture the losses and contagion the Wall Street banks themselves created in the broader financial system through their bundling and selling of hundreds of billions of dollars of toxic subprime mortgage debt and derivatives. The FCIC reports explains as follows: “Most home loans entered the pipeline soon after borrowers signed the documents and picked up their keys. Loans were put into packages and sold off in bulk to securitization firms—including investment banks such as Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, and Lehman Brothers, and commercial banks and thrifts such as Citibank, Wells Fargo, and Washington Mutual. The firms would package the loans into residential mortgage–backed securities that would mostly be stamped with triple-A ratings by the credit rating agencies, and sold to investors. In many cases, the securities were repackaged again into collateralized debt obligations (CDOs)—often composed of the riskier portions of these securities—which would then be sold to other investors. Most of these securities would also receive the coveted triple-A ratings that investors believed attested to their quality and safety. Some investors would buy an invention from the 1990s called a credit default swap (CDS) to protect against the securities’ defaulting. For every buyer of a credit default swap, there was a seller: as these investors made opposing bets, the layers of entanglement in the securities market increased.” In the 2008 crisis, there was also the obscene greed and callous disregard for the well being of the country by Wall Street investment banks actually shorting the toxic drek they had knowingly created and sold off to pension funds and other investors. Goldman Sachs created one of these toxic debt structures called ABACUS, allowing John Paulson’s hedge fund to select debt instruments likely to fail to stuff into ABACUS so the hedge fund could short it, while Goldman Sachs sold it to its own customers as a good investment. See our report: ABACUS, London Whale: Frenchmen Take the Fall for Wall Street’s Crimes. The other two witnesses scheduled for today’s hearing are Michael Barr, Vice Chairman for Supervision at the Federal Reserve; and Nellie Liang, Undersecretary for Domestic Finance at the U.S. Treasury. The same three witnesses will appear before the House Financial Services Committee tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. to further examine the collapse of these banks.

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A link to the Rapists in here
by Revevilgod God 28 Mar '23

28 Mar '23

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape Rape This article is about a form of human sexual assault. For rape among non-human animals, see Sexual coercion among animals. For other uses, see Rape (disambiguation). Rape is a type of sexual assault involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without their consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or against a person who is incapable of giving valid consent, such as one who is unconscious, incapacitated, has an intellectual disability, or is below the legal age of consent.[1][2] The term rape is sometimes used interchangeably with the term sexual assault.[3] A map of the world showing a composite index about rape of women in 2018, data by WomanStats Project. Rape is not a major problem in this society Rape is a problem in this society Rape is a significant problem in this society Rape is a major problem in this society Rape is endemic in this society No data The rate of reporting, prosecuting and convicting for rape varies between jurisdictions. Internationally, the incidence of rapes recorded by the police during 2008 ranged, per 100,000 people, from 0.2 in Azerbaijan to 92.9 in Botswana with 6.3 in Lithuania as the median.[4] Worldwide, sexual violence, including rape, is primarily committed by males against females.[5] Rape by strangers is usually less common than rape by people the victim knows, and male-on-male and female-on-female prison rapes are common and may be the least reported forms of rape.[6][7][8] Widespread and systematic rape (e.g., war rape) and sexual slavery can occur during international conflict. These practices are crimes against humanity and war crimes. Rape is also recognized as an element of the crime of genocide when committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a targeted ethnic group. People who have been raped can be traumatized and develop post-traumatic stress disorder.[9] Serious injuries can result along with the risk of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. A person may face violence or threats from the rapist, and, sometimes, from the victim's family and relatives.[10][11][12]

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Bulgarian anarchism almost rivals Ukraine and Spain
by professor rat 28 Mar '23

28 Mar '23

Lots of fascinating anarchist hirstory here waiting to be discovered https://anarchistnews.org/content/70-years-later-man-who-blew-sofia-stalin-… Reposts not clickbait teasers for more substantial fare

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The Banking Crisis Knock-On Effect Has Been a Stampede into Government Money Market Funds – Foiling the Fed’s Effort to Raise Market Interest Rates
by Gunnar Larson 28 Mar '23

28 Mar '23

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2023/03/the-banking-crisis-knock-on-effect-h… By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 27, 2023 ~ Jerome Powell (Thumbnail) Jerome (Jay) Powell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board On Sunday, Financial Times reporters Brooke Masters, Harriet Clarfelt and Kate Duguid published an article under the headline: “Money market funds swell by more than $286bn as investors pull deposits from banks.” This article needs some important clarifications. First is the fact that money market funds had to be bailed out by the government during both the 2008 financial crisis and the more recent financial panic of 2020 stemming from the COVID pandemic. On September 19, 2008 (four days after Lehman Brothers was placed into bankruptcy), stocks were crashing and investors were in a panic, the Department of the Treasury announced that it would provide a guarantee for money market mutual funds, standing behind more than $3.5 trillion in money market fund assets. In mid-March 2020, as the share prices of mega banks on Wall Street were plunging in price and investors were in another panic, the Federal Reserve, with the required approval of the U.S. Treasury Secretary for emergency bailout programs from the Fed, established the Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (MMLF). Under the facility, the Boston Fed made loans to various banks to purchase troubled assets from money market funds. When the Fed finally released the details of that program, Wall Street On Parade crunched the numbers and found that just six Wall Street firms received 72 percent of the $162.9 billion in cumulative loans made under the MMLF. The three largest recipients were Federated, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley. (See our full report here.) MMLF Largest Borrowers Most Americans are unaware that there are two vastly different kinds of money market vehicles. There is the “money market account” that one can hold at a federally-insured bank which is FDIC-insured up to $250,000 per depositor per bank. If you have multiple FDIC-insured accounts at the same bank (money market account, checking, savings, certificates of deposit), they all count toward the $250,000 insurance limit. There is also the “money market fund” which is an uninsured mutual fund packed with short-term debt instruments of varying quality. It was these uninsured money market funds that had to be bailed out during the 2008-2009 financial crisis on Wall Street and again during the March 2020 financial panic related to the COVID pandemic. The Financial Times article is talking about the uninsured money market funds. So why would Americans be flocking to these uninsured money market funds during the latest banking panic? We found our answer in the data released by the Investment Company Institute (ICI.org) According to ICI’s statistics, $276.49 billion of that $286 billion reported by the Financial Times (or a whopping 97 percent), went into a very specific type of money market fund – the kind that holds short-term debt instruments guaranteed by the U.S. government. These are referred to as “government money market funds.” ICI reports that total assets in Government Money Market Funds grew as follows in the month of March: total assets of $3.98 trillion as of March 9, 2023; total assets of $4.128 trillion as of March 15, 2023; total assets of $4.26 trillion on March 22, 2023. According to the ICI’s latest data, Government Money Market Funds in the U.S. now represent 83 percent of all money market funds. As of March 22, 2023, Government Money Market Fund assets of $4.26 trillion compared to total assets in all money market funds of $5.13 trillion. According to a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Government Money Market Mutual Funds represented 79 percent of all money market funds as of September 30, 2022. (See chart below.) This flight to safety is having an unintended consequence. It is throwing a wrench in the Federal Reserve’s plans to bring down inflation in the U.S. by hiking its benchmark interest rate. For example, the 6-month U.S. Treasury bill, which had traded at a yield of 5.29 percent in early March, is trading this morning at a yield of 4.85 percent – notwithstanding that the Fed raised its benchmark interest rate (Fed Funds) by another one-quarter percent on March 22. Money market mutual funds are required to hold short-term instruments, typically of less than one year to maturity. Government Money Market Funds hold lots of U.S. Treasury bills, such as the 6-month T-bill. The demand for these government instruments of less than one year maturity, is also likely adding to the inverted yield curve, where short-term government securities are yielding significantly more than the 30-year U.S. government bond.

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The metaverse is cryptoanarchist or failed dystopian nightmare
by professor rat 28 Mar '23

28 Mar '23

Choose wisely. No cryptoanarchist justice - no peace Thankfully cryptoanarchy aligned itself away from Galts Gulch and towards trad anarchism by 2002. So we now enjoy the technology of peoples cryptography combined with the best of the trad democratic tradition - free people, freely federating. Communications - authentications and now globalized political-economy. Viva la fuckin' revolution! In terms of democratic potential, the open metaverse actually has some advantages over the physical world because participation is already codified by the framework itself, making it harder to be illegitimately disenfranchised <<< https://cointelegraph.com/news/to-be-or-not-to-be-ethics-democracy-and-mora… Reposts willing to fight to the last Binance man

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A link to the Rapists in here
by professor rat 28 Mar '23

28 Mar '23

The Assmange dead-enders? All three of them? GEOFFREY "sexual offence for a man to deliberately deceive a partner whose consent has been conditional upon his use of a condom" ROBERTSON Julian Assange arrested in London on rape charges https://www.csmonitor.com/World/terrorism-security/2010/1207/WikiLeaks-Juli… JULIAN " Being guilty of aggravated rape has nothing to do with our party" A. Broinowski. Wikileaks Party NSW candidate for au Senate. 2013. I never sorry about being sued by the disgusting criminal rapist, Julian Rand Paul Assange, or his imitation Manson Family at WickedLeaks At least so long as truth is a defense.

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TED and RON's most excellent adventure!
by professor rat 28 Mar '23

28 Mar '23

Any law the likes of Ted Cruz and Ron DeSantis pass against some crypto is sure to be twisted and used against all crypto. With friends like this crypto-currencies don’t need enema’s. Only three main ways forward are really possible for CBDC's 1) They are opposed and that's good for our exploding cryptoanarchist inevitable 2) They are supported and that's good for our exploding cryptoanarchist inevitable, and . . . 3 ) They are treated as damage and routed around and rooted beyond redemption and etc Some combination or combinations of these three main paths are possible - indeed, already happening in the global context. But TL/DR we already won. We established what they were back in 2005 - now we're just haggling over their price.

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Gramps and Semich - The Jock-Douche and the Creep-Loser
by professor rat 27 Mar '23

27 Mar '23

The Jock-Douche and the Creep-Loser: a cult of sheer physical strength and action wedded to a wounded and brooding consciousness of impotence and humiliation. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.h… The Jock-Douche and the Creep-Loser: a cult of sheer physical strength and action wedded to a wounded and brooding consciousness of impotence and humiliation, reloaded. https://www.unz.com/ishamir/the-long-captivity-of-julian-assange/ Reposts not in cold-blood team-killing faggotry

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The Silky Road to ruin
by professor rat 27 Mar '23

27 Mar '23

FREE ROSS bozo's seem to have piped down recently. Stories like this don't help his cause either. The bad-faith, silk road to ruin https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/22/the-five-reluctant-hitmen-of-… Reposts not online deadpools on deserving targets like KGB Pooter

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Adrienne Harris' Resignation
by Gunnar Larson 27 Mar '23

27 Mar '23

Madam Superintendent: With the NYCCOIN situation, you must resign for the integrity of the financial system. Gunnar Larson xNY.io - Bank.org

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