Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

Ukrainians, and many Europeans and Americans, are defining an envisioned Ukrainian victory as the complete expulsion of all Russians from its 2013 borders.

Or, as a Ukrainian national security chief put it, the war ends with Ukrainian tanks in Red Square.

But mysteries remain about such ambitious agendas.

What would that goal entail?

Giving Ukraine American F-16s to strike bases and depots in Mother Russia? The gifting of 1,000 M1 Abrams tanks? Using American Harpoon missiles to sink the Russian Black Sea fleet?

A huge arsenal that would guarantee total victory rather than not losing?

Russia’s cruel strategy is to grind down Ukraine and turn its eastern regions into a Verdun-like deathscape.

So is a brave Ukraine really winning the war when it loses about 0.6 soldiers for every Russian it kills?

Russia plans to leverage its extra 100 million people, its 10-times larger economy, and its 30-times larger territory to pulverize Ukraine and tire its Western patrons — whatever the costs to Russia.

Yet why were only a few in past administrations calling for a joint Western effort to expel Putin’s forces from the borderlands and Crimea captured in 2014?

Why are Putin’s 2014 invasions now seen as urgent rectifiable crimes of aggression in 2022, but were not regarded as reparable during the prior eight years?

Is the United States economically capable or politically unified or socially stable enough to wage a huge proxy war on the frontiers of a nuclear Russia?

During the last comparable multibillion-dollar military efforts — the First Gulf War in 1990-1991 and the 2003 invasion of Iraq — the ratio of American debt to GDP was respectively 40 and 50 percent.

Today it hovers at nearly three times that figure at 129%, given some $33 trillion in accumulated debt.

Currently, the American economy is entering a stagflationary crisis. Banking, real estate, and financial sectors seem on the brink of imploding, especially after the near-record multibillion-dollar collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, and the meltdowns of the Silicon Valley and Signature banks.

Around 7 million illegal entries have occurred across the southern border since January 2021 alone. Millions of new impoverished foreign nationals tax social services, spike crime, and strain relations with an increasingly antagonistic Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

An emboldened Lopez Obrador now brags that 40 million of his countrymen have cumulatively crossed the border, many illegally. He urges them to vote for Democratic candidates to ensure more open borders.

Last year, over 100,000 Americans died of opiate overdoses. Most of the deaths were attributable to Mexican cartels’ brazen export of fentanyl across an open border.

Nearly a million Americans have likely died of such overdoses since 2000 — more than double the number of fatalities in World War II.

Given its shell-shocked inner cities and toxic downtowns, America is beginning to resemble mid-19th-century England that sent forces all over its global empire while novelist Charles Dickens chronicled the misery and poverty at the imperial core in London.

Is the Ukrainian war also creating the most dangerous anti-American alliance since World War II?

China is buying cheap Russian oil, while stealthily supplying its weapons.

India, normally a rock-solid democratic ally, keeps buying both banned Russian oil and armaments.

Most of the major countries in South America have not joined the sanctions.

Clients like nuclear North Korea and soon to be nuclear Iran are empowered by overt help from Russia.

NATO member Turkey and once-allied Saudi Arabia appear now friendlier to Iran, friendlier to China, and friendlier to Russia, than they are to America.

In terms of combined oil reserves, nukes, population, area, and GDP, this new loose coalition of apparent anti-Americans seems more powerful than the U.S. and its squabbling friends in Europe.

Why were those now calling for a veritable blank check for Ukraine formerly quiet when the U.S. fled in humiliation from Afghanistan?

Why were they mostly silent when an appeasing President Joe Biden begged Russian President Vladimir Putin at least to spare some U.S. targets on his otherwise extensive anti-American cyberwar hit list?

Or why were they indifferent when Biden said he would have fewer objections if Putin’s anticipated attack on Ukraine would be “minor”?

Or why were they not so eager for confrontation when Putin earlier acquired the Eastern Ukrainian borderlands and Crimea in 2014 in the first place?

Or why so subdued when the U.S. in 2015-16 refused to sell Ukrainian offensive weapons?

Why does the U.S. discount the serial and ascending nuclear threats from Russia, but we remain careful not to antagonize China?

After all, China sent a spy balloon brazenly across the U.S. to surveil and spy on American strategic locations.

And why is the administration so quiet about a likely leak of an engineered deadly COVID-19 virus from a Chinese virology lab that killed 1 million Americans?

These are Ukrainian war-related questions that never seem to be answered — but should be as the carnage rises and the nuclear threshold falls.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX recently launched the first batch of its next-generation Starlink internet satellites that already appear to be in trouble. 

In a Wednesday tweet, Musk said there were “some issues” with “V2 Mini” satellites that were blasted into orbit last month. 

“Lot of new technology in Starlink V2, so we’re experiencing some issues, as expected,” Musk wrote.

The billionaire was responding to a Twitter conversation with some users pointing out “significant” altitude changes of some of the V2 Minis. 

Musk said, “Some sats will be deorbited, others will be tested thoroughly before raising altitude above Space Station.” 

Here’s the thread. 

In a separate tweet, Starlink Insider tweeted a graph showing the decline in altitudes of some of the satellites. 

The V2 Mini sats seem to be collectively lowering their altitude. @planet4589 is this to be expected? Trajectory is certainly uncommon when looking at other Starlink launches. pic.twitter.com/O4iwWFyyHb

— Starlink Insider (@starlinkinsider) March 16, 2023

The Feb. 27 launch of 21 next-generation Starlink satellites was on top of a Falcon 9 rocket. The V2 Minis are intended to expand network capacity as Starlink crossed 1,000,000 active subscribers in December, and some customers complain of slow speeds. 

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Amid an increase in reports of squatters taking over people’s homes across the country, one expert warned that the phenomenon is on the rise and noted that removing a squatter could take months.

Real estate lawyer Jim Burling told Fox News on Tuesday that any home that is not occupied for a period of time could be targeted by squatters. If the owner tries to call the police, officers may not be able to do much, and at the same time, using the courts could turn into a lengthy and expensive process, he warned.

“I think it’s a fairly big problem and I think it’s pretty hard to avoid,” Burling, who is vice president of litigation for Pacific Legal Foundation, said. In cases where a property owner is attempting to evict a squatter, generally the court system has to get involved to determine whose paperwork is legitimate, he noted.

“If somebody is living in a home and saying ‘hey, I signed a lease, I’m paying rent, I have a right to be here,’ whether or not that’s true, the police hear that story then they hear a story of somebody who’s not living there and saying ‘this is my place these people don’t belong here,’ the police officer can’t make that legal determination,” Burling said.

He added that it’s not the “job” of the police to do that. “That’s not their bailiwick. If you have that kind of dispute it has to go to court,” he said.

Properties that are most susceptible to attracting squatters are people who have left them vacant due to a family death or foreclosure. Owners have to remain vigilant and keep their properties locked up and secured, Burling remarked.

“If I were a homeowner, I would be really careful about letting my property be vacant for any period of time,” Burling remarked. “I would be very careful about renting it out.”

“The courts are backed up, the civil process takes forever, the squatters won’t show up to court and so it just drags on and in the meantime somebody’s living rent-free for a significant period of time.”

In some places, it could take months to remove a squatter or an evicted tenant, lawyers have said.

Another landlord-tenant lawyer, Michael Zink, told CBS Chicago in a recent interview that “evictions in Chicago—whether it’s about squatters or anything else—are taking approximately six to eight months.”

Squatter cases, he added, have been on the rise in recent years because people know they can live for months rent-free with virtually no consequences. Zink noted that when the police get involved, they have little power.

“The problem that police have is when they show up to a scene like that, they don’t know who is telling the truth,” Zink told the CBS affiliate.

In many areas and states, too, landlords cannot forcibly remove anyone from a property. Only a sheriff or court-sanctioned bailiff can do so after the landlord prevails in court. If a person is proven to have trespassed, police and other law enforcement officers can intervene, however.

There have been reports that landlords and property owners have used so-called “squatter removal services” in some cities, like Detroit, to encourage squatters to leave. In one instance in January, a property owner used such a service to post official-looking notices on the property warning the squatters to leave within 24 hours or else their possessions would be forcefully taken away.

Recent Cases

A Chicago-area family told local media that they’re currently embroiled in a legal fight to evict a man who was described as a “professional squatter” who is now commandeering their deceased mother’s home. After Darthula Young’s mother, who owned a duplex in Chicago’s South Side for decades, died last year, the property was transferred to her family members, they told CBS Chicago.

“On Sept. 23, I got a call from the neighbors to say there’s been a shooting in the building—and when I went to the building and put my key in, it didn’t work,” Young told the channel.

“The person who had been shot in the apartment, this guy named Takito Murray, came back from the hospital and informed us and the police that he now lived there—that he had rights,” she said, adding that Murray “was a professional squatter.”

In another recent instance, squatters allegedly took over a home in Portland, Oregon, and have terrorized residents. Locals last week made a plea in front of the Portland City Council to intervene, KATU reported.

“We feel victimized by the irrefutable safety issues which happen so often,” Elizabeth Adams, who lives next door, said at the meeting. “We have a deep compassion for our homeless, but that doesn’t mean that we should have to live in fear for our safety each and every day.

President Biden’s efforts to end a nationwide drug crisis, which he promised to end during the 2020 election campaign, may face further challenges as the Drug Enforcement Administration issued an alert on Monday regarding a new concoction of fentanyl and a veterinary tranquilizer hitting American cities and towns. 

“Xylazine is making the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced, fentanyl, even deadlier,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram wrote in an alert on Monday. 

The alert continued, “DEA has seized xylazine and fentanyl mixtures in 48 of 50 states. The DEA Laboratory System is reporting that in 2022 approximately 23% of fentanyl powder and 7% of fentanyl pills seized by the DEA contained xylazine.” 

𝐏𝐔𝐁𝐋𝐈𝐂 𝐒𝐀𝐅𝐄𝐓𝐘 𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐑𝐓: DEA warns of a sharp increase in trafficking of #Fentanyl mixed w/ #Xylazine, a powerful sedative @US_FDA approved for veterinary use. Because Xylazine is not an opioid, naloxone (Narcan) does not reverse its effects. https://t.co/L7uqCR3Ht5 pic.twitter.com/N5HW9kbKi6

— DEA HQ (@DEAHQ) March 20, 2023

When combined, xylazine, a veterinary tranquilizer, also commonly known as “tranq,” and fentanyl make drug overdoses even deadlier because the opioid overdose antidote, naloxone, also known as Narcan, won’t reverse its effects. 

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 100,000 Americans died from drug overdoses between August 2021 and August 2022. About two-thirds of the deaths involved synthetic opioids. 

The grim statistics are a significant concern for the Biden administration, who promised to end the drug crisis during the 2020 election campaign. But with open borders and record amounts of migrants flooding into the US, it’s no wonder the drug crisis is worsening. 

Some have warned the proliferation of fentanyl, and surging overdose-related deaths nationwide should be designated as a “weapon of mass destruction.” 

“In spite of all their effort and the best intentions of the administration, the fentanyl crisis is getting tremendously worse and threatening an entire generation of young people.

“Criminal cartels in Mexico and China are continuing to act with impunity. We need greater enforcement powers and more accountability from our own government,” Jim Rauh, founder of Families Against Fentanyl, an advocacy group, told FT last month. 

The DEA’s new alert of xylazine-laced fentanyl (some have called it the “zombie drug”) should concern all Americans because it renders Narcan useless. 

Un nuevo medicamento, llamado Xylazine, o “tranq”, ha causado estragos en ciudades de los EE. UU. al causar síntomas mortales, como la pudrición de la piel. La Administración de Drogas y Alimentos (FDA) de la nación autorizó este “fármaco zombi” para su uso veterinario. pic.twitter.com/JUnC4IrrcX

— Rufino Liebana Carmona (@RufinoLiebana) February 24, 2023

Hot new drug “Tranq” is causing people’s skin to fall off pic.twitter.com/PSnR43HoaY

— HARD FACTOR (@HardFactorNews) March 1, 2023

*Today In #Portland* Fentanyl Junkie Obstructs Driveway in Alphabet District

Imagine this:

You’re going to work, one morning; as good citizens do; trying to put food on the table for the family, and this is what you see on your way out the door. #Measure110 #Oregon #Tranq pic.twitter.com/gcvT4YEJDB

— Brandon Farley (Portland Journalist) (@TheRealFarley) March 3, 2023

Dude is tweaking hard and could this be a tranq sore? pic.twitter.com/kYQpWuIpen

— 1r0nm41d3n (@1r0nm41d3n13) March 1, 2023

The much awaited release of the Fed’s latest weekly balance sheet update was released at exactly 4:30pm, and not surprisingly, it showed that in the past week the bank bailout continued if at a less torrid pace.

As of March 22, the Fed’s balance sheet increased by $94.5 billion to $8.734 trillion from $8.639 trillion which in turn was a $297 billion increase from the previous week when the bank crisis started. In total, the Fed’s balance sheet hs increased by $393 billion in the past two weeks, and is fast approaching its all time high of $8.95 trillion one year ago, when QT kicked in and shrank the Fed’s assets by $600 billion.

Looking at the actual reserve components that were provided by the Fed, we find that Fed backstopped facility borrowings were roughly flat around $164 billion, but the composition shifted, as usage of the Discount Window dropped by $42 billion to $110 billion…

… which however was offset almost dollar for dollar by a $42.6 billion increase in usage of the Fed’s brand new Bank Term Funding Program, or BTFP.

Meanwhile, other credit extensions – consisting of Fed loans to bridge banks established by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to resolve SVB and Signature Bank  – rose to $179.8 billion from $142.8 billion the previous week.

Of course, the above only accounted for just under $40BN in reserves, what was the delta?

The answer: a record $60 billion in foreign official Repo (which is also the counterparty limit) under the Fed’s new FIMA repo facility, which means that the offshore scramble for dollars was alive and well, and someone  really needed access to USD. That someone is likely either Credit Suisse or UBS, or some SPV of the Swiss National Bank; of course, we can’t know for sure since the names of counterparties are named. confidential.

The maxing out of the foreign repo is also why the Fed’s USD liquidity swaps only rose to a paltry $587 million in the past week…

… as the real number to focus on is the massive amount of foreign repo usage, which is where the foreign USD scarcity emerged this week.

Meanwhile, with QT still laughably taking place in the background, the Fed’s holdings of TSYs dropped by $3.5 billion to $7.937 trillion.

The question is whether after emergency Fed facilities rose by another $100 billion – a rough proxy of how much deposit drain took place in the week – if this marks the peak for the credit crisis. And while that may have been true until yesterday, it is none other than Janet Yellen herself who sent bank stocks plunging in the past 48 hours with her amateurish comments. In any case, this means that we will need to wait one more week until the next H.4.1 statement to see if the various emergency Fed facilities are declining or if they continue to rise and will eventually be replaced with permanent reserve facilities such as QE, similar to what happened after the 2008 financial crisis.

Finally, while the Fed is flooding the system with emergency reserves, those wondering where these are going should look at the Fed’s reverse repo facility which has soared, as well as money market funds which have been scooping up cash recently, fueled in large part by depositors pulling their money away from US banks.

The amount of money parked at money-market funds climbed to a fresh record in the week through March 22 as banking concerns continued to rock global markets. According to data from the Investment Company Institute, about $117.4 billion poured into US money-market funds in the week through March 22, bringing total assets up to an unprecedented $5.132 trillion, versus the $5.01 trillion in the week to March 15. Inflows over the past two weeks totaled more than $238 billion.

Initially much of that flow was driven by more attractive rates, but concern about the steadiness of some smaller lenders helped boost the trend this month.

“This is consistent with ongoing deposit flight from the banking system as depositors indirectly invest their cash into government securities via money funds and shun bank credit,” said TD Securities strategist Gennadiy Goldberg. “This answers the question of ‘where is the money going once it leaves the banking system?”’

As a result, more cash may remain parked at the Fed’s reverse repurchase agreement facility amid a lack of short-end supply due to ongoing Treasury bill paydowns and Federal Home Loan Banks normalizing issuance. On Thursday, some 99 counterparties parked $2.234 trillion at the RRP, down from $2.28 trillion the prior session, but just shy of 2023 highs.

Finally, looking at our favorite chart showing total reserves vs US market cap, it shows that with reserves rising to $3.425 trillion, the highest since April 2022, US stocks are now badly lagging where the amount of reserves would have them be.

On the other hand, the bank crisis needs to stabilize first and while reserves are being furiously injected into the system, money (in the form of deposit runs) needs to stop entering the reverse repo system (effectively sterilizing reserves), because as the next chart shows, much of the increase in reserves has been offset by a surge in reverse repos.

It is rather ironic that while the unexpected weekly drop in initial jobless claims highlights the structural shortage of workers in a very tight labor market, internet job-search platform Indeed plans to lay off approximately 2,200 employees, representing 15% of its workforce.

In a blog post, Indeed CEO Chris Hyams expressed that he was “heartbroken to share that I have made the difficult decision to reduce our headcount through layoffs.” 

“We anticipate we will be letting approximately 2,200 people go. This is roughly 15% of our team. The cuts come from nearly every team, function, level and region at Indeed and Indeed Flex,” Hyams wrote. 

He warned about mounting macroeconomic headwinds that will dent revenues:

“It is becoming increasingly likely that HR Tech revenue will decline in FY2023 and potentially again in FY2024.” 

… as with many tech companies, the CEO acknowledges the error of excessive hiring in recent years:

“With future job openings at or below pre-pandemic levels, our organization is simply too big for what lies ahead. We need clarity, focus, and urgency to ensure that all of our energy is directed towards investing in our future. We have held out longer than many other companies, but the revenue trends are undeniable. So I have decided to act now.” 

The irony of the Indeed layoffs lies in the fact that the labor market continues to be exceptionally tight.

“Found it quite ironic that as we are debating the strength of the labor market Indeed.com (major online us recruitment website) is slashing jobs citing a challenging macroeconomic backdrop,” Goldman Sachs analysts told institutional clients Thursday morning. 

What’s likely happening is that companies are pulling sponsor job listings posts from Indeed as recession threats surge. 

We shared with readers early Thursday morning one surprising chart that shows a possible 3-month lag between monetary policy and its effect on the job market. 

So, in summary, layoffs at one of the largest job websites in the US might serve as a telling sign of potential turbulence in the job market. 

By Ted Dabrowski of Wirepoints

If you’re looking to make sense of why so few Chicago Public School students can read and do math at grade level, you’ll want to listen to Brandon Johnson’s words from a 2018 talk he gave along with author Mark Warren, a former professor at Harvard, and Bill Ayers of the Weather Underground.

Johnson’s views on education matter because he could be the next mayor of Chicago. Equally important is that the Chicago Teachers Union has donated more than $2 million to his campaign. It’s the CTU’s philosophy, in part inspired by Johnson’s ideology, that for decades has run CPS schools. Today just 1 in 10 black CPS students can read at grade level and only 1 in 20 are proficient in math. 

If Johnson – a former CPS teacher and now a CTU organizer – takes control of City Hall, you can count on even more of the union’s influence. Less testing, less homework, lower expectations and more passing of kids along to the next grade, whether they’re ready or not. 

Brandon Johnson has already told us he wants to rebel “against the structure.” The talk in question was published on YouTube by Midwest Socialist, a publication of the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America. Johnson is asked a question (45:38) regarding the politics around education and how he handled conflicts between his personal philosophy and the requirements of the education system – in particular because Johnson taught at a selective enrollment school. His response: 

I taught at Westinghouse. Westinghouse was a selective enrollment school. That is in conflict with my philosophy. It’s actually a contradiction, it’s hypocritical. I’m teaching in a structure that actually weeds out a certain element of my neighborhood.

One of the ways I would deal with it, was, I believe I had an additional responsibility to challenge those of us who taught in selective enrollment schools. So one of the things that I did personally, it’s why I began to really push for opting out and not buying into the standardization of our public schools. Sometimes my colleagues actually had a tough time with the way I taught. I spent less time offering tests to my students. They were frustrated. I taught at a selective enrollment school much like I taught at a neighborhood school, I used a lot of inquiry based and I would challenge my honor students in particular to think beyond whatever it is they’re able to remember, they’re ability to just regurgitate.

But I also had to challenge myself. Seeing a school within a school system that provides more for a particular segment of our population is most frustrating because when those students succeed at a selective enrollment school, particularly black students, what ends up happening is, all other black students who don’t meet those same standards get shamed. ‘See, so and so made it out, what’s your problem? How come you can’t do it, these students are doing it?’ 

And so what it taught me, though, was pushing to eliminate some of the standardization of our public schools. My students, sometimes, would get frustrated. I didn’t offer any of the test prep that my other colleagues were pushing at the time. I was pushing our administration to move away from it. 

To be quite frank with you, I didn’t issue a lot of homework for students. That was my own way of rebelling against the structure. I don’t think I ever gave a kid an ‘F.’ I don’t know how a student sits in front of you and fails. I know some professors may find that slightly troubling…”  

I think the last thing is, it actually gave me that much more motivation to actually leave the class and become a full-time organizer with the CTU…

Some takeaways.

First, you can’t disagree with everything Johnson says. Too much standardization in schools isn’t good, especially if it overtakes the system. And who can disagree with inquiry-based thinking?

But this isn’t some idealistic teacher talking about improving his students’ chances by challenging them on the virtues of merit, achievement and excellence. Rather, it’s a CTU organizer talking about how “troubling” it is to hold children to specific, measurable standards.  Forget testing, forget grades, forget homework. He was a teacher willing to undermine the selective enrollment school where he worked at the expense of his own students. 

It’s a destructive mindset. Instead of raising all students up, Johnson would rather tear down high-achieving students for the sake of “equity.”

For more evidence, Johnson said in 2020, “part of it is removing ourselves away from this, you know, state-sponsored policing, but also the tools that have been placed against Black folks that have been used violently, whether it’s policing, or administering standardized tests, or … around how white supremacy finds its way in every facet of our lives, that we have to fight and resist that.”

His type of thinking is what for decades has led to a dismissiveness of standards, leaving the overwhelming majority of black 3rd-grade CPS students unable to pass basic reading tests. 

Less than 10% of black 3rd-graders read at grade level based on the most recent Illinois Assessment of Readiness test. It’s even worse for math readiness.

And if standards don’t matter – as Johnson appears to imply – then it’s no big deal for schools to just move kids through the system, whether they can read or not. Social promotion, it’s called. If teachers can’t and won’t fail a student for a lack of performance, then they’ll just automatically move students on to the next grade.  

Which is exactly what’s happening. Check out reading ability grade by grade for Chicago’s black students. The system fails them year after year after year after year. By 11th grade, just 10 percent of black students can read at grade level on the SAT.

The rejection of standards doesn’t end there. Nearly 80% of those black students in 11th grade end up graduating – accompanied by the self-congratulations of Chicago’s leadership.

And that’s not the only way accountability is bastardized and the failure covered up. The CTU makes sure its members and schools are protected regardless of student outcomes.

98% of CPS teachers were rated “proficient or excellent” in 2020. 100% of teachers got the same rating in 2021. And in 2022, 84% of all evaluated CPS teachers were rated either “proficient or excellent. 

Schools, too, get protected under updated state board of education measurements. School ratings aren’t based on whether kids can read or do math but instead on “improvements.”

It’s how black-majority schools in Englewood and Bronzeville can have zero students reading at grade level – not even one student – and yet still get “commendable” ratings from the state board. A commendable rating is the state’s second best rating and is for “a school that has no underperforming student groups, a graduation rate greater than 67%…” 

No, Johnson alone doesn’t own the mess the CTU has made for decades, a mess we reported on in detail in Why the Chicago Teachers Union Always Gets What It Wants. 

But based on his own words, Johnson is ready and willing to take the union’s extreme positions even further. 

“Where’s Janet!?”

Remember this…

The Treasury Secretary tried to fix her faux pas from yesterday, editing some text from her prepared remarks

Deleted paragraph from March 22:

“As I said last week, the US banking system is sound. The federal government’s recent actions have demonstrated our resolute commitment to take the necessary steps to ensure that depositors’ savings remain safe.”

New paragraph on March 23:

“As I have said, we have used important tools to act quickly to prevent contagion. And they are tools we could use again. The strong actions we have taken ensure that Americans’ deposits are safe. Certainly, we would be prepared to take additional actions if warranted.”

But she removed the “US banking system is sound”, sparking total chaos. (Bear in mind, as we detailed earlier, that ‘the math just doesn’t work’ for any industry-wide deposit insurance scheme, so what is she going to say?)

Banks saw some hope-filled pre-market gains battered lower with regional banks suffering most. Yellen’s changed remarks sparked a brief recovery, but that didn’t last long as bank stocks tumbled back towards their lows…

FFWM (First Foundation), PACW, ZION, KEY and FRC dominated the downturn (with Yellen’s attempt to save the day failed)…

European bank CDS (5Y) have generally narrowed somewhat since the CS debacle, we do note that short-dated CDS (more used for counterparty risk management among derivatives traders) have not declined with Deutsche Bank remaining extremely high…

Source: Bloomberg

What started off as a relief-rally overnight, with multiple CNBC anchors sighing comfortably that the ‘worst must be over and that the ‘market just needed time to digest how dovish Powell was’; ended an utter shit-show.

Nasdaq, S&P and The Dow all ramped after the US cash open, erasing the post-Powell losses. But that was all she wrote and as Europe closed, everything everywhere went just a little bit turbo as stocks collapsed below yesterday’s lows. The last 30 mins saw a bounce as 0DTE traders unwound earlier negative delta flows at a profit and the S&P bounced off technical support, but overall, all the US majors remain lower than pre-Powell/Yellen levels (Nasdaq the least ugly horse in the glue factory while Small Caps ended below yesterday’s lows)…

It seems pretty clear the market wants to test Yellen and Powell to see if they will step up and bailout the next bank that goes boom in the night.

S&P broke back below its 100- and 200-DMA (after trying to tag its 50-DMA on the morning ramp), then bounced off its 200DMA, back up to its 100DMA… a very technical day…

CRE/Office REITs were hammered again today (‘Big Short 3.0 doing well since we issued on March 9th)…

Source: Bloomberg

Treasuries were more mixed today with the long-end notably underperforming and short-end ripping lower in yield. After Yellen’s remarks, yields extended lower (30Y +1bps, 2Y -17bps). On the week, all yields are lower now except 30Y…

Source: Bloomberg

2Y Yields tumbled back below 4.00%…

Source: Bloomberg

The yield curve saw a major steepening today with 5s30s uninverting…

Source: Bloomberg

Overall, STIRs drifted dovishly with December now pricing in rates 90bps below current levels…

Source: Bloomberg

The odds of a 25bps hike in May have tumbled to 26%…

Source: Bloomberg

Which leaves the Fed’s expected rate-trajectory dramatically more dovish than the ECB’s…

⚠️ Yellen’s the head fake. Remember Europe is the most crowded overweight in equity (and short in bonds). That’s where the biggest liquidation/capitulation risks lie. ECB won’t be hiking or holding if Fed is in deep easing cycle. One of these curves looks wildly wrong $EUR $USD pic.twitter.com/XilXVJXHfW

— Viraj Patel (@VPatelFX) March 23, 2023

The dollar fell for the 6th straight day (10 of the last 11 days), bouncing a little intraday off 7-week lows…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin ripped back up towards $29,000, erasing all of yesterday’s losses, but then faded back after Yellen’s revised remarks…

Source: Bloomberg

Gold surged back above $2000…

Source: Bloomberg

Oil prices rollercoastered again today, with WTI rallying above $71 into the European close and then dumping back down to a $69 handle…

Finally, we note it is the three-year anniversary of the COVID lockdown lows today. Bitcoin is the biggest gainer since that date, bonds are the ugliest of all with the dollar basically unchanged and gold and stocks up handsomely…

Source: Bloomberg

Additionally, it appears alternative currencies are gaining favor since the global financial system started showing cracks again…

Gold has soared over the last two weeks…

Source: Bloomberg

And Bitcoin has dominated everything…

Source: Bloomberg

No wonder the Dems have made crypto the new ‘boogeyman’.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador slammed the Biden administration for accusing him of corruption while abusing the justice system in America to engage in a political witch hunt against Donald Trump “so that he doesn’t appear on the ballot”.

AMLO made the comments in response to a U.S. government report that accused his an administration of “human rights violations,” a charge which he asserts is a tissue of “lies”.

Over the weekend, Trump said he expects to be arrested in connection with a potential indictment for ‘hush money’ payments made to Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election.

“Right now, former President Trump is declaring that they are going to arrest him,” said AMLO, adding, “If that were the case…it would be so that his name doesn’t appear on the ballot.”

Obrador said he sympathized with Trump because he too had been targeted with “the fabrication of a crime, when they didn’t want me to run.”

“And this is completely anti-democratic… Why not allow the people to decide?” said AMLO.

Mexico’s President AMLO says the United States cannot talk about human rights with Julian Assange detained, cartel violence with President Joe Biden bombing the Nord Stream pipeline, or democracy while arresting the leading presidential candidate Donald Trump. pic.twitter.com/BIh93L1I43

— kanekoa.substack.com (@KanekoaTheGreat) March 22, 2023

The president also shot down claims that he was responsible for the mistreatment of journalists by pointing to America’s treatment of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, adding that the report criticizing his administration, “should not be taken seriously.”

“Let’s see, human rights? Why don’t you release Assange?” he asked. “If you are talking about journalism and freedom, why are you holding Assange?”

Obrador also said the U.S. had no right to browbeat him about violence given their alleged role in blowing up the Nord Stream oil pipelines.

“If you talk about acts of violence, how is it that an award-winning United States journalist tells us that the United States government sabotaged the Russian-European gas pipeline?” the president stated.

“Why is a cartel, or several cartels, allowed to operate in the United States, freely distributing the fentanyl that does so much harm to young people in that country?” he asked.

AMLO said the U.S. should stop trying to “be the government of the world” when their own behavior is rife with inconsistencies.

Last night, a letter written by Michael Cohen’s attorney said that Cohen acted alone when paying off Stormy Daniels in 2016, with the case against Trump looking increasingly flimsy and more likely to collapse altogether.

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After sparking a market rout on Wednesday and even prompting Bill Ackman to call her out for sparking a new bank run,  moments ago the senile, 76-year-old Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen emerged for her second day of testimony on the Hill and, realizing that blowing up the market in addition to sparking a recession and destroying the US banking system may not be the look her just as senile boss is going for, changed a key section of her testimony.

One day after her prepared remarks to the Senate Financial Services Committee sent stocks plunging when she said that she had neither considered nor examined the possibility of expanding federal insurance temporarily to all US bank deposits without congressional approval – as such a move would require legislation, although regulators were prepared to repeat depositor rescues if an individual bank failure threatened to provoke a wider contagion of bank runs –  in the process nullifying everything Powell said in hopes of stabilizing the relentless bank selloff, Yellen now plans to tell US lawmakers that regulators would be prepared for further steps to protect deposits if warranted, in new language that differs from her prepared remarks to the Senate a day earlier.

Here is the paragraph that graced her speech yesterday:

As I said last week, the U.S. banking system is sound. The federal government’s recent actions have demonstrated our resolute commitment to take the necessary steps to ensure that depositors’ savings remain safe.

Today, that entire paragraph has been deleted and replaced with the following:

“As I have said, we have used important tools to act quickly to prevent contagion. And they are tools we could use again. The strong actions we have taken ensure that Americans’ deposits are safe. Certainly, we would be prepared to take additional actions if warranted.”

The added comment, which Yellen is scheduled to deliver at 3 p.m. before a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, comes amid close scrutiny of the Biden administration’s flipflopping stance on bank deposits amid media reports that a uniform insurance on all deposits will be implemented.

And while Yellen’s hope is that the market would focus on the addition of this section: “would be prepared to take additional actions if warranted” which it did indeed for about 2 minutes, it has since shifted its attention to what was deleted, namely “As I said last week, the U.S. banking system is sound.“

So in the span of 24 hours, did something change – besides Powell hiking 25bps of course – to make the banking system no longer demonstrably sound.

In any case, after plunging to session lows ahead of her speech, stocks kneejerked higher, only to drift lower again…

… with bank stocks now back near session lows as the market will keep pushing the clueless – now laughably so  – Fed and Treasury until they capitulate, guarantee all depositors, cut rates and launch QE.