Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) purchased data from tracking companies to monitor compliance with lockdowns, according to contracts with the firms.

The CDC paid one firm $420,000 and another $208,000. That bought access to location data from at least 55 million cellphone users.

The contracts, approved under emergency review due to the COVID-19 pandemic, were aimed at providing the CDC “with the necessary data to continue critical emergency response functions elated to evaluating the impact of visits to key points of interest, stay at home orders, closures, re-openings and other public heath communications related to mask mandate, and other merging research areas on community transmission of SARS-CoV-2,” the contracts, obtained by The Epoch Times, state.

The CDC said it would be using the tracking data to “assess home-by-hour behaviors (i.e. curfew analysis) by exploring the percentage of mobile devices at home during specific period of time.” The data could also be integrated with other information “to provide a comprehensive picture of movement/travel of persons during the COVID-19 pandemic to better understand mandatory stay-at-home orders, business closure, school re-openings, and other non-pharmaceutical interventions in states and cities.”

Under a heading labeled “potential use cases” for the data, the CDC said it could be used to try to connect the forced closures of bars and restaurants with COVID-19 infections and death rates, as well as try to assess the impact of state restrictions on close contact between people outside of their home.

The data could also be used to monitor adherence to mandated or recommended quarantines after arrival from another state and to examine the correlation of mobility patterns and spikes in COVID-19 cases at facilities such as churches, concerts, and grocery stores. It would also enable examining movement restrictions such as curfews to show “patterns” and “compliance,” the contracts state.

The contracts were previously reported on by Vice News, but the outlet only released a screenshot of a single page. Together, the contracts run 71 pages. Both were signed in 2021.

Early Research Published, Unclear What Purchased Data Used For

The CDC, early in the pandemic, received the data for free from the firms, SafeGraph and Cuebiq.

CDC researchers in 2020 published two studies utilizing the data. One focused on data from four U.S. metropolitan areas, finding that people moved around less when measures such as social distancing were imposed. Another found that harsh lockdown orders led to decreased movement, while there was more movement after states began lifting the orders.

Other researchers have also used the mobility data for studies.

No CDC studies were published after the agency bought the data and a CDC spokesperson did not provide examples of what the purchased data were used for.

“For COVID-19, the insights derived from these data provide essential information on the impact and effectiveness of policies and COVID-19 mitigation measures (e.g., jurisdictional stay-at-home orders and business closures) that had profound effects on communities,” Scott Pauley, the spokesperson, told The Epoch Times via email.

“These data provide important insights to protect public health and have been used to understand population-level impacts of COVID-19 policies and can shed important light on other pressing public health problems, like natural disaster response, and toxic environmental exposures. CDC does not and could not use these data for monitoring compliance with COVID-19 orders or individual tracking,” he added.

While the data is deanonymized, it can be used to identify people, researchers have shown.

Read more here…

Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has officially embarked on another round of job cuts with the firing of 1,500 employees in recruiting and human resources, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. 

In a memo sent to employees on Tuesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined plans to reduce its workforce by laying off 10,000 employees and eliminating 5,000 vacant positions.

“The first wave of cuts were explained to Meta employees on a call with executives Thursday morning,” the people said. 

Another person said Zuckerberg would address staff on Thursday afternoon about the company’s layoffs. 

Zuckerberg has called for a “year of efficiency” to reduce costs after overhiring during the pandemic years. The first round of job cuts was announced in November of around 11,000 people or 13% of its staff. 

Meta’s downsizing comes as its social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram WhatsApp, have been hit with a slowdown in advertising revenue, leading to the first-ever annual sales decline in 2022. Zuckerberg’s cost-cutting measures are too weather the economic storm. 

Meta’s not the only tech company laying off. According to the layoff tracking website Layoffs.fyi, 483 tech companies have fired 128,000 workers so far this year.

Authored by Doug Casey via InternationalMan.com,

You’re likely thinking that a discussion of “sound banking” will be a bit boring. Well, banking should be boring. And we’re sure officials at central banks all over the world today—many of whom have trouble sleeping—wish it were.

This brief article will explain why the world’s banking system is unsound, and what differentiates a sound from an unsound bank. I suspect not one person in 1,000 actually understands the difference. As a result, the world’s economy is now based upon unsound banks dealing in unsound currencies. Both have degenerated considerably from their origins.

Modern banking emerged from the goldsmithing trade of the Middle Ages. Being a goldsmith required a working inventory of precious metal, and managing that inventory profitably required expertise in buying and selling metal and storing it securely. Those capacities segued easily into the business of lending and borrowing gold, which is to say the business of lending and borrowing money.

Most people today are only dimly aware that until the early 1930s, gold coins were used in everyday commerce by the general public. In addition, gold backed most national currencies at a fixed rate of convertibility. Banks were just another business—nothing special. They were distinguished from other enterprises only by the fact they stored, lent, and borrowed gold coins, not as a sideline but as a primary business. Bankers had become goldsmiths without the hammers.

Bank deposits, until quite recently, fell strictly into two classes, depending on the preference of the depositor and the terms offered by banks: time deposits, and demand deposits. Although the distinction between them has been lost in recent years, respecting the difference is a critical element of sound banking practice.

Time Deposits. With a time deposit—a savings account, in essence—a customer contracts to leave his money with the banker for a specified period. In return, he receives a specified fee (interest) for his risk, for his inconvenience, and as consideration for allowing the banker the use of the depositor’s money. The banker, secure in knowing he has a specific amount of gold for a specific amount of time, is able to lend it; he’ll do so at an interest rate high enough to cover expenses (including the interest promised to the depositor), fund a loan-loss reserve, and if all goes according to plan, make a profit.

A time deposit entails a commitment by both parties. The depositor is locked in until the due date. How could a sound banker promise to give a time depositor his money back on demand and without penalty when he’s planning to lend it out?

In the business of accepting time deposits, a banker is a dealer in credit, acting as an intermediary between lenders and borrowers. To avoid loss, bankers customarily preferred to lend on productive assets, whose earnings offered assurance that the borrower could cover the interest as it came due. And they were willing to lend only a fraction of the value of a pledged asset, to ensure a margin of safety for the principal. And only for a limited time—such as against the harvest of a crop or the sale of an inventory. And finally, only to people of known good character—the first line of defense against fraud. Long-term loans were the province of bond syndicators.

That’s time deposits. Demand deposits were a completely different matter.

Demand Deposits. Demand deposits were so called because, unlike time deposits, they were payable to the customer on demand. These are the basis of checking accounts. The banker doesn’t pay interest on the money, because he supposedly never has the use of it; to the contrary, he necessarily charged the depositor a fee for:

1. Assuming the responsibility of keeping the money safe, available for immediate withdrawal, and

2. Administering the transfer of the money if the depositor so chooses by either writing a check or passing along a warehouse receipt that represents the gold on deposit.

An honest banker should no more lend out demand deposit money than Allied Van and Storage should lend out the furniture you’ve paid it to store. The warehouse receipts for gold were called banknotes. When a government issued them, they were called currency. Gold bullion, gold coinage, banknotes, and currency together constituted the society’s supply of transaction media. But its amount was strictly limited by the amount of gold actually available to people.

Sound principles of banking are identical to sound principles of warehousing any kind of merchandise, whether it’s autos, potatoes, or books. Or money. There’s nothing mysterious about sound banking. But banking all over the world has been fundamentally unsound since government-sponsored central banks came to dominate the financial system.

Central banks are a linchpin of today’s world financial system. By purchasing government debt, banks can allow the state—for a while—to finance its activities without taxation. On the surface, this appears to be a “free lunch.” But it’s actually quite pernicious and is the engine of currency debasement.

Central banks may seem like a permanent part of the cosmic landscape, but in fact they are a recent invention. The US Federal Reserve, for instance, didn’t exist before 1913.

Unsound Banking

Fraud can creep into any business. A banker, seeing other people’s gold sitting idle in his vault, might think, “What is the point of taking gold out of the ground from a mine, only to put it back into the ground in a vault?” People are writing checks against it and using his banknotes. But the gold itself seldom moves. A restless banker might conclude that, even though it might be a fraud on depositors (depending on exactly what the bank has promised them), he could easily create lots more banknotes and lend them out, and keep 100% of the interest for himself.

Left solely to their own devices, some bankers would try that. But most would be careful not to go too far, since the game would end abruptly if any doubt emerged about the bank’s ability to hand over gold on demand. The arrival of central banks eased that fear by introducing a lender of last resort. Because the central bank is always standing by with credit, bankers are free to make promises they know they might not be able to keep on their own.

How Banking Works Today

In the past, when a bank created too much currency out of nothing, people eventually would notice, and a “bank run” would materialize. But when a central bank authorizes all banks to do the same thing, that’s less likely—unless it becomes known that an individual bank has made some really foolish loans.

Central banks were originally justified—especially the creation of the Federal Reserve in the US—as a device for economic stability. The occasional chastisement of imprudent bankers and their foolish customers was an excuse to get government into the banking business. As has happened in so many cases, an occasional and local problem was “solved” by making it systemic and housing it in a national institution. It’s loosely analogous to the way the government handles the problem of forest fires: extinguishing them quickly provides an immediate and visible benefit. But the delayed and forgotten consequence of doing so is that it allows decades of deadwood to accumulate. Now when a fire starts, it can be a once-in-a-century conflagration.

Banking all over the world now operates on a “fractional reserve” system. In our earlier example, our sound banker kept a 100% reserve against demand deposits: he held one ounce of gold in his vault for every one-ounce banknote he issued. And he could only lend the proceeds of time deposits, not demand deposits. A “fractional reserve” system can’t work in a free market; it has to be legislated. And it can’t work where banknotes are redeemable in a commodity, such as gold; the banknotes have to be “legal tender” or strictly paper money that can be created by fiat.

The fractional reserve system is why banking is more profitable than normal businesses. In any industry, rich average returns attract competition, which reduces returns. A banker can lend out a dollar, which a businessman might use to buy a widget. When that seller of the widget re-deposits the dollar, a banker can lend it out at interest again. The good news for the banker is that his earnings are compounded several times over. The bad news is that, because of the pyramided leverage, a default can cascade. In each country, the central bank periodically changes the percentage reserve (theoretically, from 100% down to 0% of deposits) that banks must keep with it, according to how the bureaucrats in charge perceive the state of the economy.

In any event, in the US (and actually most everywhere in the world), protection against runs on banks isn’t provided by sound practices, but by laws. In 1934, to restore confidence in commercial banks, the US government instituted the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) deposit insurance in the amount of $2,500 per depositor per bank, eventually raising coverage to today’s $250,000. In Europe, €100,000 is the amount guaranteed by the state.

FDIC insurance covers about $9.8 trillion of deposits, but the institution has assets of only $126 billion. That’s about one cent on the dollar. I’ll be surprised if the FDIC doesn’t go bust and need to be recapitalized by the government. That money—many billions—will likely be created out of thin air by selling Treasury debt to the Fed.

The fractional reserve banking system, with all of its unfortunate attributes, is critical to the world’s financial system as it is currently structured. You can plan your life around the fact the world’s governments and central banks will do everything they can to maintain confidence in the financial system. To do so, they must prevent a deflation at all costs. And to do that, they will continue printing up more dollars, pounds, euros, yen, and what-have-you.

*  *  *

Most people have no idea what really happens when the banking system collapses, let alone how to prepare… As we get closer to a widespread banking collapse, choosing where to put your money is crucial to ensuring it doesn’t get caught in the crosshairs. Owning gold is essential. Gold has held its value for thousands of years. It has preserved wealth through every kind of crisis imaginable. Gold will preserve wealth during the next crisis, too. That’s precisely why legendary speculator Doug Casey and his team just released a new video on this topic, including what the mainstream media won’t tell you about gold. Click here to watch it now.

Update (1300ET): CNBC’s David Faber is reporting that the large banks are planning – as a group – to deposit around $20 billion of their own cash with First Republic.

BREAKING: Group of financial institutions in talks to deposit about $20 billion in First Republic, sources say (via @DavidFaber) https://t.co/lhgceOTnik

— CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) March 16, 2023

This makes some sense as the ‘big banks’ have lots of reserves relative to assets… 

So Big Banks are now parking their excess reserves/cash at Small Banks in a costless bailout funded by the Fed. Remember: Big Banks still have lots of reserves left; Small Banks are reserve constrainedhttps://t.co/wa2jVsCRFJ pic.twitter.com/3B6Wr3ROPj

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 16, 2023

As a reminder, JPM and the “Big 4” got even bigger recently thanks to small bank deposit run from past week, which they are now returning as deposits back into those troubled banks.

FRC shares are jumping (and halted) on the headlines…

*  *  *

Update (1230ET): What did they know and when?

As chatter continues to build of some bailout for First Republic Bank this week, after the company’s share price has collapsed, The Wall Street Journal reports that top execs at the bank sold millions of dollars of company stock in the last two months… but did not report the sales to SEC.

A gander at the SEC filings show only one small ‘insider sale’ recently (in November)…

However, executive have been selling for months, as unlike insider sales at most companies, those at First Republic aren’t required to be reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Instead, the trades were reported to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

A handful of banks currently file these forms to the FDIC, which posts them on a website where the documents can be accessed one at a time.

As of Wednesday, First Republic is the only company listed on the S&P 500 index that doesn’t file its insider trades with the SEC, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows.

In all, insiders have sold $11.8 million worth of stock so far this year at prices averaging just below $130 a share.

Finally, we would expect a knock at the door if we were them as the DoJ is already looking at insider sales made by Silicon Valley Bank executives a week before that bank’s failure,

*  *  *

Update (1100ET): The Wall Street Journal reports that JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley are among a group in talks to bolster First Republic Bank.

According to people familiar with the matter, several large banks are discussing a potential deal with First Republic Bank that could include a sizable capital infusion to shore up the beleaguered lender.

Any deal would need the blessing of regulators and will be driven at least in part by the bank’s highly volatile stock.

FRC shares are bouncing hard off the earlier lows (halted numerous times)…

That headline sent the US Majors soaring…

*  *  *

As we detailed earlier, First Republic Bank shares have plunged this morning, extending a week-long rout, as executives consider courting a buyer to prop up the bank in the wake of the collapse of several regional peers.

Bloomberg reports that, according to people familiar with the matter, the San Francisco-based bank is said to be exploring strategic options that include a sale. The firm is also weighing options for shoring up liquidity, some of the people said.

“Normally, a headline of a potential sale would support the stock,” Christopher McGratty, an analyst at Keefe, Bruyette and Woods, wrote in a report.

“However, the potentially significant deposit outflows post-SIVB failure likely leave FRC in a tough spot.”

“Any potential sale would likely be a tough outcome for existing shareholders, given mark-to-market accounting on loans,” McGratty wrote.

FRC shares are down over 30% this morning, back at post-SVB lows…

First Republic saw its credit rating was cut to junk by S&P Global Ratings and Fitch Ratings.

“First Republic’s options have narrowed following deposit outflow, a sharp share-price decline and recent downgrades from ratings agencies, while a potential sale of the bank could center on the attractive wealth-management business,” Herman Chan, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, wrote in a note.

But, but, but President Biden said:

“Americans can rest assured that our banking system is safe.  Your deposits are safe.”

It’s not over.

Instead of charging in with a traditional ‘show of confidence’ by buying the company stock, PacWest Bancorp’s Chief Financial Officer Kevin Thompson made his ‘bullish’ bet by selling puts.

As Bloomberg reports, Thompson, who joined the company in November, is one of more than 100 US banking executives who have bet on their companies’ shares during the recent chaos – much to their chagrin now – only he did it in a protected, less optimistic (and very short-term) manner.

Thompson sold put options on 12,500 PacWest shares on March 9, according to a filing with the SEC.

The document shows that the buyer paid a total of $15,375 for the right to put the stock to Thompson at $22.50 a share.

Theoretically, the position offers Thompson limited upside gains if the stock rebounds, with significant downside risk if the stock plunges.

Things have not worked out well for the CFO as PACW stock price has plunged…

…sending the price of the sold puts soaring into tomorrow’s expiration

With the stock trading at around $10, Thompson stands to lose over $150,000 on the position.

While the sold put position makes some sense, the signal from a CFO trading derivatives into his own stock ahead of a bailout… that didn’t seem to stop the bleeding in regional banks… is not a good look for any banking exec.

The Kremlin is very smug right now over the western banking crisis, claiming that aggressive Western sanctions have largely insulated the country from its effects.

“Our banking system has certain connections with some segments of the international financial system, but it is mostly under illegal restrictions from the collective West,” said Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, according to TASS state news agency.

“We are, to a certain extent, insured against the negative impact of the crisis that is now unfolding overseas,” he added. 

In contrast, Russia — like much of the world — faced a credit crunch due to the fallout from the US subprime mortgage crisis in 2008, which ultimately led to the Global Financial Crisis.

As the country recovered from the recession, it started working towards its grand ambition of making Moscow a global financial hub. But that dream has now been bruised with Russia under sweeping sanctions. –Insider

Two days after Russia’s invasion of Ukriane, Russian banks were cut off from the Belgium-based SWIFT messaging service that allows banks to coordinate cross-border transactions – thus isolating the country to a large extent both economically and financially. Russia also faces restrictions on key energy exports, including a $60 per barrel price cap on oil.

Meanwhile, international banks and accounting firms pulled out of the country – or have made plans to do so.

That said, aluminum oligarch Oleg Derpaska (who Hunter Biden tried selling information on to Alcoa for $55,000), told the Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum in Siberia on March 2nd, that Russia “will need foreign investors” because its funds were running low.

Deripaska’s comments are among the most outspoken by a prominent business leader as the government looks to turn the screws on large companies after ending last year with a record fiscal deficit and the budget still deep in the red to start 2023. 

…

While Russia saw a surprise boom in capital spending last year, the outlook has turned more grim, especially as massive military spending strains public finances. But even with sanctions and other restrictions squeezing revenues from energy exports, the economy may grow slightly this year, according to the International Monetary Fund. -Bloomberg

“There will be no money already next year,” said the billionaire.

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

• Global oil production fell by 365,000 bpd in January, hitting a seven-month low according to data from the Joint Organizations Data Initiative.

• The drop in oil production was driven by lower output in Canada, Russia, Iraq, and Bahrain.

• Global inventories of crude and oil products increased by 101.9 million barrels to an 11-month high but remain below the five-year average.

Crude oil production worldwide fell to a seven-month low in January, dragged down by lower output in major producers Canada, Iraq, Russia, and Bahrain, data from the Joint Organizations Data Initiative (JODI) showed on Thursday.

Global oil production declined by 365,000 barrels per day (bpd) in January, which was the third consecutive month of falling output, showed the JODI data shared by the Riyadh-based International Energy Forum (IEF).

A month after the G7 price cap and the EU embargo on seaborne Russian crude imports took effect, crude oil production in Russia was down by 47,000 bpd to 9.98 million bpd in January. This was the lowest Russian output in three months and 277,000 bpd below the levels from January 2022, according to the JODI data.  

Global consumption dropped seasonally in January and was only slightly higher compared to January 2022, the data showed, but it did not include January 2023 data for China.

Beijing reports January and February economic, oil consumption, and other data together to avoid major comparison distortions due to the week-long Lunar New Year holiday, which fell in late January this year.

Global inventories of crude and oil products increased by 101.9 million barrels to an 11-month high. Yet, stocks remained 304 million barrels below the five-year average, according to the JODI data.  

In natural gas, global demand declined in January, an unusual move for a winter month in the northern hemisphere. Natural gas consumption in the EU and the UK combined slumped to a five-year seasonal low in January, the data showed.

Reduced industrial and household consumption and milder weather this winter have helped Europe avoid a gas shortage crisis, which many had feared ahead of the 2022/2023 heating season.

The lower demand was shown in the total gas inventories, which fell by 24.4 bcm month-on-month in January, less than the seasonal average draw of 43 bcm, per JODI’s data. 

The US Department of Defense published a short video of a Russian fighter jet performing an unsafe maneuver while intercepting a US Air Force MQ-9 “Reaper” drone that crashed into the Black Sea on Tuesday. American officials have criticized Russia for operating their aircraft in a way deemed “unsafe and unprofessional.”

In the 42-second clip, the Russian Su-27 can be seen approaching the back of the MQ-9 drone while it starts to release fuel. This action was likely intended to discourage the surveillance drone’s presence in international airspace over the Black Sea and obstruct its advanced sensors.

BREAKING: U.S. military releases dramatic declassified video taken by MQ-9 Reaper drone that shows the moment that a Russian Su-27 fighter jet collided with it after attempting to spray the drone with jet fuel. https://t.co/XGoVQN7ppJ pic.twitter.com/X9vH6qtFGf

— ABC News (@ABC) March 16, 2023

USAF wrote in a statement that the Russian fighter jet “dumped fuel upon and struck the propeller of the MQ-9, causing US forces to have to bring the MQ-9 down in international waters.” 

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the drone posed no threat to anyone and was operating in international airspace.

“The United States will continue to fly and to operate wherever international law allows, and it is incumbent upon Russia to operate its military aircraft in a safe and professional manner,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters Wednesday. 

Meanwhile, Russia has denied that its pilots acted unprofessionally or struck the drone’s propeller. 

The Russian Defense Ministry spoke with Austin about the incident and said the drone ignored flight restrictions in the area posted by the Kremlin. There was also a report the drone was flying with no broadcasting transponder and headed toward the Russian border. 

Russia pointed out the incident is due to “the intensification of intelligence activities against the interests of the Russian Federation.”

Although there was no loss of life, the incident outlines the ongoing conflict in Ukraine has sparked concerns that it may escalate and might lead to direct confrontation between Russia and the US. This comes as the spring offensive is underway. 

Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

• The US became the world’s largest exporter of LNG in 2020, setting a record.

• There are concerns that new proposed LNG production facilities could cause market saturation and low prices, as well as competition from low-carbon alternatives.

• Despite an increase in renewable energy, Europe still depends on Russian gas contracts to meet their energy demands.

Last year, the United States leapfrogged Qatar and Australia to become the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas. This was made possible thanks to the surge in LNG demand from Europe as it urgently sought an alternative to Russian pipeline supply.

After such a stellar year for U.S. LNG producers despite the months-long outage sat Freeport, which affected the total volume exported, it was only to be expected that the industry would have some serious capacity growth plans.

Three new LNG production facilities could get their final investment decisions as soon as this year. By 2027, the U.S. could have LNG capacity of 169 million metric tons, overtaking Qatar, which is expanding its own capacity right now, eyeing 110 million tons by the same year.

Alas, nothing is certain in energy. The above plans and forecasts about the U.S. LNG industry are based on the assumption of continued robust LNG growth from both Europe and Asia. They are based on the assumption of growing demand, in fact.

Yet even before most of this new capacity begins to be built, concerns are surfacing from threats of low-carbon alternative energy sources and the very reliability of global LNG supply.

Analysts recently warned that if all proposed LNG production facilities do get built, global capacity could surge by 67 percent to 636 million tons annually by 2030. This, Reuters reported, could lead to market saturation and drive prices down.

In light of the electricity shortages and consequent blackouts that Pakistan, for instance, experienced last year because of prohibitively high LNG prices as a result of insatiable European demand, a future with low LNG prices will not be such a bad thing for everyone.

In light of ambitions by energy companies to get in on the LNG game precisely because of where prices were last year, market saturation is unlikely to be celebrated everywhere.

As for competition from low-carbon sources, this concern is easier to dismiss for the time being, seeing as costs for both wind and solar have increased substantially, casting a shadow over the assumption that they are and will always be the lowest-cost source of energy. Suffice it to say the United States and the European Union are now locked in a subsidy race that focuses heavily precisely on these two energy sources.

The immediate future of LNG seems certain enough. This year, imports into Europe and Turkey will rise by 10 percent from last year’s record volumes to reach another record of around 190 billion cu m, according to Refinitiv. So far, so good.

Yet looking a bit further into the future, again with the assumption of strong growth in renewables, this record might be a one-off thing, according to some in Germany. The chief executive of utility major RWE recently warned that some of the LNG importer capacity that was being developed in the country might end up unused.

“It may be that the LNG terminals are not fully utilised. But you need them as an insurance premium,” Markus Krebber told German media earlier this month, as quoted by Reuters.

Interestingly, Krebber said Russia was still delivering natural gas to Germany per contractual obligations, only not via the sabotaged Nord Stream but via Ukraine. That’s despite assurances from German leaders that the country has now successfully weaned itself off Russian oil and gas.

Be that as it may, there is little doubt that demand for LNG will remain robust over at least the medium term and, if the argument for cheap renewables gets disproved, over the longer term as well. And this is when the reliability of global LNG supply might begin garnering some more attention than demand.

As energy analytics company Kayrros recently noted in an LNG market update, “LNG supply is inherently prone to disruptions. Accidents and unplanned maintenance are a common occurrence at LNG terminals around the world and a major driver of market volatility.”

The company went on to report that 32 percent of global LNG production facilities, accounting for 55 percent of global supply, go through unplanned outages more than five times a year, with the average length of the outage at 90 days.

Theoretically, this is not what one would call reliable, especially with a view to future demand, which is seen as considerably higher than current demand. But then there are the delays and cost overruns of future plants, too. Most large-scale LNG projects in the world have seen major delays and massive cost overruns. With a world panting for more LNG, this might become a problem.

The solution to this problem is likely to be the same as the solution to the LNG price problem that plunged Pakistan into severe blackouts: coal. When the cleaner fuel becomes unavailable, for whatever reason, consumers tend to revert to the cheaper, though dirtier alternative rather than the cleaner one, also allegedly cheaper but more of a hassle to build.

Whether there will be a glut of LNG or a prolonged shortage, the future of that fuel certainly looks interesting.

First Republic Bank shares have plunged this morning, extending a week-long rout, as executives consider courting a buyer to prop up the bank in the wake of the collapse of several regional peers.

Bloomberg reports that, according to people familiar with the matter, the San Francisco-based bank is said to be exploring strategic options that include a sale. The firm is also weighing options for shoring up liquidity, some of the people said.

“Normally, a headline of a potential sale would support the stock,” Christopher McGratty, an analyst at Keefe, Bruyette and Woods, wrote in a report.

“However, the potentially significant deposit outflows post-SIVB failure likely leave FRC in a tough spot.”

“Any potential sale would likely be a tough outcome for existing shareholders, given mark-to-market accounting on loans,” McGratty wrote.

FRC shares are down over 30% this morning, back at post-SVB lows…

First Republic saw its credit rating was cut to junk by S&P Global Ratings and Fitch Ratings.

“First Republic’s options have narrowed following deposit outflow, a sharp share-price decline and recent downgrades from ratings agencies, while a potential sale of the bank could center on the attractive wealth-management business,” Herman Chan, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, wrote in a note.

But, but, but President Biden said:

“Americans can rest assured that our banking system is safe.  Your deposits are safe.”

It’s not over.