The 2Y Treasury yield is down 45bps from yesterday's highs...

That is the biggest 2-day drop in the 2Y yield since Lehman (Sept 2008)...

Source: Bloomberg

The market's expectation for Fed moves has shifted dramatically more dovish with the terminal rate tumbling by over 40bps and a full 25bps rate-cut now priced-in by year-end...

And gold is seeing huge safe haven inflows...

Will The Fed break its blackout window to soothe market fears?

In a remarkable interview Thursday, Anthony Fauci had the gall to defend dangerous gain of function research, which in all likelihood was the direct cause of the COVID pandemic, and mocked the idea that a lab leak is being covered up.

Appearing on Fox News, Fauci told anchor Neil Cavuto “If you shut off all gain of function research. Did you get the flu shot this year, Neil? If you did, and you got it from an influenza vaccine, that was gain-of-function that made that influenza vaccine. That’s what people don’t understand.”

Fauci twice suggested that he should be “taken out of this,” reasoning that “I’m a charged person,” and went on to argue the case for gain of function research, which makes pathogens more deadly.

“The whole scientific community feels that you have to have some degree of being able to manipulate organisms,” Fauci claimed, adding “When you do it, you have to do it carefully and under very controlled conditions.”

All the while, Fauci was again careful not to define exactly what gain of function is, having previously changed the definition to cover his own culpability.

When asked if the research serves any value, Fauci stated “It depends on what your definition of gain of function is,” going on to say “Look at a whole array of virologists and scientists who do research that is absolutely critical for the health of the country. Some of that involves manipulating organisms. You want to call it gain of function. It really is not, in many respects, but it needs to be very well-regulated.”

Wall Street Banks just spent the last four weeks selling investors on a soft - NO landing scenario -- There are rare moments of social risk awareness in markets where everyone is huddled on the wrong side of the boat, and when the migration starts, the broad belief system flips and the swing can be very violent. We are here NOW...

Back to the Future

It´s a lot more like the late 80s (S&L Crisis), than 2008.

Most of the risk is spread out across hundreds of regional banks. Tertiary financials -- like ALLY above -- are important leading indicators. At 19x earnings, now... most of us can see an air pocket of the face of the S&P 500, hello 13x, next stop.

US futures and European stocks pared broader declines earlier sparked by a rush to havens amid concerns about the health of the US banking system following the collapse of Silvergate and the rout that has crushed Silicon Valley Bank, sending it shares down 40% premarket after plunging 60% on Thursday amid a spreading liquidity crisis. The collapse of the lender was sufficiently traumatic to push today's payrolls report - until yesterday the highlight of the week - off the front page.

S&P 500 futures fell slightly, erasing a bigger drop that pushed eminis briefly below 3,900 setting up the underlying index to extend a rout fueled by liquidity concerns in the banking sector and as investors prepare for the monthly payrolls report.  The benchmark dropped the most in over two weeks on Thursday, with banks slumping as SVB Financial Group took steps to shore up its capital position following losses in its securities portfolio. Nasdaq 100 futures were little changed.

Europe’s Stoxx 600 equity gauge dropped more than 1%, with an index of bank stocks sliding the most since June. Bond markets were also roiled by the SIVB news, sending yields plunging and reversing sharp gains earlier this week following Powell's hawkish speech. Treasuries extended gains for a second day, driving 10-year yields down by as much as 11 basis points to a three-week low, while German 10-year government borrowing costs were at one point poised for their biggest slump since early February.

In premarket trading, Shares of SVB - a major lender to startup companies - dropped 46% after a record 60% plunge on Thursday after a surprise announcement from SVB that it was holding a $2.25 billion share sale after a significant loss on its portfolio, which included US Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities. Other banks including JPMorgan and Bank of America also inched lower.

There’s little question that federal agents were among the January 6 crowds “protesting” on the Capitol grounds that day – what we don’t know is how many feds were there and what role they played in fanning the flames that turned the protests into riots and assaults on the building itself.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson calls out the left for trying to erase the real definition of 'woman' after Jill Biden presents 'International Women of Courage Award' to a biological male.

A man convicted of credit card fraud and deported to Brazil has submitted a sworn declaration to federal authorities, alleging that Rep. George Santos, a New York Republican, orchestrated a 2017 credit card skimming operation in Seattle.

Gustavo Ribeiro Trelha claimed in his declaration that Santos, whose full name is George Anthony Devolder Santos, was the mastermind behind the operation. He said, "Santos taught me how to skim card information and how to clone cards. He gave me all the materials and taught me how to put skimming devices and cameras on ATM machines." Trelha decided to come forward after seeing Santos on television, he said in the declaration.

North Korea fired off at least six short-range missiles on Thursday afternoon in what could be the opening salvo in weeks of military displays on both sides of the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, analysts said.

Photos released by state-run media on Friday showed North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attending the Hwasong artillery unit’s fire drill on the western front, along with his daughter and military officials.

Kim’s daughter, who’s believed to be called Ju Ae, has recently appeared at major events held in North Korea next to her father.

Angry citizens are taking to the streets all over the world, and often they are lashing out in wild and unpredictable ways.  The eruptions of civil unrest that you will read about below are all happening for different reasons, but they all have one thing in common.  People are deeply frustrated with the direction that things are going, and they have lost faith in the ability of their elected representatives to solve their problems.  Unfortunately, this is just the beginning.  For years I have been warning my readers that we will eventually see civil unrest on a scale that we have never seen before.  Could it be possible that we are now entering the leading edge of that storm?

On Tuesday, the streets of Paris were turned into a war zone as French citizens expressed their displeasure with the pension reforms that French President Emmanuel Macron seems determined to implement…

Violence erupted on the streets of Paris today as thousands took to the streets across France to protest against pension reforms.

Riot police fought running battles with demonstrators in the capital city on a so-called Black Tuesday of industrial action across the country.

The mainstream media continues to tell us that the economy is in fine shape, and you can believe that if you want.  But evidence continues to mount that indicates that we are headed for very serious trouble.  Inflation is out of control, home sales have fallen for 12 months in a row, large corporations all over America are conducting mass layoffs, and hunger is spreading like wildfire as economic conditions rapidly deteriorate.  If this is “fine”, I would hate to see what “bad” would look like.  Virtually everything that normally occurs during the early stages of a major economic downturn is happening right now, and that includes an inversion of Treasury yields…

On Tuesday, the difference in the yield on 2-year and 10-year Treasury notes further inverted, with the yield on the 10-year falling 103 basis points, or 1.03 percentage points, below the yield on the 2-year yield. This dynamic has preceded each of the last eight U.S. recessions.

Please read that last sentence again.

This has happened for eight recessions in a row.

Do you think that by some miracle we won’t have a recession this time?

Major employers all over America are announcing mass layoffs, but the mainstream media continues to insist that everything is just fine.  Every month the Biden administration gives us numbers that suggest that the economy is stable, and most mainstream reporters willingly go along with that narrative.  But anyone with half a brain should be able to see that we are headed for big economic trouble.  The housing bubble is imploding, food prices just keep rising, and we haven’t seen a wave of layoffs like we are currently witnessing since the days of the Great Recession.

One of the things that I appreciate about Challenger, Gray & Christmas is that they don’t have a political axe to grind.  They just report the facts, and their latest report tells us that announced job cuts in the United States are running 427 percent higher than they were at this time in 2022…

So far this year, employers announced plans to cut 180,713 jobs, up 427% from the 34,309 cuts announced in the first two months of 2022. It is the highest January-February total since 2009 when a total of 428,099 job cuts were announced in January and February.

Let those figures sink in for a moment.

MarketWatch Poll Report: 68% of Americans couldn’t cover their living expenses for even a month if they lost their job.

The wait for the next “Lehman Brothers moment” is over.  On Friday, we witnessed the second biggest bank failure in U.S. history.  The stunning collapse of Silicon Valley Bank is shaking the financial world to the core.  As of the end of last year, the bank had 175 billion dollars in deposits, and approximately 151 billion dollars of those deposits were uninsured.  In other words, a lot of wealthy individuals and large companies are in danger of being wiped out.  In particular, this is being described as an “extinction level event” for tech startups, because thousands of them did their banking with SVB.  I cannot even begin to describe how cataclysmic this is going to be for the tech industry as a whole.

There is so much to cover, and so let me try to take this one step at a time.

Rumors of trouble at SVB had sparked a massive bank run in recent days, and regulators moved quickly on Friday to permanently shut the bank down…

Financial regulators have closed Silicon Valley Bank and taken control of its deposits, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. announced Friday, in what is the largest U.S. bank failure since the global financial crisis more than a decade ago.

This week’s cover depicts news anchors promoting war and destruction from the comfy confines of a newsroom thousands of miles away from any conflict – all to keep their corporate bosses and their favorite politicians fat and happy. The business of journalism is show business.

What is the military tactic in Ukraine that the media won't explain to us? Don't worry, we've got former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter on the show to explain how Ukraine is on the ropes, no matter what Ukraine or NATO does.

Russia said Thursday that it employed its feared Kinzhal hypersonic missile system in its latest attack on “Ukraine's military infrastructure,” which reportedly resulted in at least six deaths.

A Ukrainian air force spokesperson told Reuters that it was a major attack and “for the first time with so many different types of missiles.”

“It was like never before,” the source said.

The Kinzhal is nuclear-capable and can travel up to five times the speed of sound, or about one mile a second. It was believed Russia fired six of the missiles from high-flying MiG-31s. The New York Times reported: Launching the missile from a warplane at high altitude, instead of from the ground, leaves it with more fuel to use to reach higher speeds.

Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Air Force, told the paper that Ukraine does not have a defense system that can intercept these missiles. 

World War 3 could take a radical turn for the worse in coming weeks. Until now, NATO allies have not deployed combat troops in Ukraine to engage Russian forces. That may change the next month or two. Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary has claimed that NATO allies will send troops into Ukraine soon to fight Russians. The Hungarian leader made the stunning admission on an interview on Hungary’s national public radio station. We will start today’s TruNews with a look at this article published by Novasti news agency.