The new CEO of failed Silicon Valley Bank is a familiar name to many in Charlotte’s banking community — Tim Mayopoulos was fired as general counsel of Bank of America in 2008 in the midst of the financial crisis and escorted out of the office by an HR representative.

The Silicon Valley Bank failure was the second-largest in U.S. history.

The FDIC closed Silicon Valley Bank on March 10, started a new bank called Silicon Valley Bridge Bank, and named Mayopoulos as CEO on Monday.

 French President Emmanuel Macron imposed a highly unpopular bill raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 on Thursday by shunning parliament and invoking a special constitutional power.

Lawmakers were shouting, their voices shaking with emotion as Macron made the risky move, which is expected to trigger quick motions of no-confidence in his government. Riot police vans zoomed by outside the National Assembly, their sirens wailing.

The proposed pension changes have prompted major strikes and protests across the country since January. Macron, who made it the flagship of his second term, argued the reform is needed to keep the pension system from diving into deficit as France’s population ages and life expectancy lengthens.

Amid its worst ratings in over a decade, CNN recently sought to reinvent its primetime strategy. But that gambit to boost viewership looks like it has failed.

More than a year after firing its most-watched anchor Chris Cuomo over an ethics scandal involving his disgraced ex-governor brother, the cable-news pioneer has struggled to find a permanent replacement in the 9 p.m. time slot. Last month, the network decided to fill the pivotal hour with town-hall events and specials focusing on hot-button news topics, as well as interviews with prominent politicians and celebrities.

Since implementing that formula late last month, however, CNN has yet to see viewers embrace the new direction. In fact, CNN’s primetime specials have attracted a smaller audience than the network’s regular programming in that same time slot this year.

Since the start of the year, CNN has averaged 679,000 total viewers in the 9 p.m. time slot whenever Anderson Cooper, whose nightly program airs at 8 p.m., has anchored the hour. Prior to Cuomo’s move to primetime a few years ago, Anderson Cooper 360 was a two-hour news show. Additionally, 7 p.m. CNN anchor Erin Burnett has averaged an overall audience of 567,000 when filling in during the primetime slot. Cooper also has averaged 159,000 viewers in the key advertising 25-54 demographic during his 9 p.m. broadcasts, while Burnett has pulled in 114,000 in the demo.

BUMP TO THE TOP!

 Russia has proposed suspending its double taxation agreements with what it calls “unfriendly countries” - those that have imposed sanctions on Moscow, the Finance Ministry said on Wednesday.

“The Russian Finance Ministry and Foreign Ministry proposed that the President of Russia issue a decree suspending double taxation agreements with all countries that introduced unilateral economic restrictive measures against Russia,” it said. (Reporting by Reuters)

Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, is set to become the first higher education institution in the state to offer its students access to emergency contraception via a vending machine on campus.

The machine will provide 24/7 access to the "morning after pill" at a discounted price that has yet to be determined. The move follows the example of Boston University and George Washington University, which have already adopted similar schemes.

According to a spokesperson for Miami University, students will be able to purchase emergency contraception for around $7 to $15 from the vending machine. This will provide a more affordable and accessible option than visiting a pharmacy, which can be difficult to access at odd hours when stores are closed.

Americans watch as a newly-elected senator appears to be falling apart. We’ve warned the country about this man, who suffered a stroke during the election cycle last year. John Fetterman has not appeared to have recovered from that severe episode. After a few days in the hospital last month, he admitted himself into Walter Reed, for “depression.”

We can’t say if this depression is really a front for other, serious complications from his stroke. But things aren’t looking good. He’s been MIA for weeks, now. Even his family has run off to Canada. We’ve received no updates from the man himself. Not videos of him thanking supporters for their “thoughts and prayers.”

Finally, his office gave an update. But it’s far from reassuring.

From the New York Post:

Sen. John Fetterman’s health is reportedly improving but he could remain hospitalized for up to two more weeks as doctors work to get his medication “exactly right.” […]

The policies of the US Federal Reserve are responsible for the unfolding banking crisis and could lead to more failures in the sector, Chairman of the Institute for Political Economy Paul Craig Roberts believes.

The official, who served in the US Treasury in the 1980s, talked to RT about the recent high-profile bank failures that have rattled the US financial system and the potential fallout of those events.

“For many years, the Federal Reserve kept the rates very low, so the interest on the financial assets that the banks have on their balance sheet is low. When the rates start rising, the values of their portfolios fall, but their liabilities don’t,” Roberts explained.

The United States Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has reportedly asked potential rescuers of some failed U.S. banks not to support any crypto services.

The FDIC regulators have asked banks interested in acquiring failed U.S. lenders like Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank to submit bids by March 17, Reuters reported.

The authority will only accept bids from banks with an existing bank charter, prioritizing traditional lenders over private equity firms, the report notes, citing two sources familiar with the matter. The FDIC aims to sell entire businesses of both SVB and Signature, while offers for parts of the banks could be considered if the whole company sales do not happen.

The FDIC has also required any buyer of Signature to agree to give up all cryptocurrency business at the bank.

Webmaster addition: US revenge for the drone incident?

Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki – now a host on MSNBC – took a shot at Fox News' Tucker Carlson in light of court filings suggesting he doesn't believe some of the things he feeds his viewers.

“I had about 20 seconds where I thought … Tucker Carlson, maybe he’s one of us,” she said during an episode of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” “And then, by second 21, I thought, wait, he is intentionally sharing disinformation with his audiences and treating them like they are stupid, frankly, so that he can save his job, save viewers and make money.”

This week, as you know, I've been blogging about the growing movement in the USSA which, for want of a better description, we'll simply describe as the "pushback movement."  This movement is really part of a growing global phenomenon of revolt against globaloneyism and its lack of any unifying culture except greed, graft, and grift, the three Gr's that made the Bai Den Jo family one of the most successful oriental gangs in history.  At the top of this list of pushback this week you can include the governor of my home state, Kristi Noem, who just vetoed a bill from the South Dakota legislature that would have recognized central bank digital currency - we'll call them "fedgimmicks" for convenience and ease-of-use's sake - but not other crypto-currencies:

A new artificial intelligence program can keep up with human beings on a number of professional and academic tests, according to its creator, which said the model scored among the top 10% of test-takers on a simulated bar exam.

Technology firm OpenAI unveiled its latest language model on Tuesday, dubbed GPT-4, saying the program is “more reliable, creative, and able to handle much more nuanced instructions” than its predecessor, GPT-3.5.

“GPT-4 is a large multimodal model (accepting image and text inputs, emitting text outputs) that, while less capable than humans in many real-world scenarios, exhibits human-level performance on various professional and academic benchmarks,” it said. “For example, it passes a simulated bar exam with a score around the top 10% of test takers; in contrast, GPT-3.5’s score was around the bottom 10%.”

Webmaster addition:

Pfizer has offered to extend its Covid-19 vaccine contract with the European Union while scaling back deliveries, but still expects the bloc to pay billions of euros for unused doses amid a major supply glut in some countries, the Financial Times has reported. The offer prompted outrage from a handful of member states, who say the deal would serve the interests of Big Pharma over their own citizens.

The contract extension would push the vaccine agreement out to 2026, with a proposed 40% reduction in the number of doses supplied as well as delays to deliveries, the newspaper reported on Tuesday, citing two unnamed officials. 

However, despite the suggested cuts, the US pharma giant still insists that it be paid for the full number of doses originally agreed upon, many of which would never be produced under the new terms.

March 15 marks the 12th anniversary of the Syrian conflict which started with unrest that later translated into a multinational standoff fanned by the collective West. Russia's involvement turned the table on the war, disrupting the attempts to isolate Damascus.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad held talks on Wednesday, March 15. Assad is still at Syria's helm despite the collective West's bid to replace him with a jihadi proxy during a bloody civil war which erupted exactly 12 years ago.

Do you remember when wealthy people all over the world would stash their money in Swiss banks because there were so strong and so private?  Well, the second largest bank in Switzerland is literally on the brink of collapse.  As I discussed yesterday, Credit Suisse is a prime candidate to be one of the next dominoes to fall.  It has been on very shaky ground for a long time, and now the global banking panic has greatly accelerated the outflow of assets from the bank.  So why should you care if it fails?  Unlike Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, Credit Suisse is so critical to the worldwide banking system that it has officially been designated “as being systemically important by the international Financial Stability Board”