Thus far in this 3-year fiasco of mismanagement and corruption, we’ve avoided a financial crisis. That’s for specific reasons. We just had not traveled there in the trajectory of the inevitable. Are we there yet? Maybe. In any case, the speed of change is accelerating. All that awaits is to observe the extent of the contagion.

The failure of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), $212 billion in assets until only recently, is a huge mess and a possible foreshadowing. Its fixed-rate bond holdings declined rapidly in market valuation due to changed market conditions. Its portfolio crashed further due to a depositor run. And it all happened in less than a few days.

It’s all an extension of Fed policy to curb inflation, reversing a 13-year zero-rate policy. This of course pushed up rates in the middle and right side of the yield curve, devaluing existing bond holdings locked into older rate patterns. Investors noticed and then depositors too. The high-flying institution that specialized in providing liquidity in industries that have lost their luster suddenly found itself very vulnerable.

In addition, the bank was exposed with a portfolio of collateralized mortgage obligations and mortgage-backed securities. But with rates rising, those are coming under stress too as high leverage in housing and real estate become untenable amidst falling valuations. Borrowers are finding themselves under water and that in turn adds to stress on lenders.

Webmaster addition: Mortgage-backed securities was a major cause of the 2008 melt-down! 

Brigitte Macron, the First Lady of France, filed a complaint last year against two women who uploaded a YouTube video titled "Brigitte Macron is a man." The video alleged that Brigitte had a gender reassignment at 18.

On Wednesday, the French newspaper Le Point reported that Brigitte's complaint against the two women was "voided" by a Paris Judge. 

In its decision, consulted by AFP, the court declared void the summons issued by Brigitte Macron for invasion of privacy and image rights, considering that the facts she denounced should have been qualified of public defamation.

Brigitte Macron, her brother, and the three children of the First Lady had assigned two women on February 15, 2022, one presenting herself as a "medium," the other as an "independent journalist."

They asked the court to condemn these two women to pay them damages for having broadcast on the YouTube channel of the "medium", on December 10, 2021, "a perfectly eccentric thesis" according to which Brigitte Macron, born Trogneux, does not would never have existed, but that his brother would have taken on this identity after changing sex.

Global air pollution declined by 31% during the initial COVID-19 lockdowns, demonstrating a link between economic activity and air quality.

As Visual Capitalist's Jenna Ross details below, this graphic from The Hinrich Foundation, the fourth in a five-part series on the sustainability of trade, explores how air pollution varies by economy. It pulls data from the 2022 Sustainable Trade Index, which The Hinrich Foundation produced in collaboration with the IMD World Competitiveness Center.

The showdown over the future of the federal budget is taking shape as President Joe Biden releases his fiscal year 2024 spending proposal and House Republicans prepare to leverage their new majority to block the plan.

Stanford University’s law school is deemed the second-best in the nation in the latest U.S. News and World Report, which means its current enrollees likely include future senators, judges, and possibly even Supreme Court justices who will help shape American law over the next half-century.

Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Stanford Law School Dean Jenny Martinez delivered an apology on Saturday to Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan, after he was verbally attacked by student protesters and a school administrator.

Former Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker explained to Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) this week how President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice is a “two-tiered system of justice” in which conservatives often get the short end of the stick.

Joe Biden just can’t stop lying about his policies that have crushed the American people.

How long has he been telling us that he only wants to go after the “rich” people with his phalanx of thousands of new IRS agents? A long time it seems. Anyone who knows Joe Biden knows what malarkey his claim truly is and we’ve pointed out some of the lies surrounding this claim in the past.

But Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen finally admitted under grilling on Friday by Rep. Adrian Smith (R-NE), the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee, that 90 percent of the new audits were going to be on families and small businesses — lower and middle-income people making under $400,000, and not on “billionaires and tax cheats,” as Joe Biden has claimed.

Webmaster addition:

Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-CA) suggested on Saturday that despite not wanting to “get in the business of telling troops what they can and cannot watch,” he might be open to banning Fox News on military installations.

Remember the scene in “It’s a Wonderful Life” when there’s a run on Jimmy Stewart’s bank? That just happened in real life.

Silicon Valley Bank collapsed Friday after depositors rushed to pull funds from the tech lender amid jitters about its exposure to the fragile technology sector.

It’s the biggest bank failure since the 2008 financial crisis, putting nearly $175 billion in customer deposits under the control of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

While this kind of thing doesn’t happen very often, the demise of Silicon Valley Bank serves as an lesson for all bank customers about what can happen if an institution goes under.

Illegal border crossings in Arizona show no signs of slowing down, in fact the Tucson Sector Border Patrol officials just reported the apprehension of a group of 235 illegal aliens from 14 different nations.

On Monday, Tucson Sector Chief Patrol Agent John R. Modlin tweeted out a photo of the group, which included single adults, families, and small children, apprehended by Ajo Station agents.

Tucker Carlson sits down with Redacted Host Clayton Morris for a wide ranging interview about the January 6th video controversy, the state of journalism, personal attacks and much more.

Attorney Jenna Ellis has been criticized in Colorado for misconduct accusations and making false claims about the 2020 election.

Democrats took a stab at getting Ellis disbarred outright, but that effort failed, according to the Post Millennial.

Ellis’ attorney, Michael Melito, said the following about the situation: “My client remains a practicing attorney in good standing in Colorado. We have secured the correct outcome in a very heated political climate.”

Ellis was a senior advisor to the Trump campaign in 2020 and was responsible for securing the authenticity of the 2020 election results and arguing on behalf of the Trump campaign’s position that the results were not what the media was making them out to be.

Thousands of farmers are expected to drive tractors to The Hague, Netherlands, on Saturday morning to oppose the government’s plan to shut down 3,000 farms.  The government made the move to comply with global warming goals despite a heavy vehicle ban the day before.

It can be recalled that the Dutch government is planning to “buy and close down up to 3,000 farms near environmentally sensitive areas to be in compliance with EU environmental rules” of the nitrate emission reduction plan.

Thousands of farmers and the climate activist group Extinction Rebellion will hold a rally in The Hague, Netherlands on Saturday, March 11.

The Stormer HVM (High-Velocity Missile) is a short-range air defense system. It can be used as for air defense with semi-automatic laser guidance. It is essentially "invisible" to on-board radar sensors mounted on enemy aircraft and helicopters, since there is no radar station on this air defense system.

On Saturday, the Russian Defense Ministry released footage of a British Stormer HVM air defense system which had been supplied to Kiev being destroyed.

The video includes footage from a UAV of an enemy combat vehicle, footage from a loitering munition guidance camera and the destruction of the Stormer HVM air defense system.

Earlier, speaking at the Rage Against the War Machine Rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC on 19 February, to protest against the vast funds being funneled into Ukraine, American media personality Jimmy Dore slammed "corrupt" America, claiming that US politicians “want to enrich weapons manufacturers, so they keep donating to them".

American stand-up comedian Jimmy Dore has accused the US of hypocrisy and slammed it as "the world’s biggest terror organization".

Joe Biden on Friday took off for another weekend vacation in Delaware.

Biden has spent over 40% of his presidency – 309 days – on vacation without visitor logs.

This is Biden’s 67th trip to Delaware since being sworn into office in January 2021.

There are no visitor logs at Biden’s Delaware compound so the American people have no idea who Biden is meeting with off-the-record.

We have no idea who is visiting Joe Biden every weekend in Delaware.

When asked who is coming and going to Biden’s Delaware home, the White House said it’s none of our business.

Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs just vetoed a piece of legislation that would have banned teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT) in schools in Arizona.

The Daily Caller reports that Senate Bill 1305 would have prohibited the teaching of these controversial materials. Still, Governor Hobbs stepped in to protect the learning of these subjects, and some are wondering why their Governor would do such a thing.

Webmaster addition: As a favor to the people who stole the election for her?

Forty-five NGOs have urged US President Joe Biden to reject the remarks made by American ambassador to Israel Tom Nides who had said Washington would back Israel in “whatever action” they take against Iran.

In a letter, the organizations called on Biden to “clarify that these comments do not reflect US policy towards Iran for the sake of regional stability, future diplomacy, and respect for Congress’ constitutional responsibility for war powers.”

The NGOs expressed concern that the Israeli far-right cabinet would “perceive these remarks as tacit approval for military action, even when such action most likely will damage US national security interests, further embroil our military in regional conflict, and prevent future diplomacy.”

The warning comes as the US diplomat had recently said “Israel can and should do whatever they need to deal with [Iran] and we’ve got their back.”

 Iran and the United States have reached an agreement to exchange prisoners, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian told state TV on Sunday, adding that he hoped the exchange would take place soon.

"Regarding the issue of prisoner swaps between Iran and the U.S. we have reached an agreement in the recent days and if everything goes well on the U.S. side, I think we will witness a prisoner exchange in a short period," Amirabdollahian said.

"On our part everything is ready, while the U.S. is currently working on the final technical coordination."

A group of Iraqi legislators plans to repeat calls for disclosure of the results of an investigation into the assassination of top Iranian anti-terror commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani and his Iraqi trenchmate Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who were killed in a US drone strike near Baghdad airport more than three years ago.

Hassan Salem, a member of the al-Sadiqoun bloc – the political wing of the anti-terror Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq resistance group in the Iraqi legislature, told Iraq's Arabic-language al-Maalomah news agency on Saturday that lawmakers intend to reopen a file into the matter.

He added, “There are domestic and foreign parties involved in the crime, and the offenders hail from the United States, Lebanon, Syria, and even Iraq.”

Tens of thousands hold fresh rallies across several cities throughout the occupied territories for a 10th straight week, blasting so-called "legal reforms" that are planned by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's extremist cabinet.

The biggest demonstration was held in the coastal city of Tel Aviv on Saturday, attracting, what the Israeli regime's media estimated were, around 100,000 people.

Some 50,000 also rallied in the northern city of Haifa and 10,000 in Beersheba in the central part of the occupied territories. Media reports said the populations that gathered for the protests in the cities were the largest ever since early January when the demonstrations began.

The so-called reforms serve as the centerpiece of the policies of the Netanyahu-led cabinet, which he cobbled together late last year by wooing ultra-Orthodox and hard-right parties.

As one might expect, the Judiciary hearing on the "weaponization" of federal agencies, featuring Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger as witnesses was full of fireworks, facts, and ad hominem friction.

Out of the gate, Ranking Member Democratic Del. Stacey E. Plaskett labeled the two "so-called journalists" as dangerous and a "threat" to former Twitter employees.

She claimed that Republicans brought "two of Elon Musk's ‘public scribes'" in "to release cherry-picked out-of-context emails and screenshots designed to promote his chosen narrative - Elon Musk’s chosen narrative - that is now being parroted by the Republicans" for political gain.

“I’m not exaggerating when I say you have called two witnesses who pose a direct threat to people who oppose them,” Plaskett said after the video.

Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, had a simple response to her accusations:

“It’s crazy what you were just saying.”

“You don’t want people to see what happened,” Jordan continued.

“The full video, transparency. You don’t want that, and you don’t want two journalists who have been named personally by the Biden administration, the FTC in a letter. They say they’re here to help and tell their story, and frankly, I think they’re brave individuals for being willing to come after being named in a letter from the Biden FTC.”

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy recently called out California Democrats Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff as liars, pointing to their time on the House Intelligence Committee.

Last week, a healthy and active 17-year-old girl suddenly suffered a cardiac arrest during a cheer competition, leading to multiple seizures.