We knew this was the endgame more than two weeks ago when we reported that “Credit Suisse Crashes To All Time Low After Boosting Deposit Rates To Reverse Bank Run” in which we reported that after a quarter of “staggering” bank runs, the second largest Swiss bank – clearly panicking – was offering a 6.5% annual rate on new three-month deposits of $5 million or above – and a rate as high as 7% for one-year deposits – far above matched maturity Bills, and suggesting that to attract a client, the bank is forced to eat a loss.

The hope, we explained, “was that after it attracts enough new clients, the bank will then be able to quietly lower the rates and make the new accounts profitable, however as the various DeFi blow ups of 2022 showed, it never quite works out that way.”

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Michael Regan said on Friday that he expects the cleanup in East Palestine, Ohio, to take three months.

“We are absolutely laser focused on ensuring that Norfolk Southern cleans up this mess as quickly as possible. We are optimistic that the cleanup will be complete in three months,” Regan said during a conference call on Friday.

“We will continue to be transparent. We will continue to ensure that the people of East Palestine get the protection that they deserve and that Norfolk Southern will be held accountable,” the EPA administrator added.

Webmaster addition: The clean-up will take a lot longer than that! Especially with the latest dioxin numbers!

House Oversight Committee Republicans are seeking to bring in Hunter Biden associate John R. Walker for questioning after poring over years' worth of his bank records and uncovering a $35,000 payment to Hallie Biden, Beau Biden's widow.

Panel chair Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) released a letter Thursday with new details on the $3 million payment that Walker received from a Chinese firm, after issuing a subpoena to Bank of America for his financial records. 

The information provided by Comer stated that Walker received a $3 million wire transfer from Chinese State Energy HK Limited, a firm affiliated with CEFC China Energy, then distributed $1.3 million to accounts associated with Biden family members.

Update (1345ET): At least four major banks including Societe Generale and Deutsche Bank have placed restrictions on their trades involving Credit Suisse or its securities, Reuters reports, citing five unidentified people with direct knowledge of the matter.

Another source at a major global bank, who deals directly with Credit Suisse in Asia, said their bank had started asking the Swiss lender to gross settle, a trading scenario where the counterparty demands upfront payment from Credit Suisse instead of collecting later any money the Swiss lender might owe them as a result of the trade.

Another global bank has reduced its unsecured exposure to Credit Suisse, which includes all lending with no collateral, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The bank is still providing repurchase agreements, which is secured lending.

Webmaster addition: Credit Suisse's stock price continues its plunge.

French President Emmanuel Macron used special constitutional powers to pass a controversial pension bill through the National Assembly (the lower house) without a vote, a move likely to ignite protests on the streets of Paris.

The New York Times reported that Macron's government used Article 49.3 of the Constitution to push through the pension reform bill without a parliamentary vote, highlighting the unpopularity of the proposed increase in retirement age by two years to 64.

AFP said there was chaos in the parliament and even outside after the government invoked 49.3:

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.

Macron's government has emphasized the need for pension reforms to ensure the sustainability of the pension system for the next ten years, as it is projected to have an annual deficit of 10 billion euros ($10.73 billion) from 2022 to 2032.

The Twitter Files document how classic communist repression of freedom of speech now is the commonplace strategy in the United States.

Journalist and bestselling author, Matt Taibbi’ presentation at the “Hearing on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on the Twitter Files” for the House Judiciary Committee, is but another example of the horrifying level of centralized censorship that engulfs America.

Lankford then noted that it has been reported that many Chinese funds and startups, including those with ties to the CCP, had invested with SVB.

"Will my banks in Oklahoma pay a special assessment to be able to make Chinese investors whole from Silicon Valley Bank?" Lankford asked, to which Yellen replied, "I suppose that could include foreign depositors."

"I don’t believe there’s any legal basis to discriminate among uninsured," she continued.

• The Federal government is actively trying to take away what little power states have left in their own elections. According to Just The News, the Department of Homeland Security wants to have more power in how local elections are handled by quietly using an unknown non-profit called the Center for Internet Security Agency (CIS).
• The trend started when the CIS suddenly popped up in county elections all across the country offering vague "cybersecurity services" to allegedly protect against cyberattacks. Nobody's stopping this group from taking over. In fact, this group is being welcomed with open arms.
• What most people probably don't know is that the CIS has been embroiled in countless censorship scandals targeting information that they deem goes against the swamp's official narrative. They have a history of censoring information from the public.
• Not only is the CIS a censorship tool for the state, but DHS has previously confirmed that they are in a "cooperative agreement" with the CIS directly. In other words, the CIS is controlled by the DHS, which is controlled directly by the Biden administration.

Matt Taibbi has unearthed still more evidence of collusion and censorship at Twitter, all done by people and institutions who believed that they were righteous in their efforts to ban and block Americans from telling the truth about their own personal experiences with the Covid vaccine. This time, it's Stanford University and their Virality Project that told officials what information should be banned.

Taibbi reports that Stanford's Virality Project took issue with accounts that used factual information to question the "expert guidance" of Dr. Anthony Fauci, former head of the NIAID. He notes that accounts that questioned the "Wuhan wet market" origin story of Covid, instead suggesting that the virus could have leaked from a Wuhan Virology Lab, were suspect per Stanford. That "lab leak" theory is now the primary Covid-origin theory per officials.

Prior to its implosion, Signature Bank of New York was busy indoctrinating its employees into the world of LGBT pronouns like “ze” and “hir,” it has been revealed.

Chairman Scott Shay co-hosted a company event just last fall called “Know Your Pronouns” in which lower-level employees were browbeaten into adopting the use of made-up gender pronouns that affirm the delusions of the mentally ill – instead of learning how to properly run a bank so it avoids a collapse.

Video footage of the seminar, which up until today was publicly available on the Signature Bank YouTube page before it was taken private, depicted employees dressed up in tar-and-feather costumes dancing around to “woke” tunes and lyrics, presumably inspired by Shay and his ilk.

Along with Finn Brigham, a Manhattan-based corporate consulate on gender issues, Shay forced Signature Bank employees to participate in a so-called “Social Impact” series that proudly featured as its header the claim that Signature Bank was “the first bank in the United States to have an openly gay man on our board.”

Newly released data shows soil in the Ohio town of East Palestine – scene of a recent catastrophic train crash and chemical spill – contains dioxin levels hundreds of times greater than the exposure threshold above which Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientists in 2010 found poses cancer risks.

The EPA at the time proposed lowering the cleanup threshold to reflect the science around the highly toxic chemical, but the Obama administration killed the rules, and the higher federal action threshold remains in place.

Though the dioxin levels in East Palestine are below the federal action threshold and an EPA administrator last week told Congress the levels were “very low”, chemical experts, including former EPA officials, who reviewed the data for the Guardian called them “concerning”.

Rioters threatened the home of French president Emmanuel Macron after he bypassed parliament to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.

Thousands took to the streets across France last night to express their fury at the move, setting fires to property and fighting the police.

The demonstrations in Paris, Lyon, Marseille and Nantes were triggered by Macron's government using a controversial constitutional mechanism to crash a bill through the National Assembly.

There is a strong signal that irregularities happened intentionally to change the results of the latest AZ election between Republican Kari Lake and Democrat Katie Hobbs. On Friday morning, one top pollster reported to Steve Bannon on the War Room that he feels very confident, based on new polling, that Lake won her race by a massive lead of 8 points.

“We asked questions about who did you vote for in the most recent midterm elections, and we asked about Governor, Secretary of State Attorney General government,” Mark Mitchell of Rasmussen, told Bannon about the way the polling happened, adding:

“We used our standard method, and we used very uncontroversial weightings. They’re slightly more favorable to Democrats by two points than the Edison numbers that came out, which is what everybody uses, you know, the gold standard in the industry for exit polling. And so we found that just four months ago, the people of AZ elected Kari Lake as governor of Arizona by eight points.” 

 “That is a landslide,” Bannon replied, inviting Kari Lake into the conversation. “We thank whoever sponsored this poll.”

‘My thoughts are that the red wave did happen, and this poll verifies that point. And it shows that people understand that elections are corrupt and people care about these issues. For example, 50% believe that 2020 elections were rigged, and 55% believe that 2022 was rigged,” Lake told Bannon when she joined in on the segment.

• “There is evidence that suggests patients who receive a COVID-19 vaccine are at an increased risk of myocarditis.”
• “Onset was typically within several days after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination (from Pfizer or Moderna), and cases have occurred more often after the second dose than the first dose.” [PAGE 19]
• “The reasons for male predominance in myocarditis and pericarditis incidence post COVID-19 vaccination remain unknown.” [PAGE 28]
• “The pattern of cases conform, as per the label, to a pattern of myocarditis cases occurring in majority of young males below 29 years of age within the first two weeks postvaccination...” [PAGE 19]
• “Since April 2021, increased cases of myocarditis and pericarditis have been reported in the United States after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination (Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna), particularly in adolescents and young adults (CDC 2021).” [PAGE 18]
• “Myocarditis events were defined as encounters with a billing or encounter diagnosis consistent with an ICD10-CM or SNOMED CT code for myocarditis which fell within two weeks of receiving dose 1, 2, or 3 of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.”
• “Incidence rates of myocarditis were measured for each vaccine dose with denominator signifying the total number of patients receiving that dose and numerator signifying the total number of patients meeting the above criteria for an encounter for myocarditis following that dose.”

The massive success of communist China’s research and development (R&D) programs over the years would not have been possible without constant funding from Tony Fauci when he headed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), new evidence shows.

Fauci sent lots of American taxpayer dollars overseas to the Chinese to pick apart viruses and perform other dangerous experiments that many believe ultimately led to the creation and unleashing of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) – which makes Fauci directly complicit in causing the “pandemic.”

One such recipient of cash from Fauci is Lishan Su, a graduate from Shandong University in China who now works as a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. Su has been in the United States for more than 30 years, according to his publication record, having maintained active research collaborations with scientists in China, including several with direct links to the Communist Chinese Party’s (CCP) People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

Over the course of all these years, Su received more than $5 million in research grant money from Fauci, which he used, in part, to produce the 2021 U.S. patent US11136399B2. This patent belongs not to the University of Maryland where Su works, but rather to the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

“Lishan Su is an inventor for that patent and his address is shown as the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, not the University of Maryland,” wrote Dr. Lawrence Sellin, PhD, in a bombshell piece about Fauci’s treasonous funding of secretive R&D programs in communist China.

Earlier today we said that with Wall Street freaking out over the latest bank crisis, everyone's attention would be focused on today's weekly H.4.1 update from the Fed. And they weren't disappointed because what we found was striking.

In the week ended March 15, borrowings under the Fed's deeply stigmatizing last-ditch liquidity facility, the Discount Window, exploded to $152.85BN, a record $148BN weekly jump to an all-time high which surpassed even the borrowings during the financial crisis!