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Regime Change at the Fed: From Big Bank Bailouts to Local Productivity
On January 30, when former Federal Reserve board member Kevin Warsh was nominated by President Trump as the central bank’s next chair, markets sold off and gold and silver plunged. Investors were positioned for a “dove,” someone inclined to cut rates aggressively and keep money loose; and Warsh has a long-standing reputation as a “hawk.” So wrote Michael […]
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Poverty and Crisis: Sucking Humanity Dry
The World Bank says nearly 80% (560 million) of the 700 million people who were pushed into extreme poverty in 2020 due to COVID policies were from India. Globally, extreme poverty levels increased by 9.3 per cent in 2020. In 2022, it was estimated that a quarter of a billion people across the world would be […]
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Banking Crisis 3.0: Time to Change the Rules of the Game

On CNN March 14, Roger Altman, a former deputy Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, said that American banks were on the verge of being nationalized: What the authorities did over the weekend was absolutely profound. They guaranteed the deposits, all of them, at Silicon Valley Bank. What that really means … is that they have […]
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The Looming Quadrillion Dollar Derivatives Tsunami
On Friday, March 10, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapsed and was taken over by federal regulators. SVB was the 16th largest bank in the country and its bankruptcy was the second largest in U.S. history, following Washington Mutual in 2008. Despite its size, SVB was not a “systemically important financial institution” (SIFI) as defined in […]
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What Will Happen When Banks Go Bust?
Financial podcasts have been featuring ominous headlines lately along the lines of “Your Bank Can Legally Seize Your Money” and “Banks Can STEAL Your Money?! Here’s How!” The reference is to “bail-ins:” the provision under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act allowing Systemically Important Financial Institutions (SIFIs, basically the biggest banks) to bail in or expropriate their […]