Free Republic

In a surprising twist, the European Central Bank is turning to social media to keep tabs on banking sentiments. It’s like giving banks a pair of social media glasses to see how people feel about their money. This shift comes after Silicon Valley Bank and Credit Suisse took a tumble last year, making regulators buckle up and pay closer attention to banks’ financial health. Picture this: regulators are now not just looking at how much money banks have but also checking what people are saying online. Join us on this journey to uncover how social media insights might just become...

Peter Schiff appeared on Real America with Dan Ball to talk about the bank bailout, the unfolding financial crisis, the Fed and inflation. He said this is a sequel to 2008 and like all sequels, it’s going to be worse.Dan started the interview by referencing Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s assertion that the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank was caused by “deregulation.” Peter said this deregulation “exists in the fantasy of her mind,” and pointed out that banking is one of the most heavily regulated industries in the world.It would be much safer if it was regulated by free...

Be a shame if Trump supporters led a nationwide bank run

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...

Over the weekend, amid populist howls of outrage that a bailout of SVB would promote moral hazard (in the end depositors did get bailed out with a full recovery, but other unsecured creditors oddly enough would get nothing, while the common stock is a doughnut), we said that while technically true, the events that toppled SVB and now SBNY as well, are really a subsidy for the big banks.Many view what's happening as a question of moral hazard and a bailout of small banks. It's really a subsidy of big banks: JPM was solidly green in Friday's rout https://t.co/GAlJJ2iSLI —...

Fallout from the Silicon Valley Bank collapse has directed attention to a $620 billion ticking time bomb in the banking system that has the potential to spell doom for the financial system. SVB's meltdown was partly caused by a chasm between its assets and what they were worth in the market. Eventually, SVB sold some of those assets, spooking investors and triggering a run on the bank. But SVB isn't alone, as banks across the United States were sitting on $620 billion in unrealized potential losses at the end of last year, per the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. That hole...

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) was on a Zoom meeting this afternoon with members of Congress, the Fed, the Treasury, and FDIC. The call was organized after Silicon Valley Bank crashed and was taken over by the State of California on Friday. Silicon Valley Bank was the largest US bank to crash since the 2008 banking crisis. During the call on Sunday afternoon Massie reported that one Democrat Senator asked if there was a program in place to censor free speech at this time on social media. The first thought of the Democrat Party is to strip Americans of their right...

A Video circulating on social media showing tanks lined along a lit-up road in the middle of the night in an unspecified Chinese city has sparked rumors that the clip was taken at the scene of protests in the province of Henan. The clip started circulating with the claim that the footage had been shot in Zhengzhou, the city in the province of Henan where protests recently took place against frozen funds in several rural banks. Many who commented on the video, drew a comparison to the scenes from Tiananmen Square in 1989, when the government called in the army...

Concerns are growing over the intensifying risk of a full scale bank run in China, with mass protests held outside bank branches in China’s Henan Province throughout this weekend (July 9 & 10). Asia Markets has verified video and images shared across Chinese social media platforms, including Weibo and WeChat, showing violent clashes between police and depositors who have been unable to withdraw funds. A WeChat user who posted photos from the protest in Zhengzhou told Asia Markets the majority of protestors had come from rural areas and have recently been told that their money, which has been frozen for...

The West on Sunday imposed a ban on SWIFT, excluding Russia from the global payments system as a stringent response to Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. Photos and videos that were circulated online showed the Russian public forming long lines outside of ATMs in panic, to retrieve cash to avoid a financial downfall.

According to the Canadian financial blog Armstrong Economics, the emergency powers activated by Justin Trudeau to cripple the trucker protests have sparked panic among citizens, which could lead to a devastating financial crisis. On Feb. 14, Trudeau enacted the Emergencies Act, which enabled Canadian banks to freeze the assets of anyone who donated to protests against the vaccine mandates — without due process or any court action. Trudeau then ordered the banks to unfreeze the accounts after the protesters had been cleared away. But what is reported to have happened after that is being ignored by the corporate press. Armstrong...

Five major Canadian banks went offline for hours blocking access to online and mobile banking as well as e-transfers for customers. The banks reportedly hit by the outage include Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), BMO (Bank of Montreal), Scotiabank, and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC). Reports of users having trouble getting to their online banking peaked between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, although BleepingComputer is continuing to see an influx of these reports into today: RBC customer Andrew Currie reported having "no access to my money at the grocery store" and being stuck in...

🚨Canada's largest banks are all offline.Royal Bank, BMO Bank of Montreal, CIBC Bank.Did Trudeau try to hack into their databases?Did the U.S. hack them first, to stop it?What could cause all three to crash on the same day -- hours after Trudeau's expropriation order?— Ezra Levant 🍁🚛 (@ezralevant) February 16, 2022

It has been an miserable five years for Turkish citizens who have seen their purchasing power slashed by more than half, and it’s only getting worse. The Turkish lira has cratered against the dollar and most developed currencies, plunging from 3 TRY per dollar, to a record low 7.37 last week after a brief and valiant attempt at imposing shadow capital control by Erdogan (who is now de facto head of the Turkish central bank) failed miserably at the end of July, and not even a draconian hike in overnight funding rates above 1000% last week (to crush the shorts)...

CARACAS— Venezuelans are rushing to the banks this week in a desperate attempt to protect their savings from the government’s latest spasm of reckless financial policymaking. On Tuesday morning thousands of people across Venezuela played hooky from work to line-up outside banks and deposit bundles of cash into their savings accounts after the government gave everyone a 72-hour countdown to turn in all their 100 bolivar notes before they’re removed from circulation. “I’ve been saving for so long, withdrawing money every week and for what? Nothing!” complained José Orozco, who was holding a backpack full of money as he stood...

Full title: Dow sheds 200 points as bank stocks fall sharply; Deutsche Bank tumbles 8% U.S. stocks traded sharply lower on Thursday after banking stocks fell sharply. The three major indexes hit session lows shortly after Bloomberg reported that approximately 10 hedge funds were reducing their exposure to embattled European bank Deutsche Bank. Deutsche shares fell 8 percent in afternoon trade.

Greece banks to stay closed on Monday, Piraeus Bank chief says, after emergency meeting in Athens This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly

One of the biggest question marks surrounding the Greek negotiation and ultimately, bailout extension, was just how panicked was the Greek population and domestic corporations. Recall that as explained previously, the tension boiled down to this: the Troika did everything in its power to accelerate the bank run in order to crush any negotiating leverage Varoufakis may have; Greece on the other hand was desperate to make its cash drain appear far better than rumored. Moments ago the Bank of Greece presented its latest, January, deposit data. And it's a doozy: following a record €12.2 billion monthly outflow, greater...

Russians are watching their country suffer another avoidable economic calamity. The blame for this rests largely with the disastrous policies of President Vladimir Putin, who has consistently put his ego, his territorial ambitions and the financial interests of his cronies ahead of the needs of his country. ........................................................ Long before he annexed the Crimean peninsula and began backing pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, Mr. Putin created an economic system that allowed a coterie of insiders to grow wealthy on Russia’s vast oil and gas reserves. He did little to diversify the economy or to make it more resilient. Now Russian...

Do you remember seeing old pictures of the Great Depression which depicted "lines"? There were two types, bread lines and also lines to the front doors of banks. While we don't see any bread lines today, trust me, there are bread lines in every single state, and long ones at that. Nearly 50 million people in the U.S. survive on SNAP, EBT cards or whatever they are called in your state. Can you imagine the "confidence" it would instill if each day on your way to work you saw massive lines of people waiting for breakfast? Or, when you came...