SILLICON VALLEY BANK: A WALL STREET IPO PIPELINE

 By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 13, 2023 ~

If you want to genuinely understand why Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) failed and why Jerome Powell’s Fed led the effort yesterday to make sure $150 billion of the bank’s uninsured depositors’ money would be treated as FDIC insured and available today, you need to take a look at how the bank defined itself right up until it blew up on Friday. (That history is still available at the Internet Archives’ Wayback Machine at this link. Give the page time to load.)

This was a financial institution deployed to facilitate the goals of powerful venture capital and private equity operators, by financing tech and pharmaceutical startups until they could raise millions or billions of dollars in a Wall Street Initial Public Offering (IPO). The bank was also involved in managing the wealth of those startup millionaires or billionaires once they struck it big in an IPO.

Many of the former startup companies also continued to keep their operating money at the bank – in many cases in the millions of dollars, ignoring the fact that just $250,000 of that was insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Last Friday, dozens of publicly-traded companies made filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission indicating that they had large sums of uninsured deposits now frozen at Silicon Valley Bank. Several indicated that the amounts represented 23 to 26 percent of the company’s cash and/or cash equivalents.

Roku, Inc., the publicly-traded manufacturer of digital media players for video streaming, reported the following to the SEC: “The Company has total cash and cash equivalents of approximately $1.9 billion as of March 10, 2023. Approximately $487 million is held at SVB, which represents approximately 26% of the Company’s cash and cash equivalents balance as of March 10, 2023.”

Publicly-traded Oncorus, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing RNA-based medicine for cancer patients, reported the following to the SEC: “The Company informs its investors that it has deposit accounts with SVB with an aggregate balance of approximately $10 million, which is approximately 23% of the Company’s total current cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments. In addition, the Company has a standby letter of credit in place with SVB of approximately $3.4 million securing obligations under its lease agreement with IQHQ-4 Corporate Drive, LLC.”

In big, bold type on its website, Silicon Valley Bank bragged that “44% of U.S. venture-backed technology and healthcare IPOs YTD [year-to-date] bank with SVB.”

To put it bluntly, this was a Wall Street IPO machine that enriched the investment banks on Wall Street by keeping the IPO pipeline moving; padded the bank accounts of the venture capital and private equity middlemen; and minted startup millionaires for ideas that often flamed out after the companies went public. These are the functions and risks taken by investment banks. Silicon Valley Bank – with this business model — should never have been allowed to hold a federally-insured banking charter and be backstopped by the U.S. taxpayer, who was on the hook for its incompetent bank management.

We say incompetent based on this fact alone (although there were clearly lots of other problem areas): $150 billion of its $175 billion in deposits were uninsured. The bank was clearly playing a dangerous gambit with its depositors’ money.

Adding further insult to U.S. taxpayers, the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco was quietly bailing out SVB throughout much of last year. Federal Home Loan Banks are also not supposed to be in the business of bailing out venture capitalists or private equity titans. Their job is to provide loans to banks to promote mortgages to individuals and loans to promote affordable housing and community development.

According to SEC filings by the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, its loan advances to SVB went from zero at the end of 2021 to a whopping $15 billion on December 31, 2022. The SEC filing provides a graph showing that SVB was its largest borrower at year end, with outstanding advances representing 17 percent of all loans made by the FHLB of San Francisco.

Notably, another bank which had $14 billion of loans outstanding from the FHLB of San Francisco – First Republic Bank – saw its stock price plummet by 14.8 percent on Friday. In premarket trading this morning, its stock was down another 70 percent, despite the announcement of a new bailout facility last evening by the Fed.

Western Alliance Bancorp, also on the FHLB of San Francisco’s list of its top 10 borrowers, saw its stock close with a loss of 20.88 percent on Friday. It had lost another 29 percent in premarket trading this morning.

Another member of the top 10 borrowers at FHLB of San Francisco, Silvergate Bank, announced last Wednesday that it was closing shop and liquidating. Silvergate’s problem stemmed from the hot money it held in deposits from crypto companies heading for the exits as investigations began into its role in potentially laundering money for Sam Bankman-Fried’s collapsed house of frauds.

Another crypto-related bank, Signature Bank, was shuttered by New York State regulators on Sunday, with the FDIC being named the receiver. All of its depositors, including its uninsured depositors, will also be made whole, according to a statement from the FDIC yesterday. Signature Bank’s filings with federal regulators indicate that more than $79 billion of its $88 billion in deposits were uninsured at the end of the fourth quarter of 2022.

Signature Bank was also quietly tapping into ongoing bailouts from a Federal Home Loan Bank. In this case FHLB of New York. Its borrowings from FHLB of New York exploded in the fourth quarter of last year, rising to $11.3 billion. According to an SEC filing, as of September 30, 2022, it had total borrowing capacity of $23.4 billion from FHLB New York.

We’re starting to see a pattern here. If you want to know which banks are going belly up next, simply look at which ones took the largest loan advances from a Federal Home Loan Bank last year. That appears to mean that they were seeing an exodus of depositor money and needed to plug their liquidity holes.

The new emergency lending program set up by the Federal Reserve was announced last evening, as follows:

“The additional funding will be made available through the creation of a new Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP), offering loans of up to one year in length to banks, savings associations, credit unions, and other eligible depository institutions pledging U.S. Treasuries, agency debt and mortgage-backed securities, and other qualifying assets as collateral. These assets will be valued at par. The BTFP will be an additional source of liquidity against high-quality securities, eliminating an institution’s need to quickly sell those securities in times of stress.”

The translation of the above is as follows: to prevent banks from further panicking the markets by taking massive losses on their underwater Treasury securities by selling them in order to meet depositor withdrawals, we’re going to accept these Treasury securities as collateral for one-year loans and pretend that their market value is par (the full face amount at maturity).

It’s not clear if this new emergency bailout program from the Fed complies with the statutory language of Dodd-Frank, which prohibits the Fed from setting up an emergency bailout program to bail out a specific financial institution; requires that it accept good collateral; and requires that any new Fed emergency facilities be broad-based across the financial industry.

Federally-insured banks that did themselves in with crypto deposits or functioned as an IPO pipeline to Wall Street, do not appear to us to represent a broad base of the federally-insured, commercial banking industry in the U.S. The Fed’s bailout program, once again, appears to be rewarding hubris and enshrining moral hazard in the U.S. banking system.

Equally troubling, both Silvergate Bank and Silicon Valley Bank were supervised by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Why the San Francisco Fed’s bank examiners didn’t blow the whistle on the dangerous manner in which these banks were operating deserves its own investigation. For years now, Wall Street On Parade has warned that the crony Fed should be stripped of its supervision of banks.

 

 To a President.

ALL you are doing and saying is to America dangled
mirages,

You have not learned of Nature—of the politics of
Nature, you have not learned the great ampli-
tude, rectitude, impartiality,

You have not seen that only such as they are for
These States,

And that what is less than they, must sooner or later
lift off from These States.

"A WARNING TO MY READERS" (MARCH 13, 2023)

A #WARNING TO MY #READERS
I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.#WBERRY pic.twitter.com/Se9runvD4c

— Guillermo Ruiz Zapatero (@ruiz_zapatero) March 12, 2023

Do not think me gentle 

because I speak in praise 

of gentleness, or elegant 

because I honor the grace 

that keeps this world. I am 

a man crude as any, 

gross of speech, intolerant, 

stubborn, angry, full 

of fits and furies. That I 

may have spoken well

 at times, is not natural. 

A wonder is what it is.

WB

YOU ARE EU, DON'T ARE YOU?

NOT ON BBC NEWS.#Paris police charge and attack protestors with batons 🤬 pic.twitter.com/yvU5LAOpvz

— Anti Lockdown Alliance(GLOBAL) (@Demo2020cracy) March 11, 2023

MATT HANCOCK, UK HEALTH SECRETARY, AND MODERNA CEO AT WEF (DAVOS 2019)

"REIMPRIMIR LA REALIDAD" ("MATT HANCOCK", UK HEALTH SECRETARY?)

 

 

 

Hancock had set up a WhatsApp group called 'Crisis Management' with his media adviser Damon Poole and his lover Coladangelo. 

Here's a damaging transcript from December 13 2020; make what you will of it: 

Hancock: "We frighten the pants off everyone with the new strain" 

 Poole: "Yep that's what will get – proper behaviour change" 

Hancock: "When do we deploy the variant?" 

Poole: "Been thinking more about this and think we need to be more cautious - the strain that is. Think you made the point earlier but we need to keep schools off the paperwork/agenda" 

Hancock: "Yes" 

 Poole: "Worth doing a bit about no leaking at the top I think. Big risk with the variant, right wing papers go for a renewed push for let it rip on the basis the vaccines strategy is undermined" 

Hancock: "That's why we reassure on the vaccine"

 Finally Hancock (joked?) by telling aides that Gates "owes me one considering how many people I'm getting his chips injected into". 

 And here is confirmation of Hancock's involvement with the WEF and the CEO of Moderna, in 2019

 

LA GUERRA DEL DOLAR ESTÁ TERMINADA (TOM LUONGO (II): ¿LA MOSCA O EL PARABRISAS?)

 

More than a decade ago I looked at the responses to President Obama cutting Iran out of the SWIFT system as the beginning of the end of the petrodollar system. The goal was to take Iran out of the global oil markets by shutting Iran out from the dominant dollar payment system.

Out of necessity Iran opened up trade with its major export partners, most notably India, in something other than dollars. India and Iran started up a ‘goods for oil’ trade, or as Bloomberg called it at the time, “Junk for Oil.”

The stick of sanctions created a new market for pricing Iranian oil and a way around the monopoly of US dollar oil trading. India, struggling with massive current account deficits because of their high energy import bill, welcomed the trade as a way to lessen the pressure on the rupee.

Iran needed goods. They worked out some barter trade and the first shallow cuts into the petrodollar system were made.

Turkey eventually joined the fray, seeing the opportunity to act as a middle man by accepting gold into its banks from Iran’s customers and settling up with Iran in dollars or whatever.

Turkey was the first country to make gold a 100% reserve asset in defiance of Basel I capital rules to facilitate this trade. Turkey’s gold ‘reserves’ skyrocketed because of this.

More than 10 years later we’re now looking at the lynchpin of the petrodollar, Saudi Arabia, seriously considering taking other currencies for their oil. The petrodollar was never going to die overnight, it was always going to die as the cost of doing business in dollars rose to make using other currencies a better path to buying/selling oil.

Every time the US went to the sanctions well to coerce conformity, the more “star systems slipped through its fingers,” to quote Princess Leia. While we joke today about never ‘going full retard,’ this is just another way of saying that you should never threaten to nuke someone either.

Trump went sanctions nuclear on Iran in 2018. He failed.

“Biden” and Davos went nuclear on Russia in 2022, going further than even Trump. And they failed even harder. All they did was raise the cost of using dollars in the minds of the dollar’s best customers.

When the cost/benefit framework flips, behavior changes accordingly.

In the world of money, since we don’t have anything close to resembling real capital markets, rather politicized ones, policy is the thing that alters that cost/benefit structure the most. This means while analyzing the market reaction to day-to-day data the listening to the tea-leaf reading by commentators becomes an exercise in chasing your tail through a wilderness of rhetorical mirrors if you don’t include policy changes.

So, with that in mind we have to analyze structural changes to markets from a policy perspective to see what the future really looks like. It’s not that the markets don’t have a say in the matter, it’s that if you analyze the policy through the lens of capital flowing to where it is treated best, then the future outcome is pretty predictable if there isn’t a competing policy put in place to redirect that capital flow later.

In this sense, financial analysis in politicized markets is better described  by court politics than spreadsheet output cells.

The Davos solution to their problems of overpromising the deliverables of socialism financed through the dollar is to default on those promises through global monetary inflation using war with Russia and China as the cover and Climate Change as the reason why it’s necessary.

This is to save themselves and secure totalitarian control for their posterity into the next cycle of history.

But history will prove them wrong. Because, in the end, you can’t fight a flowing river any more than you can alter the mass of human behavior with respect to their preferences. If they want to drive a car, eat a steak, live in a house, own a gun or have a child, they will.

You can delay it or make it more expensive but that expense is a double-edged sword, because as Margaret Thatcher famously said, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” (OPM)

Think of the Eurodollar system as the ultimate expression of OPM, which is a homophone for ‘hopium.’

But back to Diminishing Marginal Utility. The law simply states that the acquisition of the next unit of a thing, any thing (water, money, food, credit dollars, etc.), is worth less to a person than the previous unit. We act to alleviate our perceived need to hedge against future uncertainty. So, in hurricane season, we Floridians stock up on bottled water, propane, toilet paper, preserved food, etc.

Price is supposed to tell us when to stop stocking up and really assess what’s important to us. I’ll leave my rant about ‘anti-gouging’ laws on the cutting room floor.

It is this verity about human action in the face of both scarcity and abundance that creates the Newtonian ‘opposite reaction’ to rising/falling costs.

So, while you can bully people into acting against their preferred outcomes for a while by raising the costs of disobedience to be greater than the marginal return of defiance, eventually a reversal of that cost/benefit framework takes place.

For the Fed and the domestic banking interests, the best way to get to their preferred end, a domestically-driven cost structure to the US dollar, it meant offering the market gradually a better alternative to the old system or Eurodollars.

SOFR is a collateralized rate, delivered to the market by the market for dollars. It’s a fundamentally superior interest rate product than LIBOR, which is a number picked out of thin air by 18 banks of dubious character and even more dubious motivations.

Eurodollar futures are set based on LIBOR and because of LIBOR being written previously into every old debt and debt derivative instrument out there, LIBOR was the tail wagging the monetary policy dog.

The five-year roll out of SOFR was done to introduce the better system and phase it in allowing the market to come to the ‘right’ conclusion that it is superior. If SOFR wasn’t a superior product to LIBOR no matter how much the Fed tried to force it onto the market, the market would have rejected it.

Eurodollar futures would have remained a vibrant and liquid market up to the last day and call the Fed’s bluff.

But SOFR was a superior product, gradually weaning the markets off LIBOR. Now there is still a whole lotta LIBOR-indexed debt out there and a lot of people are holding out hope this is all just a bad dream, but it’s not.

Caught between the Scylla (a 25 bps spread over LIBOR) and Charybdis of prime, 3.50% over that, the outcome is inevitable. Anyone holding out is likely hoping for a last-minute policy change to help them out. If I had to guess those holdouts are at Blackrock trying to blackmail the Fed like they blackmailed the Bank of England last summer over UK pension obligations.

I don’t know that the situation is analogous but it certainly smells that way.

 Powell reiterated his ‘higher rates for longer’ mantra. But, unlike in the past, the markets are now actually listening to him. There are still holdouts, trying to undermine the Fed, but I’ll leave the ECB and BoJ out of the discussion for now. The bond markets are grudgingly accepting this but the yield curve on US Treasury debt is still stubbornly inverted.

1/2

Interesting passage from Powell's testimony today: pic.twitter.com/SuKSba2oJW

— Jim Bianco biancoresearch.eth (@biancoresearch) March 8, 2023

Moreover, what’s unspoken by Powell and others in the position to support him is what’s lurking on the other side of the International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC), a growing international framework for trade wholly outside the control or threats of the western political establishment and their slap-happy sanction monkeys we call heads of state.

Powell can see the de-dollarization writing on the wall and he knows now is the time to slow down that trend and find a way to make the dollar more trustworthy. But, again, he can only deal with one side of that equation — the monetary policy side. The Fiscal and regulatory side are still firmly controlled by, frankly, shitbag commies; old, terrified colonial interests in Europe and the northeast US who see their time passing and refuse to accept it with grace.

People who would rather burn the world to the ground than let it fall into the hands of those they consider ‘the help.’ 

 But ‘the help’ are no longer helpless in the face of a big bully US dollar. They have a plan and they are executing it. That plan clearly involves the return of gold as the asset to balance the trade books to rebuild global trust and if the US and Europe don’t stop acting like entitled, spoiled children on the world stage, they will drop the gradualism and one day we will wake up in a different reality.

This was Powell’s real message to Congress this week. It is the clear geopolitical imperative staring us all in the face. But if we don’t start down it now voluntarily, the superior monetary system will eventually outcompete and capital will flow to where it is treated best.

This is the future policy choice we have to make our peace with. Because if we don’t I’m reminded of an old, bad joke I first heard as a teenager. “What’s the last thing that goes through a fly’s head before it hits the windshield of your car?”

“It’s ass.”

TOM LUONGO

"¿Qué es lo último que atraviesa por la cabeza de una mosca antes de estrellarse en el parabrisas?"

"Su culo"

 We can move from boom to bust
From dreams to a bowl of dust.
We can fall from rockets red glare
Down to — “Brother can you spare…”
Another war — another wasteland —
and another lost generation…”
— RUSH, “Between the Wheels”

 

Stevi y The New York Times/Comisión Asunto T-36/23

 

The New York Times is taking the European Commission to court over the executive institution’s failure to release text messages between its president Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.

The newspaper will face off against EU lawyers in the bloc’s highest court, arguing that the Commission faces a legal obligation to release the messages, which could contain information on the bloc’s deals to purchase billions of euros worth of COVID-19 doses.

The case was lodged on January 25 and published on the European Court of Justice's public register on Monday, but no detailed information is yet available online. Two people familiar with the matter confirmed the details of the case to POLITICO.

The New York Times declined to comment on the case. A statement from the publication stated: "The Times files many freedom of information requests and maintains an active docket. We can't comment at this time on the subject of this lawsuit."

The European Commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit follows a January 2022 inquiry from European Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly, which identified maladministration in the Commission’s attempts to originally recover the text messages, following a public access request by netzpolitik.org journalist Alexander Fanta. The Ombudsman’s investigation found that the Commission did not explicitly ask the President’s personal office to look for text messages.

In response, the EU’s Values and Transparency Commissioner Věra Jourová claimed that the text messages may have been deleted, due to their “short-lived, ephemeral nature.”

Germany’s Bild daily previously filed a series of lawsuits against the Commission seeking the disclosure of documents related to negotiations to buy the COVID-19 vaccines made by Pfizer/BioNTech and AstraZeneca.

While several of its petitions were thrown out by the courts, Bild — which like POLITICO is owned by publisher Axel Springer — did obtain some documents relating to the talks, including email correspondence starting in June 2020. No information on von der Leyen’s prior contacts with Pfizer CEO Bourla came to light as a result of Bild's litigation, however.

UNA PRUEBA DE LA PUJANZA DE #EUROPA: UNO DE SUS MÁS IMPORTANTES ASUNTOS HA SIDO PROMOVIDO POR "THE NEW YORK TIMES"

LA GUERRA DEL DOLAR ESTÁ TERMINADA (PARTE 1, TOM LUONGO: NO EURODOLARES PARA TI)

 

 

One of the biggest complaints about the Fed’s policies since the 2008 financial crisis has been that it has acted as the Central Bank of the World, rather than the Central Bank of the US. What I find hilarious, honestly, if not a little pathetic, is that the moment the Fed starts acting like a domestic central bank, the wailing and gnashing of teeth comes from all corners.

I expect that from globalists and vultures who love taking the Fed’s zero-cost dollars and levering them up to feather their own nests to build their own private empires in the shadow banking system. I didn’t expect that from the alternative economics space, however.

It’s like the Fed had just become everyone’s punching bag and that was that.

Ok, rant off. Back to the avalanche at hand.

Think back to 2021, or even the beginning of 2022, and remember that no one could even conceive of where we’d be today — the Fed Funds Rate at 4.75%, likely going to 5% in less than two weeks, and the term structure of dollar futures markets reluctantly admitting to a terminal rate between 5.50% and 5.75%.

I argued strenuously that in order for FOMC Chair Jerome Powell to make this new sovereign US monetary policy stick, he would have to ‘pull a Volcker’ and raise rates aggressively. This would expose the lies of the “Biden” administration about deflation and the need for trillions more in COVID-19 relief funds — the Build Back Better bill.

It would uncover who on Capitol Hill was aligned with the Fed and the New York Banks it represents, or, at least, who had their backing — Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Joe Manchin (D_WV) — and who was actively working against them. — Joe Biden, Federal Reserve Vice-Chair Lael Brainard, the Democratic Party and most of the Republican Party and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

Even as I was making these arguments I never thought Powell would actually do it.

Then he did it.

And here we are today (well, March 3rd’s closing). 

 

When I say markets reluctantly acceded to the Fed’s program I mean that just one month ago these curves were all signaling a Fed “Pivot” at 5% and that it would happen in June. Now the Fed Funds Futures is essentially flat at 5.45% until December.

But these curves are highlighting for me exactly what I’ve been preaching for the past two years. The Fed, through aggressive rate hikes and fundamental changes to its transmission of monetary policy, has placed the biggest burden on on US dollar markets overseas, not domestically.

Moreover, every major shift in policy, the statements coming from Powell, and the upcoming changes to US dollar markets themselves have supported this idea.

All of this was taking place against a gradual change in the foundation of US dollar markets phased in over a five-year period; the shift from LIBOR as the debt-indexing rate in US dollars globally to SOFR.

As of today there are three major futures markets to coordinate the supply of US dollars through time, the Eurodollar, the Fed Funds, and now SOFR.

But all of these ultimately were subservient to LIBOR because that’s where the overnight money markets took their cues directly from. The futures markets reacted to the LIBOR call out.

Remember in January 2022, the penultimate phase of SOFR’s replacement for LIBOR took place. That was when all new US debt had to reference SOFR as the baseline rate, rather than LIBOR. LIBOR was ending in June 30th, 2023.

Keep that date in mind. Because it looms large over everything currently happening.

 

Go back to what I’ve been saying for over a year, the Fed is not raising rates to combat inflation. The Fed is raising rates to drain offshore dollar markets and force the offshore dollar trade to take its cues from the domestic cost of dollars as priced by SOFR, not LIBOR.

If you still haven’t been convinced of this argument, fair cop, but then why is the Eurodollar futures curve, at the first sign of bond markets finally believing the Fed is serious about not “pivoting,” trading significantly above both the Fed Funds and the SOFR futures markets? (see graph of yield curves above).

The spread being positive (26 basis points positive!) means the demand for US dollars overseas is far greater than the demand for them domestically. That spread is the pain threshold not for the Fed but for, primarily, the ECB and the Bank of England.

 

Bye Bye Eurodollars, Hello SOFR

Two years ago the idea that SOFR would successfully replace Eurodollars as the global market yield curve for US dollars was laughable. When SOFR was introduced in 2017 it was phased in with a five-year rollout plan, culminating in January 2022’s mandate. SOFR was the indexing rate of the US and that was that.

In December of 2021 SOFR futures traded around 290,000 contracts per day. By this report by IFR going from numbers from the CME, volume surged to 964,000 contracts. 

 That was last year, less than a month before Powell began squeezing the Eurodollar markets to death.

 Still not convinced? Why would you be, a year ago SOFR was doing 37% of the mighty Eurodollar’s business. Then let’s flash forward to February of this year with a press release from the CME itself.

 

 CME Group, the world’s leading derivatives marketplace, today announced new milestones in the growth of its SOFR derivatives contracts, with a single-day record of 7,558,467 SOFR futures and options traded and record open interest (OI) of 35,698,298 contracts on January 12…

…In the first two weeks of January 2023, the average daily volume (ADV) of SOFR futures and options traded reached 4,674,007 contracts. Month-to-date January 2023 SOFR futures ADV is equivalent to 572% of Eurodollar futures ADV and SOFR options ADV is equivalent to 1,334% of Eurodollar options ADV.

 

Ooops.

If this was a prize fight they would have called it on a technical knockout two rounds ago.

Oh, but wait, they already did. You see, this is why I sandbagged you for this entire article. One, because I’m an asshole and two, because so are the guys running the CME.

The CME announced back in October that it was suspending trading in its former champion Eurodollar Futures and Options on Futures contracts dated after (wait for it) June 30th, 2023. The last day of trading will be April 14th. For a little more fun you can check out the CME’s daily SOFR Futures report.

I think that avalanche is now so loud it could be heard from space. Poor pebbles.

 

SOFR knocked out the Eurodollar because that was the Fed’s and New York’s ultimate goal; to replace the global rate for dollars with a domestic one where the capital would have to trade here. The globe takes its cues, not from what Europe or Hong Kong wants, but what America needs.

This stabilizes our banking system, taking back power the Fed had ceded under Greenspan, Bernanke and Yellen and reminding everyone else just who runs Bartertown.

Most importantly, it pulls liquidity from around the world back into US markets, providing a foundation for a future where Davos doesn’t control DC. There are further implications of this but I’ll leave that for Part II.

The question I leave you with is the following, “Is there another, bigger avalanche further up the mountain?’

 https://tomluongo.me/2023/03/05/war-for-dollar-already-over-no-eurodollar/

EL "ASALTO" AL CAPITOLIO Y LA "CARTA A UN PRESIDENTE" (JOSEPH BRODSKY)

🚨BREAKING: Never before seen video of January 6 shows Jacob Chansley, the QAnon Shaman, being led through the Capitol by police the entire time that he was in the building. pic.twitter.com/rikoRMWezF

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 7, 2023

"Durante largas décadas-afirma usted en su discurso-, la principal pesadilla del mundo democrático era el comunismo. Hoy, tres años después de que empezara a desmoronarse en bloque, parece haber sido sustituido por otra pesadilla: el poscomunismo". A continuación describe con notable detalle las respuestas del mundo democrático a las catástrofes ecológicas, económicas, políticas y sociales que van quedando al descubierto allí donde sólo parecía haber una balsa de aceite.

(...)

Aquí es donde creo que su metáfora le falla, señor Presidente. La pesadilla comunista o poscomunista , no entraña incomodidad alguna: al mundo democrático le ha servido, le sirve y le servirá durante algún tiempo para personificar el mal. Y no sólo al mundo democrático. Para algunos de los que vivimos esa pesadilla, y sobre todo para quienes lo combatieron, supuso una fuente de considerable consuelo moral: pues quien se resiste o lucha contra el mal automáticamente se siente bueno, y ya no se preocupa de analizarse más.Así pues, quizás ya sea hora de que tanto nosotros como el resto del mundo, democrático o no, borremos el término comunismo" de la realidad humana de la Europa del Este, para que de este modo esa realidad pueda verse como lo que realmente es: un espejo.

Todo mal humano lo es. Los topónimos o los términos políticos constituyen no ya un telescopio o una ventana, sino un reflejo de nosotros mismos: del potencial negativo del hombre. La magnitud de lo acontecido en nuestra zona durante más de dos tercios de siglo no puede reducirse a "comunismo". Los tópicos , por lo general, ocultan más que revelan, y en el caso de las decenas de millones de personas asesinadas y del trastorno sufrido por naciones enteras, tales tópicos resultan intolerables.Aunque en proporción el número de víctimas superó el de verdugos, la magnitud de lo sucedido en nuestra zona, teniendo en cuenta además su atraso tecnológico en aquélla época, parece indicar que los verdugos se contaban también por millones, sin olvidar la complicidad de otros millones de personas.

Las homilías no son mi fuerte, señor Presidente; además usted es un converso. No me corresponde a mí decirle que lo que usted denomina "comunismo" fue un trastorno de la humanidad y no un problema político. Fue un problema humano, un problema de nuestra raza, y por lo tanto persistente. Ni como escritor ni, sobre todo, como líder de una nación debería utilizar una terminología que oscurezca la realidad del mal humano,, una terminología, permítame añadir, inventada por el mal para oscurecer su propia realidad. Ni habría que referirse a ese mal como "pesadilla", pues no fue un asunto nocturno, ni siquiera en nuestro hemisferio.

Hasta el día de hoy, la palabra "comunismo" sigue resultando cómoda, pues todo "ismo" sugiere un hecho consumado.

(...)

Habría que empezar simplemente por admitir que en este siglo se ha producido una extraordinaria regresión antropológica en nuestro mundo (no importa qué o quién la haya provocado), que involucró a masas que actuaban por propio interés y que, por consiguiente, se rebajaron a nivel éticos ínfimos.El propio interés de las masas-estabilidad y nivel de vida, igualmente reducidos- se consiguió a costa de otras masas inferiores en número. De ahí la magnitud de muertos.

Resulta cómodo considerar estos asuntos un error, una horrenda aberración política, impuesta quizás a los seres humanos desde un anónimo "otro mundo".

(...)

Pues resultaría harto incómodo (sobre todo para los vaqueros de las democracias industriales de Occidente) reconocer en la catástrofe ocurrida en nuestro territorio comanche el primer aviso de la sociedad de masas- un aviso, por así decirlo, llegado desde el futuro- y verlo no como un "ismo" sino como un abismo abierto d repente en el corazón humano para engullir toda toda honestidad, compasión, cortesía y justicia, y, una vez saciado, presentar a la parte aun democrática del exterior una apariencia razonablemente impecable y monótona.

Los vaqueros, no obstante, aborrecen los espejos, aunque sólo sea porque en éstos reconocen, con facilidad inadmisible, el reflejo de los atrasados indios.Así pues, prefieren montar sus grandes caballos, explorar los horizontes ya libres de indios, mofarse del atraso de éstos, y obtener una enorme satisfacción moral de que los demás los consideren vaqueros (empezando por los propios indios).

(...)

Quizá la bondad del hombre sea proporcional a la maldad de las instituciones. Si no es así, quizá alguien debiera decir de una vez que el hombre no es tan bueno.

¿Acaso no nos encontramos en esta coyuntura, o al menos usted. señor Presidente? ¿Deberían los "indios" lanzarse a imitar a los "vaqueros" o deberían seguir consultando otras opciones de sus espíritus? ¿Acaso la magnitud de la tragedia por ellos vivida constituye en sí misma una garantía de que no volverá a ocurrir ? ¿Puede su dolor y el recuerdo de lo ocurrido cerrar más vínculos igualitarios que la libre empresa y el sistema bicameral? Y puestos a redactar una constitución, lo mejor sería empezar reconociendo que ellos y su historia durante la mayor parte de este siglo constituyen un recordatorio del pecado original.

Como usted sabe, no se trata de un concepto tan extravagante. Traducido a términos más comunes, significa que el hombre es peligroso.

(...)

Todo escritor es lector, y si examina usted los estantes de su biblioteca, se dará cuenta de que la mayoría de sus libros trata sobre traición y crimen. En cualquier caso, parece más prudente edificar una sociedad sobre la premisa de la maldad del hombre que sobre la de su bondad. Así al menos cabe la posibilidad de hacerla segura psicológicamente, si no físicamente (aunque quizá también), para la mayoría de sus miembros, y de que las ineludibles sorpresas resulten en este caso agradables.

Quizás la verdadera cortesía, señor Presidente, consista en no crear falsas ilusiones. Hablar de "nueva comprensión", "responsabilidades globales", "metacultura plural" no resulta mucho más provechoso que las utopías retrospectivas de los nacionalistas de hoy y las fantasías empresariales de los nuevos ricos. En todos estos casos se sigue partiendo de la premisa, aún prestigiosa, de la bondad humana, del hombre como posible ángel o ángel caído.Este tipo de formulaciones pueden resultar admisibles en boca de los ingenuos o de los demagogos que dirigen las democracias industriales, pero no en la suya, señor Presidente, que debería conocer la verdad del corazón humano.

(...)

Lo que le hizo ser como es no fue sus experiencia penal

(...)

Esa medida contribuiría más a la buena marcha del mundo que la emulación de los vaqueros.

(...)

Contra la vulgaridad del corazón humano no hay más antídoto que la duda y el buen gusto, que aparecen fusionados en las grandes obras literarias, incluidas las escritas por usted. Si donde se pone más de manifiesto el potencial negativo del hombre es en el crimen, donde se pone más de manifiesto su potencial positivo es en el arte.

Usted quizá podría preguntarme por qué no le hago la misma estrafalaria sugerencia al presidente del país del que soy ciudadano, La razón es que él no escribe; y que cuando lee, suele leer literatura de baja estofa; y que los vaqueros creen en la ley y reducen la democracia a la igualdad de las personas ante ella; es decir a la pradera con ley.Lo que yo le sugiero es la igualdad de los hombres ante la cultura. A usted le corresponde escoger lo que pueda ser más adecuado para su pueblo (...) porque está claro que los imperativos morales no los aprendió en la facultad de Derecho.

(Publicada en The New York Review of Books en respuesta a una conferencia de Václav Havel que había aparecido el 27 de mayo de 1993 en la misma publicación. Traducción de Antoni Martí García)

La "#banalidad del #mal" de #Arent no parecía realista porque el mal no aparecía como banal. Cuando todo es banal no hay distinción alguna y la propia "banalidad del mal" desaparece

 

CAPITOL "ASSAULT" (JANUARY 6, 2021) AND THE LETTER TO A PRESIDENT ( BY JOSEPH BRODSKY, 27 May 1993)

“For many decades,”, — starts your next paragraph, -“mostly a nightmare for the democratic world was communism. Today, three years after the collapse of its avalanche, It begins to feel, that he was replaced by another nightmare: postkommunyzm”. Then you describe in some detail the existing forms of the democratic world's response to environmental, economic, political and social catastrophe, unfolding there, where before we only distinguish between smooth fabric. You compare these reactions with the reaction to your “inconvenience” and say, that such a position is “to escape from reality and, ultimately, humility in front of her. It leads to peace, even to cooperate. The consequences of such a position may even be suicidal”.

Right here, Mr. President, I think, your metaphor brings you. For neither communist, no post-communist nightmare is not limited to the disadvantage, because it helps, It helps and for a sufficiently long period of time will help the democratic world to seek and find the cause of evil outside. And not only the democratic world. For many of us, who lived in this nightmare, and especially for those, who fought with him, his presence was a source of considerable moral satisfaction.

for he, who are struggling or resisting evil, almost automatically he considers himself a good and avoids introspection. So that, perhaps, it's time — and for us, and the world as a whole, whether it is democratic or not — scrape term “communism” with the human reality of Eastern Europe, that it was possible to recognize this reality is, than it has been and remains, — mirror.

For human evil always is such.

Then, what was happening in our part of the world for over two thirds of a century, on the scale does not fit in the word “communism”. Labels generally miss more than, you save, and in the case of tens of millions of dead and undermined the lives of entire nations shortcut just will not do. Although the content ratio of the executioners to the victims in favor of the latter, size of, What happened in our area, show, considering the then technical backwardness, the first as there are millions, not to mention the complicity of other millions.

Источник: https://brodskiy.su/proza/pismo-prezidentu/2

sermons — not my element, besides you facing. Do not you talk to me, something, what you call “communism”, It was man's fall, and not a political issue. It was a human problem, the problem of our species, and because it has a protracted. neither writer, nor even the leader of the nation should not use terminology, which obscures the reality of human evil — terminology, I should add, invented evil, to darken his own reality. Also, do not call it a nightmare, as it is a human downfall was not a dream, at least in our hemisphere.

Why do not we just start with the recognition, that in this century the extraordinary anthropological landslide occurred in our world, regardless of, who or what it is called? That he drew the masses, acting in their own interest and in the process reducing their common denominator to the moral minimum? And that their own interests of the masses — life stability and its standards, also dropped, — It was achieved at the expense of other masses, although numerically smaller? Hence, the number of dead.

For it would be very inconvenient — especially for cowboys western industrial democracies — admit the crash, which occurred on the territory of the Indians, the first cry of mass society: cry, so to speak, of the future of the planet, and consider him not isms, and the abyss, razverzsheysya suddenly in the human heart, to absorb the honesty, compassion, civility, justice and, thus satiated, stand still democratic to the outside world is quite perfect monotone surface. However, the Cowboys do not like mirrors — not least because, there they can see rather backward Indian, than in the prairie. Therefore, they prefer to be always on the horse, eyeing eyes peeled Indians horizons, ridicule the backwardness of Indians and draw a deep moral satisfaction in the, they are considered cowboys — primarily Indians.

Does not this situation we find ourselves, Mr. President, — or, at least, you? should “Indians” to do an imitation “cowboys” or they should consult with the spirits relative to other options? May be, scale of the tragedy, postigšej them, in itself is a guarantee, that it will not happen again? Maybe, their grief and memory of, What happened in their territories, create a great egalitarian relationship, what free enterprise and bicameral legislature? AND, if they have yet to write a constitution, perhaps, they should start by recognizing themselves and their history for the better part of this century, a reminder of the original sin.

It is not so reckless idea, as you know. Translated into everyday language it means, that man is dangerous.

Every writer is a reader, and if you look at the shelves of your library, you will understand, that most of the books on these shelves — or about betrayal, or the murder of. Anyway, it seems more prudent to build a society on the premise, that man is flawed, rather than on the assumption, he is good. In this way, at least, it is possible to make society safer psychologically, if not physically (but it is also possible), for the majority of its members, not even speaking about, his surprise, are inevitable, could be more pleasant properties.

maybe, genuine politeness, Mr. President, It is, not to create illusions. “new understanding”, “global responsibility”, “plyuralystycheskaya metakultura” — in fact, much better than the current retrospective utopias nationalists or entrepreneurial fantasy nouveau riche. Pieces of this kind are still based on the assumption, even cautious, human kindness, human representation of himself as either of the fallen, or as the probable angel. It this type of, perhaps, to face inexperienced or demagogues, wheel and deal in the industrial democracies, but do not you, who should know the truth about the human heart.

For there is no other antidote to meanness of the human heart, except doubt and good taste, alloy which we find in the great works of literature, as well as in your own. If the negative potential of man is most clearly manifested in murder, its positive potential is best manifested in the arts.

Why, perhaps, you ask, I do not like extravagant proposals to the President of the country, citizen which I am? In fact he is not a writer; and when he reads, He often reads trash. Because the Cowboys believe in the law and democracy, relegates to the equality of people before him: ie. to law enforcement on the prairie. Whereas the, I suggest you, there is equality before the culture. You need to decide, which course is best for your people

"REIMPRIMIR LA REALIDAD" ("MATT HANCOCK", UK HEALTH SECRETARY?)

Dec. 2020. UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock: "When do we deploy the new variant?" https://t.co/geFtC8wrcp pic.twitter.com/u3lr0EEKOe

— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) March 4, 2023

‘Project Fear’ authors discussed when to ‘deploy’ new Covid variant

Matt Hancock’s plan to ‘frighten the pants off’ the public to ensure compliance with lockdown measures exposed in leaked WhatsApp messages

By The Lockdown Files Team 4 March 2023 • 9:00pm

 

 

La "#banalidad del #mal" de #Arent no parecía realista porque el mal no aparecía como banal. Cuando todo es banal no hay distinción alguna y la propia "banalidad del mal" desaparece

 

 

Caritas no conoce el temor porque no conoce la pérdida

El signo de caritas en la Tierra es la ausencia de temor

Hay quienes mueren con entereza; pero perfectos son quienes viven con entereza

Solo porque tiene verdaderamente que trascender la vida presente en este mundo, puede el recuerdo convertirse en garante de un futuro transmundano

Gratitud por el don absoluto de la vida es, en cambio, la fuente del recuerdo...lo que últimamente aquieta el temor a la muerte no es la esperanza o el deseo, sino el recuerdo y la gratitud

Amaban creyendo, imitaban amando

Lo que da unidad y totalidad a la existencia humana es la memoria y no la expectativa (no la anticipación de la muerte, por ejemplo, como en el pensamiento de Heidegger)

LA INTERRUPCIÓN DE LA PRESCRIPCIÓN DE LAS LIQUIDACIONES TRIBUTARIAS ANULADAS EN VÍA CONTENCIOSA (II)

ROJ: STS 302/2023 https://t.co/meQxAmC6V8

No cabe conferir a la Administración un repetido derecho a equivocarse, sino que sólo se admite, por
vía judicial, una única oportunidad de rectificar sus fallos, sustantivos o formales#TRIBUNALSUPREMO

— Guillermo Ruiz Zapatero (@ruiz_zapatero) March 1, 2023

  

La doctrina legal fijada en la STS de 19 de noviembre de 2012, cit., ha sido recogida y compendiada en posteriores sentencias de las que cabe citar la STS de 22 de diciembre de 2020 (recurso de casación 2931/2018) en la que se declara como doctrina jurisprudencial cuanto sigue:
"[...]
"a) Los actos dictados por la Administración tributaria en ejecución de una resolución judicial que se limita a anular una liquidación tributaria por falta de motivación, sin abordar el fondo del asunto, suponen una retroacción de actuaciones -al margen de que se ordene ésta formalmente en el fallo -, formando parte del mismo procedimiento de gestión en el que tuvo su origen el acto administrativo anulado por aquélla.
b) La ejecución de las sentencias judiciales se rige por mandado por el artículo 117.3 CE, en relación con los artículos 103 y siguientes LJCA. La regulación administrativa que complementa el régimen procesal de la ejecución resulta aplicable en la medida en que no se oponga a la LJCA.
c) En función del alcance del fallo y el contenido de la sentencia anulatoria, pueden producirse diversas situaciones en la ejecución. En particular, habida cuenta de que la anulación por motivos formales produce la retroacción de actuaciones, lo que procede es que se vuelva al procedimiento para que se subsane el vicio formal, momento en el que debe continuar el procedimiento dirigido a dictar la liquidación dentro del plazo que resta [...]".
Y en la misma línea y por su relevancia para el caso que nos ocupa, es oportuno traer aquí el criterio jurisprudencial recogido en la sentencia STS 441/2021, de 25 de marzo (recurso de casación 3607/2019) que,luego de ratificar la anterior doctrina jurisprudencial ya expuesta, añade que "[...] conforme a nuestra doctrina reiterada, no cabe conferir a la Administración un repetido derecho a equivocarse, sino que sólo se admite, por vía judicial, una única oportunidad de rectificar sus fallos, sustantivos o formales, es de añadir, una vez más,que dentro del seno de la ejecución de la sentencia [...]".
Esta doctrina jurisprudencial, debe ser ahora reiterada, con remisión a la establecida en las sentencias citadas.

SÉPTIMO.- Resolución de las pretensiones.

Como colofón de lo expuesto, hemos de concluir que la sentencia recurrida es errónea en cuanto encuanto deniega la posibilidad de que la Administración, en ejecución de aquella sentencia firme que anuló elprimer acuerdo de derivación de responsabilidad solidaria, pudiera reiniciar aquel procedimiento, con sujeciónen todo caso a las normas sobre ejecución de sentencias, puesto que tal conclusión es contraria a lainterpretación jurisprudencial fijada y a su calificación como actividad inserta en el ámbito de la ejecuciónde sentencias. Sin embargo, su pronunciamiento de fondo estimatorio, con anulación parcial del acuerdo
de derivación de responsabilidad solidaria, es acertado, pues el Ayuntamiento de Azuqueca de Henares hareiterado por al menos una vez más el mismo procedimiento de derivación de responsabilidad solidaria,incurriendo en los mismos defectos que, en su momento determinaron la anulación del primer expedientede derivación, y, conforme hemos declarado en nuestra STS 441/2021, cit., la actividad de ejecución desentencia incorrectamente realizada no permite otorgar a la Administración un reiterado derecho a reiniciarindefinidamente aquel procedimiento en que se apreció el vicio determinante de la anulación.Para llegar a esta conclusión partimos de la integración de nuevos hechos, complementarios de los hechos
probados declarados en la sentencia recurrida, tal y como permite a esta Sala el art. 93. 3 LJCA, quedispone que al resolver en la sentencia del recurso de casación la concreta controversia jurídica, el TribunalSupremo podrá integrar los hechos que, habiendo sido omitidos por la Sala de instancia, estén suficientementejustificados según las actuaciones y cuya toma en consideración resulte necesaria para apreciar la infracción
alegada de las normas del ordenamiento jurídico o de la jurisprudencia, incluso la desviación de poder.
Pues bien, examinadas las actuaciones, constatamos que, tal y como señala la parte recurrida en su escrito de oposición y ya hizo constar en la propia demanda, además del primer expediente de declaración de deuda por responsabilidad solidaria a nombre de la mercantil Cantábrica de Silos, S.A., iniciado en el año 2017 y quefue objeto de anulación en la sentencia del juzgado de lo contencioso-administrativo núm. 1 de Guadalajara,
de 7 de diciembre 2018 (expediente 6179/2017), se han seguido otros dos expedientes de derivación de responsabilidad solidaria, de los cuales, al menos en uno, el expediente 2437/2018, se siguió por los mismos débitos ahora reclamados. En ese expediente, aunque se afirma en el acuerdo de iniciación del que ahora nos ocupa, se dice que fue incorporada la justificación documental del coeficiente de participación, lo cierto es que finalizó por anulación de oficio acordada por la propia entidad local recurrente en casación, lo que dio lugar a su vez a la finalización por satisfacción extraprocesal del recurso contencioso-administrativo interpuesto contra dicho acuerdo de derivación, además de otro por débitos posteriores (autos recaídos en procedimientos abreviados 336/2018 y 22/2019 del mismo Juzgado). Se incurre con ello en una reiteración del mismo defecto
que motivó la anulación en sentencia firme del primer expediente de derivación de responsabilidad solidaria,sin que aquella posibilidad de retrotraer las actuaciones del procedimiento para ejecutar debidamente aquella sentencia pueda conferir a la Administración, como ya se dijo en nuestra STS 441/2021, de 25 de marzo "[...]un repetido derecho a equivocarse, sino que sólo se admite, por vía judicial, una única oportunidad de rectificar
sus fallos, sustantivos o formales [...]".

LA INTERRUPCIÓN DE LA PRESCRIPCIÓN EN EL CASO DE LIQUIDACIONES TRIBUTARIAS ANULADAS EN VÍA CONTENCIOSA

 

 

 III.- CONCLUSIÓN

La norma que establece la suspensión del cómputo del plazo de prescripción, una vez interrumpida, no debería considerarse aplicable en aquellos supuestos de anulaciones en vía contencioso-administrativa de liquidaciones tributarias recurridas por los contribuyentes, pues equivale en la práctica a la prolongación indefinida de las facultades administrativas de liquidación sin sujeción a plazo de prescripción alguno. Y convierte la jurisdicción en un mero apéndice que corrige sin fin la improcedencia de la actuación administrativa. Sin riesgo ni seguridad derivada de las normas generales sobre prescripción de acciones.

En la vía contencioso-administrativa los contribuyentes podrían oponerse a este efecto, instando se reconozca la prescripción derivada de la anulación, cuando por las circunstancias concurrentes deba considerarse prescrito el derecho de la Administración a comprobar y liquidar una vez anulada la liquidación recurrida en la vía contencioso-administrativa.