There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
US lenders preparing for possible bank runs | RT Business News by RT
Banks borrowed a record $165 billion from the Fed after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank
US banks took out a combined $164.8 billion in loans from two Federal Reserve facilities over the past two weeks, Fed statistics released on Thursday showed. This came as lenders rushed to backstop liquidity in the event of bank runs in the wake of the Silicon Valley Bank collapse.
According to the data, US lenders borrowed $152.85 billion from the discount window in the week ending March 15, up from $4.58 billion in the previous week. The figure, which marks an all-time high, topped a record set during the 2008 financial crisis.
The borrowing came via the Fed’s discount window, which is a tool whereby the Fed provides liquidity to banks in the form of loans against safe collateral for up to 90 days. US lenders also obtained another $11.9 billion in loans through the Fed’s Bank Term Funding Program, a facility launched following the SVB collapse and under which funding is available for up to one year.
Earlier this week, the Financial Times reported that the top six Wall Street banks have lost around $165 billion in market capitalization this month, about 13% of their combined value, in the wake of the fallout from the largest US bank failure since 2008.
Last week, SVB, which focused on the tech and startup sectors, was shut down by the US financial authorities, thus sparking a crisis in the sector. This followed the liquidation of California-based, crypto-focused Silvergate and New York-based Signature Bank.
The Fed’s report did not specify the exact number of banks or the identity the institutions that secured funding. Meanwhile, US banking majors have given no indication they are experiencing any solvency issues.
Earlier this week, US President Joe Biden offered assurances that the American banking system remained safe, and that the government would do “whatever is needed” to protect it against a full-blown crisis.