PacWest Shares Plunge 60%, More Banks Drawn Into Quagmire.

MSN: PacWest Shares Plunge 60%, More Banks Drawn Into Quagmire.

PacWest shares plunged by 60 percent in after-hours trading Wednesday, raising concerns that the Los Angeles-headquartered bank might be the latest victim of the turmoil sweeping through the banking sector ever since the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in March.
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Growing anxiety over the fate of PacWest and other smaller banks in the future would likely increase pressure on the Fed, which in the aftermath of the SVB's collapse was widely expected to pause its interest rate hikes.

Another smaller bank, Western Alliance, saw its shares drop by as much as 38 percent in after-hours trading on Wednesday.

But despite predictions and expectations, the Fed has so far persisted in its strategy.

^ The Fed's Strategy ^

Maybe...if we all started wearing masks again the bank failures will stop.

More bank failures on the way?

Hit The Kobeissi Letter at Twitter for ongoing updates. The outlook...let's just say it's not optimistic.

Conservative Playbook: Are PacWest and Western Alliance the Next 2 Dominoes to Fall?

Things weren’t supposed to move this quickly.  Just hours after First Republic was dissected, two more major banks are in very serious trouble.

Are the dominoes going to start to fall more quickly than we were anticipating?  After his bank gobbled up First Republic, Jamie Dimon told the world that “this part of the crisis is over”, and many in the corporate media believed him.
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Both institutions are now highly vulnerable, and as Dick Bove has aptly noted, those that have made massive amounts of money from recent bank failures are searching for their next victim[.]
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Of course PacWest and Western Alliance are not the only potential targets.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell punked by Russian Prank Callers.

🤣

NY Mag: Jerome Powell Got Punked by Russian Prank Callers.

...it’s a little jarring to see that on Thursday, the gray-haired Powell was made the butt of a joke by two Russian pranksters crudely posing as Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. This happened back in January, but Powell apparently thought this call was a private one with the world leader and talked candidly about how a recession was just as likely as it was not, and it is now making the rounds on Russian media and Twitter.

BBC: Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell pranked by Russians.

Comedians Vladimir Krasnov and Alexei Stolyarov - known as Vovan and Lexus - claimed credit for the stunt.
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In one of the clips shared on Russian television, Mr Powell praised Russia's central bank chief Elvira Nabiullina for managing the Russian economy amid Western sanctions, according to the BBC Monitoring service.

Other video now circulating on the internet shows Mr Powell describing a sharp slowdown in growth in the US, following the bank's efforts to rein in price rises.

"We would tell you that a recession is almost as likely as very slow growth," he said of expectations for 2023. "I think that is partly because of us having raised rates quite a bit but this is what it takes to get inflation down."
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"Embarrassing moment for the Fed," chimed in Jesse Cohen, global markets analyst at Investing.com.

"Embarrassing moment for the Fed." Ya think?

Powell needs to go. Didn't care for his policies during Trump's term, he shouldn't have been appointed, still don't care for his policies.

This wasn't a perfect phone call. Resign.