In an attempt to combat surging inflation, the Federal Reserve has implemented its fastest interest rate hikes since the 1980s, which has yielded unintended consequences with severe side effects for banks.
The spike in customer withdrawals from American banks saw $78 billion evacuated from bank accounts between July 5 and 12, according to the latest data from the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) system. Under the same circumstances, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank were hit in March by a huge cash drain. Also, First Republic Bank had to solicit tens of billions of dollars from other banks to stay afloat.
The massive cash flights came on the heels of two weeks of relative stability as major banks allocated substantial amounts to third parties to bring in new deposits.
SVB Bank Collapse
On March 1, SVB's value was close to $17 billion, holding about $200 billion in customer deposits. Its clientele, consisting mainly of venture capital firms and the companies they invested in, gave the bank a strong foothold in a profitable market. .....more below
China has suspended several 2025 export controls on strategic materials — including rare earths, superhard materials, and lithium batteries – for a year. Is this a concession to the US, or a move in a far more complex game?
"The first aim of China’s export controls was to consolidate its leverage in negotiations. The second was to establish a long-term framework for managing such controls," says Yana Leksyutina, deputy director at the Institute of China and Contemporary Asia, Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS).
Сhina could activate this mechanism at any moment, and now everyone knows it’s a lever it holds, she explains to Sputnik.
Balancing the Mineral Market
"The moratorium on export bans to the US essentially resets the rare earth market to where it was previously," Jeff J. Brown, author of 'The China Trilogy' and founder of Seek Truth From Facts Foundation, tells Sputnik.
In the meantime, there will be a global rush by the US and its NATO allies to acquire as many rare earth ...
The Israeli regime has reportedly signed contracts worth millions of dollars in recent months to sway American public opinion as part of attempts to launder the occupying entity’s genocidal war crimes against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Israeli daily Haaretz reported on Friday that the multimillion-dollar campaign aimed to reshape US public opinion, both online and offline, through coordinated influence operations combining digital marketing, AI, geotagging, and religious messaging.
The contracts, signed between the Israeli regime and firms linked to US President Donald Trump, reveal a “hasbara [propaganda] campaign” and schemes to target millions of US churchgoers, deploy bots, hire influencers, and try to make ChatGPT more pro-Israel.
The largest contract, worth $6 million, was signed with Clock Tower X, owned by Trump’s former digital campaign chief Brad Parscale, to produce and distribute roughly 100 core pieces of pro-Israel content per month and thousands......
