Luv2play

I think that's another explanation of why she did it. The embassy official who told me the story said her attempt to fool anybody by pasting another picture on top was clumsy and immediately obvious. They would have peeled off her photo which is why the auctioned one shows the real passport photo. I thought it was a great story and probably would have increased interest in the auction had it been known to the auction house.

Well, looking at the picture that was the official one in the passport Bette looks every bit as old as her then age of 78. The story I was told was that she simply pasted a more flattering and youthful portrait over top of the official one. She probably was used to being whisked through customs without anyone actually looking inside her passport, she was so famous. It only caught up with her when she died abroad and the passport became a vital document to be examined for ID purposes.

I beg to disagree. I read his interview and it's one of the most intelligent and interesting ones I have seen on RM. Not sure I would hire him but that's based on other considerations.

As I understand it the Fed has made their discount window available to all banks in the US with looser rules since last weekend. Now they can borrow funds in exchange for the security of the bonds they hold at face value and not the depreciated values as a result of the rise in interest rates. The NYT is reporting this evening that banks are making great use of this and tens of billions have been borrowed from the Fed this week to increase banks' liquidity to meet any demand on their deposits by customers withdrawing their money.

I'm surprised the arts organization shared your contact info after you had made a cash contribution to them. For a number of years I made an annual donation to a small theatre company on whose board of directors I was a member. I was listed on the annual program which was distributed at each performance to audience members. I was in the top tier of donors each year but never got a followup contact from any other arts organization. But just my name appeared on the program and the theatre company never gave out my contact info as far as I am aware.

I lived in Switzerland for 4 years and had a Swiss lover who of course worked in a Swiss bank along with many of his friends, who also became my friends. They were so proud of their banks almost to the point of being arrogant whenever they talked about banks in other countries. Once I accompanied a young man to collect a suitcase of money at a Swiss bank in Geneva for his foreign lover from a Latin American country. He counted the money in front of the Swiss banker in his locked office while I watched. I was a friend of the lover who asked me to accompany the youngster to make sure he went from the bank directly to the airport. Lol.

I just got my monthly auto renewal and it's still $9.95 and I still have all the advantages of premium membership. So all good.

That's the difference between a stripper and an escort. The stripper is covered in one dollar tips.

I am just the opposite. I always allow my donations to be published with my name and the amount or the range if that's how they classify donations eg. $1000-$5000. It helps charitible entities fund raise in several ways, including by providing an incentive to donors to show their support for the causes they like. Also the entities can demonstrate a community of supporters. This is particularly important for community based organizations as opposed to national orgs. I give very little to the national orgs and concentrate on my community as my contributions make a bigger impact at that level. I'm not donating $millions or even $100's of thousands but in the range of four figure amounts to my favorite causes. These smaller groups appreciate every thousand they receive. And I have never received solicitations from unknown groups for donations. Maybe it's a Canadian thing. May be different in US.

Interesting article. It clarifies that the large US banks participating are in effect making available $30B in cash deposits to FR. For 4 months. And FR has another $30B in cash reserves and othrr sources of liquidity from the Fed. They have huge liabilities though totalling over $650B and 70 percent are in uninsured deposits. It is therefore questionable whether the cash injection will be adequate. The stock ended the day up 10 percent but will that stem the tide of withdrawals? The article says that on after market trading the stock declined by 20 percent. Not a good omen.

I don't yet know the details of the cash injection made by the 4 largest US banks into First Republic but they are being characterized as deposits formerly held by those banks. I wonder if the depositors have been consulted about transfers of their money to uninsured accounts at FR?

So yeaterday saw all the gains in the markets on Tuesday wiped out by the increasingly grim news facing the international banking sector in Europe and elsewhere. I saw where shares of First Republic resumed their downward movement with a 21 percent decline on Wednesday. As this thread started on the question of whether First Republic was in any danger of failing, what is the feeling now? Is there any sense that a run on deposits could occur especially by those holding amounts above the FDIC guarantee limit of $250k? If that were to occur what would the authorities do in Washington? Having made whole the depositors at SVB and Signature, could they refuse to lift a finger to help FR's depositors? These questions must be causing some sleepless nights for the parties concerned.

This banking crisis is not over yet. Today banking stocks around the world are in serious decline, even in staid old Switzerland, where Credit Suisse has halted trading after a 20 percent decline in its share value. US markets are expected to open lower, erasing the gains of yesterday. What is apparent to me is that banks are now exhibiting the ill effects of the rapid increases in interest rates by central banks everywhere over the last 12 months. Inflation has eased somewhat but there are several factors at play underlying inflation that interest rates alone cannot control, such as the war in Ukraine and climate induced food shortages. Confidence is the only thing that sustains the banking sector. After all you are entrusting your money to someone else to safeguard it and return it to you on demand. If that assurance weakens by facts on the ground like SVB's failure, then all bets are off.

Again I respectfully disagree. Yellen instructed the FDIC over the weekend to extend funds beyond the $250k limit but from their own account. In the CNN article you cited above she expressly said the government was not going to bail out the bank with government money as they had done in 2008. The FDIC funds are raised by the banking industry itself. The article used the words "extend a federal backstop" but those were CNN's words to characterize the actions of the government and as such were somewhat misleading as to who was doing what. The Treasury never uttered the words that they were backstopping the bank with goverment guarantees of money.

I wasn't thinking of natural disasters when a house burns down. I was just thinking of the garden variety isolated incident of a house fire, which is all I personally have ever seen in my area of Canada in the east. When whole towns are consumed by fire as in British Columbia and Alberta in the last several years, different approaches are taken by governments to help the victims. Compensation over and above private insurance are often resorted to by governments

Your analogy of insurance on a house not covering the whole amount of a loss of $500,000 isn't really apt here because in a case like that the insurance company will not even fully cover your insured loss of $250,000. They will say you underinsured your house and therefore must assume a part of the loss within the $250,000 limit. This is because by understating the value of your house you avoided paying the full premiums that would have applied had the full value been insured. That is also why when house values increase insurance coverage is adjusted annually to reflect the amount the insurance company is on the hook for if there is a loss.

One thing you said I don't believe to be true is about the Treasury stepping in to backstop the value of deposits at SVB. For that Janet Yellen would have had to confirm that. Which she did not since that would have been tantamount to a taxpayer bailout. What the Fed did do is to make their discount window more accomodating to other banks if they faced liquidity problems in the coming days. That window has a current limit of $25 billion and the Fed loosened this to accomodate potential withdrawals. It is not yet known how much of a shortfall, if any, the assets at SVB will experience compared to liabilities, but if there is one then the FDIC will cover it and levy an extra fee against all banks, thus averting a taxpayer bailout which Biden vetoed. My understanding is that the government made recourse to a provision in the law that allowed FDIC to make whole deposits above the $250,000 limit in cases where the integrity of the overall banking system was at risk. This as I noted above has rarely been resorted to but gave Biden the means to avoid a taxpayer bailout.

I read this morning that here in Canada government and banking officials were working throughout the weekend to asses the situation and take measures to ensure the contagion south of the border was headed off from affecting Canadian businesses. Reminded me of my days in international finance when I had to work overtime on weekends to the same ends. Every decade brings its crises in financial markets and for the people involved at the government level the work is thankless.

That's not what happened over the weekend. The FDIC and Fed tried to have an auction of the failed bank but it didn't work because they were not able to make an assessment in the short time before Monday opening of how much the assets of SVP were worth. Faced with no buyers and the $250,000 limit on insured deposits, many companies were not able to make payroll on Friday. If this had persisted there was a real danger of the problem spreading rapidly throughout the banking sector. So the government stepped in and covered every depositor for all their money held by SVP. They used a provision in law rarely resorted to so that taxpayers were not on the hook. Rather the banking sector overall would be liable for any losses and the fees levied on banks for deposit insurance would cover such losses. This was not restricted to the US, as here in Canada 16 high tech companies who had their money in SVB Cda, a subsidiary, could not make payroll on Friday as well. The good news is that there is no evidence that the banking system was in danger of seizing up as it did in 2008, when banks stopped lending to each other. The bad news is that tech companies are going to find it harder to borrow for expanding their businesses. And that will negatively impact the economy.

That's not what Biden said today. Depositers at SVP are being covered for all of their deposits including those above the insured limit of $250,000.

The shares of a lot of regional banks got hammered today. Halt trading in eleven or so. It looks like more will need to be done to restore confidence in the banks. And I don't think coffee and donuts is going to cut it.

There are other elements to the rescue package but I won't get into them. What I theorize is that the major assets of SVB are its loan portfolio and investments. We already know their investments in Treasuries are under water given the rapid increase in the Fed rates. What we don't know is what state their loan portfolio is in. Most of it is to VC firms we are told. Some of those may be shaky given the rapid decline in the tech sector this last year. The other may be in mortgages and while we are not looking at what happened in 2008, with the rapid increase in mortgage rates in the last year, loans made at 1.5 percent over 15 or 30 years may not look so hot when money costs so much more today.

Just read in NYT that the feds have come up with a package to try to restore calm in the banking world. It will see all deposits at SVB and Signature, another bank based in NY closed today, guaranteed by the FDIC. That amounts to over $300 billion in deposits. If the money is not fully recovered through sale of assets of the two banks, all banks will share in the pain through a levy on the insurance program maintained by the government . So no taxpayer bailout but potentially increased bank fees by all who bank anywhere in the US.

The thought has occured to me every once in a while that since I live alone in a house in a small town, if I suffered an health incident where I lost consciousness, who would find me and how soon. I will look into getting a medic alert even though I might not fit the profile, not having had a heart attack or stroke (yet). My father was in his mid 80's when he had his first heart attack but was able to tell his wife to call 911. I'm only in my mid 70's but still. I used to worry when I had 2 dogs that if something happened to me they would probably eat my face, trying to revive me. Don't laugh. I have heard it happening. But now I am really alone with no pets. I had a college buddy who 20 years ago suffered what happened to Daddy. He was found a day later in his kitchen having suffered a stroke. In his case he lived another 10 years but in a wheelchair.

I just checked and the information I read was that First Republic was sold by Bank of America back in 2009-2010, one year after they acquired it. It is now owned by private investors. Obviously if this is true it is not protected by a bank that is "too big to fail". You might want to check what other things your accountant is telling you.