For many, many, many purposes in financial markets, you have to post collateral. Most importantly, if you want to borrow money in some of the biggest lending markets, you put up some collateral and get the money; when you repay the money you get the collateral back. If you do certain derivatives trades, you have to post collateral to ensure that you are good for your obligations. If you want to sell a stock short, you borrow the stock and post collateral to secure your obligation to return it. If you are a retail brokerage, your customers do trades today but actually hand over the money on Friday, and meanwhile you post collateral with a clearinghouse to guarantee their trades. The plumbing of global finance works through collateral: You and I can agree to do stuff in the future, without necessarily knowing each other well or trusting each other much, because we have posted collateral to ensure that we’re good for our promises.
Often the way this works is that the collateral consists of some securities that you own, and the safer the securities are — the more likely they are to retain their value — the better they are as collateral. The best collateral, for most things in US finance, is short-term US Treasury bills, which have no credit risk and very little interest-rate risk and are pretty much always worth a pretty predictable amount. Longer-term Treasury bonds are also good, though they have more rate risk. Some other kinds of collateral — agency bonds, municipal bonds, highly rated corporate and structured-finance bonds, etc. — are also quite good and acceptable for many purposes, though not all; some sorts of collateral-demanding businesses are very picky and will accept only Treasuries. And then there is a lot of other stuff: Junk bonds, penny stocks, private-company stocks, fractional ownership of racehorses, any sort of financial asset you can name. So much crypto. All of this stuff could be collateral, for some purposes; somebody would probably lend you money against any of it. But if you bring it to the GCF repo market or the Fed’s discount window they will turn up their noses; they don’t take fractional racehorses there.
The point of the collateral, in a lot of the big markets, is to make things easy and efficient, so nobody has to think about risk. Somebody will lend you money against a fractional racehorse or your startup shares, but they will think about it for a while and make a particular underwriting decision; they will be in the specialized business of lending money against weird assets. Financial-markets plumbing is different; it is a big organized system that uses fungible collateral that everybody agrees is good and that nobody has to think about specifically. Huge piles of similar, safe assets — like the trillions of dollars of reliable and well-understood US Treasuries — work best; weird bespoke stuff doesn’t work at all.
And of course if you have some bonds that are in default, where the issuer is not current on its interest and principal payments, they would be quite bad collateral. Not that they’re worthless, necessarily — maybe the issuer will get its act together and start paying again — just that evaluating defaulted debt is a very specific skill. Many systems that demand collateral would not even consider defaulted bonds as collateral; defaulted bonds are not at all the sort of safe, fungible assets that work as collateral in deep and liquid markets
And so of course the question is, if Treasury bills are also defaulted bonds, what happens? Does everything break?
(Continued)

The basic question about this year’s US regional banking crisis is “why weren’t the banks prepared for the very predictable problems that they faced when interest rates went up,” and the basic answer is “because they thought rates going up would be good for them.”
We have talked about this a few times around here, and I have described two theories of banking. In Theory 1, banks have short-term deposits and invest them in long-term assets, so when interest rates go up, their costs go up (they have to pay more on their deposits) while the value of their assets goes down (those assets continue to pay fixed rates, and now are worth less). Rising rates are bad. In Theory 2, bank deposits are actually long-term, because the banks have enduring relationships with their customers and their customers are unlikely to leave, or demand higher rates, as interest rates go up. And so banks can use those long-term-ish deposits to fund long-term assets, and as interest rates go up, the banks can earn higher rates, don’t have to pay higher rates, and so make more money. Rising rates are good. Theory 2 is the traditional theory of banking, and it is why many banks were not adequately prepared for rising rates.
At the Wall Street Journal today, Jonathan Weil and Peter Rudegeair report on Theory 2:

The recent spate of bank failures is upending a long-held theory among banking executives and regulators—that the value of a lender’s deposit business goes up when interest rates move higher.
The theory rests on an assumption: That banks don’t have to pay depositors much to keep their money around, even as rates rise. The deposits would be a stable source of low-cost funding while the bank earned more money lending at higher rates.
The more rates rose, the bigger the franchise value of those deposits would become—a natural hedge against the declining market values of a portfolio of fixed-rate loans and bonds.
But if rising rates or plunging asset values cause a bank’s depositors to flee en masse, the franchise value is zero—and, worse, it could beget other bank runs. That is what happened with Silicon Valley Bank. …
The Federal Reserve, which both regulates banks and sets interest-rate policy, in a November report pointed to large unrealized losses on banks’ bondholdings due to rising rates. Things weren’t so bad, the Fed said, because “the value of banks’ deposit franchise increases and provides a buffer against these unrealized losses.”

Not really! And yet Theory 2 has some truth to it, just not so much for regional banks:

JPMorgan Chase lifted its outlook for how much it expects to earn this year from its lending business following the recent purchase of First Republic, bucking a broader trend among US banks of shrinking profits owing to deposit withdrawals.
In a presentation for its investor day on Monday, JPMorgan lifted its 2023 target for net interest income (NII), excluding its trading division, to about $84bn from $81bn previously, because of its deal for First Republic. NII is the difference between what banks pay on deposits and what they earn from loans and other assets. …
Large lenders such as JPMorgan have benefited from the US Federal Reserve lifting interest rates last year, which enabled them to charge borrowers more for loans without passing on significantly higher rates to savers.
The bank said its deposits, which totalled $2.3tn at the end of March, were “down slightly” year on year. Chief financial officer Jeremy Barnum said the expectation was that system-wide deposits at US banks would continue to decline as the Fed tightened monetary policy and customers chased better yields on their cash.
“We will fight to keep primary banking relationships but we are not going to chase every dollar of deposit balances,” Barnum added.
JPMorgan is paying 1.21 per cent on average to depositors, lower than the 1.75 per cent average of its peers, according to data from industry tracker BankReg.

See, that’s a deposit franchise. Having a valuable deposit franchise means that you don’t have to chase every dollar of deposits, because they don’t go anywhere.

Recessions & financial crises go hand in hand after Federal Reserve tightening cycles. Outspoken economist Dave Rosen-"bear"-g sees evidence of both and advises defensive investments.
He's predicting 3100 on the S&P 500.
Previous lows:
Present Level = 4192
1 year low - Oct 10, 22 = 3500
3 year low - Mar 11, 2020 = 2586
5 year low - Dec 1, 2018 = 2506

@Derf- Hey there- no sir, the brokerage maintains a cash account, separate from their bank, and that's where your unallocated cash resides. However that account isn't a MM account, isn't protected by the FDIC, and pays next to nothing. You're correct- from that account you can then move cash into another investment, or to another place:
• It's easy to set up a transfer arrangement to an external bank or financial house to transfer cash into or out of the brokerage account.
• If you do have a Schwab bank account, it's simple to transfer cash instantaneously between their bank and the brokerage. Your checking account on the bank side also pays next to nothing, but is covered by the FDIC. I don't know if their bank savings accounts pay anything decent or not.
• You can also set up transfer arrangements to external banks or financial houses from the bank side if you want to.
Take care.

Yogi: "Only m-mkt funds and T-Bills are "cash" alternatives. No other fund, including the ultra-ST bond funds, can formally serve that purpose."
I guess I respectfully look at this a bit differently than stated above. Cash is an asset class that requires some decisions, with risks and rewards. The most obvious form of cash are bills and coins, that you carry in a billfold/wallet, in your pocket, or stash in a some other designated spot (mattress, refrigerator, envelope in a drawer, etc.). It is pretty liquid and accessible, but there are "risks" with this choice--easily stolen, can be destroyed in a fire, hard to find in that hole in your backyard, etc. There can be practical limits to "how much" cash can be stored in those locations as well.
Then there are those "safe" locations in banks/credit unions, etc. in the form of checking accounts, savings accounts, safety deposit boxes, CDs, etc. These have comply with the restrictions of these institutions, not always instantly accessible in any amount, vary as to their ability to generate interest and "grow", and can not exceed certain amounts to be protected under FDIC, NCUA, etc. For the past few years, bank/credit unions paid next to nothing and that "cash" did not significantly increase in value. Recently, we have had some banks failing and some accounts exceeded government protection limits.
If your criteria for where you put your cash, was in your wallet, backyard hole in the ground, envelope in a refrigerator, or in a bank or credit union, there are risks and rewards that had to be understood and accepted with that decision. When you start looking for where else to put that cash, there are different kinds of risks/rewards with those decisions. As an investor for most of my adult life, I was faced with other forms of alternatives for my cash, some much more risky than others, some with much more rewards than others, but many of them heavily recommended by various financial advisors as an important and necessary choice for what I would be experiencing in the future. I had to learn certain skill sets to help identify the risks and rewards of those investments, and steps available for me, if investing/market conditions started changing. For me personally, I held a very large percentage of that cash in equitiies when I was younger, but when I got older I was adjusting those asset options for my cash, to be more income oriented options, such as bond oefs in a falling interest rate environment.
In the past year, I used my skill sets, to reassess where I wanted to put my cash, and when the market became more volatile and risky. I sold my most volatile and risky (largely defined by Standard Deviation criteria promoted by M* definition of risk). I held on to less risky (less volatile and lower SD) investments, such as RPHIX, but I dramatically started reducing the amount in those bond oefs. I found myself holding a large amount of "traditional" cash in banks and brokerage accounts, but earning no interest and exceeding government protection limits. Then interest rates started dramatic increases, and all of a sudden I was finding interest rates for MMs, CDs, Treasuries, etc. very competitive with what I had been previously with funds like RPHIX. I chose to liquidate my holdings in RPHIX, and shifted that "cash" to MMs and many CDs within FDIC protection rules.
I apologize for this lengthy explanation of my concept of "cash", but it makes sense to me, but maybe not for others! Each individual investor can establish their criteria for what they do with their cash, and of course that will vary tremendously.
Happy Investing!!

Yes, that's what I was trying to say- SCHW owns/controls both the brokerage and the bank. It seems to me that the bank could get into trouble without much spillover to the brokerage. I'm thinking that if the bank went away completely the brokerage would need to do some restructuring to compensate for that, but there shouldn't be any financial impact.
As a customer, you don't even need to have a Schwab bank account. You can also have a Schwab bank account without having a Schwab brokerage account.

A lot of this spring’s US regional banking crisis can be explained this way:

• 1) Banks bought a lot of Treasury bonds and other US government-backed securities when interest rates were low, paying roughly 100 cents on the dollar for them.
• 2) Interest rates went up a lot, driving the prices of those bonds down to, say, 85 cents on the dollar.
• 3) Banks had big losses on those bonds, eating through a lot of their capital.
• 4) People noticed, stocks went down, deposits fled, some banks failed and others have looked shaky.

One solution to this crisis would be that, if the bonds magically went back to being worth 100 cents on the dollar, the banks would mostly be fine again. That seems improbable, though I guess one interesting mechanism would be if the banking crisis caused enough of a recession to drive long-term interest rates back to where they were in 2020. Then the bonds would be fine, though probably the banks would have credit losses.
Another solution to this crisis would be that, if the US government just bought the bonds from the banks at 100 cents on the dollar, the banks would mostly be fine again. Of course then the government would have paid 100 cents for stuff worth 85 cents, which seems bad. But through the magic of held-to-maturity accounting, you can sort of wave your hands and pretend that it’s not bad. If the government paid 100 cents today for a bond worth 85 cents, and then held it until it matured, it would get back 100 cents. (Plus interest, though not very much.) In some accounting sense, the government would not lose any money: It would get a below-market rate of interest on its money for the next few years, but it would technically get all of its money back.
And in fact this is kind of how the banks thought of these bonds: They were often in the banks’ held-to-maturity portfolios, meaning that they didn’t need to be marked down when they lost value due to changing interest rates. It’s just that, when people notice this stuff and deposits flee, you can’t hold the bonds to maturity, because you have to sell them, at a loss, to pay back depositors. But the government is not funded by short-term deposits, so it really can hold the bonds to maturity.
And in fact this is kind of, a little bit, a solution that the government hit on: In response to the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, the US Federal Reserve announced a new Bank Term Funding Program that would lend the banks 100 cents on the dollar against bonds worth 85 cents on the dollar. This is not the same thing as buying the bonds at 100 cents on the dollar — the banks, rather than the government, are still economically on the hook for the losses — but it is motivated by the same sort of thinking. “Eventually these bonds will pay out 100 cents on the dollar, so it’s fine to lend 100 cents on the dollar against them, even if they are worth 85 cents today.”
But nobody has actually embraced a program of “the government will just buy the bonds back at par to make the banks healthy again,” because it is kind of an extreme transfer of losses from banks to taxpayers, even if you can wave your hands a bit and pretend it isn’t. But here’s this from Andrew Ackerman at the Wall Street Journal:

Banks have spent the past week or so testing what would be a clever gambit: Paying billions of dollars they collectively owe to replenish a federal deposit insurance fund using Treasurys instead of cash.
The idea—floated to regulators and lawmakers by PNC Financial Services Group and supported by others—could allow banks to take securities that are currently worth, say, 90 cents on the dollar, and give them to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. at full price. That would effectively shift losses clogging the banks’ balance sheets to the FDIC, according to people familiar with the proposal. ...
Proponents say nothing in the law says FDIC fees have to be paid in cash, so the agency could change its rules. They say the move, if greenlighted by the FDIC, would help the banking system address the way rising rates over the past year have saddled lenders with billions in losses on their portfolios of bonds. Those losses helped sink Silicon Valley Bank in March, sparking turmoil across the banking sector. …
Supporters say the government would hold the securities until maturity, allowing them to recover principal and interest on the debt. The government would suffer no losses, they say.

The FDIC has spent billions of dollars on its bank rescues — which is also a transfer of losses from banks to the government to make the banking system more solvent — but it is getting the money back by charging a special assessment to be paid by about 113 big banks. If the banks pay the assessment with Treasuries that are worth 90 cents on the dollar, but that count for 100 cents on the dollar, then they get a little discount on the assessment and get to move unpleasant assets off their balance sheets.
Why stop there? They should pay their taxes in Treasuries. Really what they should do is pay executive bonuses in Treasuries: “We’re giving you a $1 million bonus, technically it is only worth $850,000 but if you hold it to maturity it’s a million.”

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1261788/000089418923003762/zieglerseniorfloatingratef.htm
497 1 zieglerseniorfloatingratef.htm 497E ZIEGLER SENIOR FLOATING RATE FUND LIQUIDATION
Trust for Advised Portfolios
Supplement dated May 17, 2023
to the Prospectus and Statement of Additional Information
dated January 31, 2023 for the
Ziegler Senior Floating Rate Fund
Ziegler Capital Management, LLC (“ZCM”), investment adviser to Ziegler Senior Floating Rate Fund (the “Fund”), has recommended, and the Board of Trustees of the Trust for Advised Portfolios has approved, the liquidation and termination of the Fund. The Fund is expected to cease operations and liquidate on or about July 16, 2023 (the “Liquidation Date”). On or promptly after the Liquidation Date, the Fund will make a liquidating distribution to its remaining shareholders equal to each shareholder’s proportionate interest in the net assets of the Fund, in complete redemption and cancellation of the Fund’s shares held by the shareholder, and the Fund will be dissolved.
Effective at the close of business on May 22, 2023, the Fund will no longer accept purchase orders. In addition, beginning at the close of business on May 17, 2023, ZCM will begin an orderly liquidation of the Fund’s assets and the Fund’s assets will be converted into cash and cash equivalents. As a result, during this process, the Fund will no longer be pursuing its stated investment objective. Although the Fund will be closed to new investments as of the close of business on May 22, 2023, shareholders may voluntarily redeem their shares before the Liquidation Date. Shares of the Fund redeemed on or after July 16, 2023 will not be subject to redemption fees. ZCM will bear all expenses incurred in carrying out the liquidation process, except for transaction costs incurred in connection with liquidating the Fund’s investments. Shareholders remaining in the Fund just prior to the Liquidation Date may bear increased transaction fees incurred in connection with the disposition of the Fund’s portfolio holdings.
The liquidating distribution will include any accrued income and capital gains, will be treated as a payment in exchange for shares, and will generally be a taxable event for shareholders investing through taxable accounts. You should consult with your tax advisor for further information regarding the federal, state and/or local income tax consequences of the liquidation that are relevant to your specific situation.
Please contact the Fund at 833-777-1533 or your financial advisor if you have questions or need assistance.
Please retain this supplement with your Prospectus and Statement of Additional Information for future reference.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1314414/000158064223002742/psi_497.htm
497 1 psi_497.htm 497
PSI STRATEGIC GROWTH FUND
Class A Shares FXSAX
(a series of Northern Lights Fund Trust)
Supplement dated May 16, 2023 to
the Prospectus dated October 28, 2022
The Board of Trustees of Northern Lights Fund Trust (the “Board”) has determined based on the recommendation of the investment adviser of the Portfolio Strategies, Inc. (the “Fund”), that it is in the best interests of the Fund and its shareholders that the Fund cease operations. The Board has determined to close the Fund and redeem all outstanding shares on June 27, 2023.
Effective at the close of business May 16, 2023, the Fund will not accept any purchases and will no longer pursue their stated investment objectives. The Fund may begin liquidating its portfolio and may invest in cash equivalents such as money market funds until all shares have been redeemed. Any capital gains will be distributed as soon as practicable to shareholders. Shares of the Fund are otherwise not available for purchase.
Prior to June 27, 2023, you may redeem your shares, including reinvested distributions, in accordance with the “How to Redeem Shares” section in the Prospectus. Unless your investment in the Fund is through a tax-deferred retirement account, a redemption is subject to tax on any taxable gains. Please refer to the “Tax Status, Dividends and Distributions” section in the Prospectus for general information. You may wish to consult your tax advisor about your particular situation.
ANY SHAREHOLDERS WHO HAVE NOT REDEEMED THEIR SHARES OF THE FUND PRIOR TO June 27, 2023 WILL HAVE THEIR SHARES AUTOMATICALLY REDEEMED AS OF THAT DATE, AND PROCEEDS WILL BE SENT TO THE ADDRESS OF RECORD. IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS OR NEED ASSISTANCE, PLEASE CONTACT YOUR FINANCIAL ADVISOR DIRECTLY OR THE FUND AT 1-888-9-BUYPSI.
IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR RETIREMENT PLAN INVESTORS
If you are a retirement plan investor, you should consult your tax advisor regarding the consequences of a redemption of Fund shares. If you receive a distribution from an Individual Retirement Account or a Simplified Employee Pension (SEP) IRA, you must roll the proceeds into another Individual Retirement Account within sixty (60) days of the date of the distribution in order to avoid having to include the distribution in your taxable income for the year. If you receive a distribution from a 403(b)(7) Custodian Account (Tax-Sheltered account) or a Keogh Account, you must roll the distribution into a similar type of retirement plan within sixty (60) days in order to avoid disqualification of your plan and the severe tax consequences that it can bring. If you are the trustee of a Qualified Retirement Plan, you may reinvest the money in any way permitted by the plan and trust agreement.
This Supplement and the existing Prospectus dated October 28, 2022, provide relevant information for all shareholders and should be retained for future reference. Both the Prospectus and the Statement of Additional Information dated October 28, 2022, have been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, are incorporated by reference and can be obtained without charge by calling the Fund at 1-888-9-BUYPSI.

Meanwhile, this asshole
https://thehill.com/business/banking-financial-institutions/4006252-sherrod-brown-blasts-svb-chief-over-bonuses-stock-sales/

Fidelity Flex® funds are a lineup of Fidelity mutual funds that have zero expense ratios, and include proprietary active and passive funds. Flex funds are currently available only to certain fee-based accounts offered by Fidelity, like Fidelity Go®. Unlike many other mutual funds, the Flex funds do not charge management fees or, with limited exceptions, fund expenses. Instead, a portion of the advisory fee you pay is allocated to access the Flex funds in which your account will be invested.

https://www.fidelity.com/managed-accounts/fidelity-go/investment-account-faqs
They're generally good funds. Be advised that Fidelity is still tinkering with its lineup. For example, Fidelity recently shuttered the Intrinsic Opportunities Fund (FFNPX), a MCV offering. It looks like Fidelity decided to change its lineup from mostly actively managed funds to mostly indexed funds. Here's the original lineup (CityWire PR) and the current lineup (M* search by name)
One of the few actively managed funds is FJTDX. It is managed by the same team as the retail fund FCNVX, with similar ultrashort duration, though the actual holdings while similar don't seem to be identical. That is, these funds are not clones. Nevertheless, performance difference seems to approximate the difference in ERs, i.e. 0.25%. Here's a Fidelity comparison page for the two funds.
The slightly better performance of the Flex fund is somewhat illusory. As noted above, the fund is getting paid management fees out of your pocket. They're just getting laundered through advisory service charges. So the management fees aren't subtracted from the performance figures of the Flex funds, making the Flex funds look a little better than they actually are.
It's a matter of perspective - how you want to allocate the advisory fees in your mind - do they all go for advisory services (when you compare advisory fees from different providers), or do you mentally reduce the advisory fees and add that to the Flex funds' ERs, thus reducing the funds' performance numbers?
Finally, with respect to Vanguard changes, Vanguard dropped the free financial plan offering years before the pandemic. I'm just not sure of exactly which year.

I didn't mention specific financial planning because this particular service was discontinued years ago and I don't know whether a service like this is integrated into Vanguard's current service offering.

So much has changed at Vanguard post-pandemic, and their phone service has declined. I still recall being the Voyager Select and Flagship customers. I will give them a call later in the evening 8am - 8 pm, EST) and report back.
At present, there is little details on their plan. Fidelity has their advisory plans, but we are unfamiliar with their Fidelity Flex Funds, and the level of planning that Fidelity offers.

It used to be (until 2015 or so?) that Vanguard would provide Voyager Select and Flagship customers with a free financial plan. After reviewing the basic survey that a customer filled out, a CFP would discuss the customer's situation over the phone for about an hour. There would be shorter followup conversations, before and after the plan was prepared.
The plan was not cookie-cutter, at least in the sense that it provided for keeping a lot of non-Vanguard assets, both individual stocks and funds. The plan offered suggestions on how to deal with specific (overweighted) individual stock holdings. Vanguard said it had tools to help the DIY investor implement the plan on their own, or that Vanguard could manage the portfolio for the investor.
I didn't mention specific financial planning because this particular service was discontinued years ago and I don't know whether a service like this is integrated into Vanguard's current service offering.

No personal experience. I suggested Vanguard to a couple of people who are using it now, so I get a bit of feedback that way. They are primarily using it for asset and cash flow management. I don't know how much in the way of general financial planning Vanguard provides.

Very good analysis of massive benefits Middle and upper classes get from the government, while the poor get blamed for being lazy.
Reducing the deficit will certain gore someone's sacred ox
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2023/04/20/the-high-cost-of-being-poor-matthew-desmond/?printpage=true
According to recent data compiling spending on social insurance, means-tested programs, tax benefits, and financial aid for higher education, the average household in the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution receives roughly $25,733 in government benefits a year, while the average household in the top 20 percent receives about $35,363. Every year, the richest American families receive almost 40 percent more in government subsidies than the poorest American families.
Taken from Desmond's new book Poverty, by America

“The fear-driven selloff that’s cut the stock-market values of some banks in half may look like a perfect chance to buy the dips. If only they’d stop falling.  As shares of lenders (BKX) tumbled for a fourth straight week, investors are showing signs of throwing in the towel. They yanked $2.1 billion out of financial stocks in the week through May 10, the most since May 2022, according to Bank of America Corp. (BAC) strategists citing EPFR Global data. Exchange-traded funds focused on the sector saw the biggest exodus of cash since September, according to Refinitiv Lipper. And the $29 billion Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund has seen more than $2 billion pulled out over just the past two weeks.”
Yahoo Finance (Reprinted from Bloomberg)

subject says it all.
Press Release:
https://ir.oneok.com/news-and-events/press-releases/2023/05-14-2023-232007760
Merger Presentation:
https://ir.oneok.com/~/media/Files/O/ONEOK-IR-V3/financial-reports/2023/05-14-2023-investor-presentation.pdf
I own about 1000s MMP ... for now.

The problem is that almost everyone thinks that a solution for the debt-ceiling problem will be found at the last minute. But then, most think (at least in the DC) that it is for others to fix it. A meeting of the main players scheduled for Friday was cancelled and may happen this week.
That is what concerns me. There is no urgency to do anything.
But this stuff is very serious. Treasuries are the foundation of not just the US but global financial system. And if an accident happens, it will affect everything - the risk assets, the safe assets. Treasuries are the foundation of US safe assets - bank a/c, CDs, m-mkt funds, loan collaterals. I can see some panic in the institutional market from the distortion of the very short end of the Treasury yield curve.
Now only 2 more weeks of this manufactured crisis.

It’s very interesting that nothing was said about Summers’ absence. Possibly he’s traveling outside the country or on a vacation. But very puzzling indeed. More likely he’ll join Carlson & Lemon as recent TV cast-offs. I can’t imagine having Summers for a Prof in college and sitting through hours and hours of his lectures.
I rarely draw anything decisive about the investment climate from this show. Like a lot of financial TV, the tenor of the program seems to follow whatever course the markets took that week. If markets were positive guests tend to focus on “opportunities” for investment. If they were downbeat as this week, caution becomes the buzzword. Note the mention this week about hedging risk - without really delving into how to hedge.

Let's all take a deep breath and urge our representatives to work on rational compromises, and let's please stop voting for political extremists on both sides of the aisle.

The classic false moral equivalency or “bad people on both sides” argument. I remember that “very fine people on both sides” remark in Charlottesville, too. Sorry, but it just ain’t so in this case, and it wasn’t the case in Charlottesville either. This is brinkmanship coming from the right side of aisle which did not have the red wave it wanted so now it is employing hostage taking financial terroristic tactics to extort what it wants. It does not represent the will of the people or else the red wave would’ve happened in the first place. Moreover and crucially, the same GOP didn’t angst about the higher debt ceiling’s impact on “future generations” when they were raising it multiple times during the Trump administration to finance tax cuts for the wealthy, and the Democrats didn’t employ this kind of brinkmanship during that period over the ceiling.