Wipe-out of Credit Suisse’s AT1 bonds triggered selloff
SMFG has started sounding out demand for its riskier bonds
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. is delaying the timing of a planned Additional Tier 1 bond sale to after mid-May following a selloff in such notes globally, triggered by writedowns at Credit Suisse Group AG.
The Japanese bank is planning to go ahead with a two-part AT1 offering in yen, according to an email from underwriter Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities Co. on Monday. The lender had previously announced its intention to sell the notes from late April onwards.
An overwhelming majority of Parisians voted to ban electric scooters from the streets of the French capital on Sunday, in a non-binding referendum that city authorities have said they would follow.
The ban won between 85.77% and 91.77% of the votes in the 20 Paris districts that published results, according to the City of Paris website on what was billed as a rare "public consultation" and prompted long queues at ballot boxes around the city.
"I preferred to vote against, because in Paris it's a mess," railway worker Ibrahim Beutchoutak, 47, told Reuters TV. "The way it's organised, the danger that it creates in Paris, the visual pollution, it's not good."
Cities worldwide are tightening regulations on e-scooters, limiting the number of operators as well as speed and where they can park.
In 2021, 24 people died in scooter-related accidents in France, including one in Paris. Last year, Paris registered 459 accidents with e-scooters and similar vehicles, including three fatal ones.
"In my work, we see a lot of road accidents caused by scooters, so we really see the negative effects," general physician Audrey Cordier, 38, told Reuters after voting against the scooters.
Electric scooters accessed through smartphone apps have operated in Paris since 2018, but following complaints about their anarchic deployment, Paris in 2020 cut the number of operators to three.
It gave them a three-year contract, required that scooters' speed be capped at 20 km/hour and imposed designated scooter parking areas. The current contracts will run until September.
Operators had offered further regulations, including checking users were over 18, fixing licence plates so police could identify traffic offenders and limiting to one passenger.
On Sunday, operators such as Tier and Lime sent free voucher codes to users to encourage them to vote against the ban.
Some voters said they would have rather had tighter regulations than an outright ban.
"I voted for (the scooters) because I'm against the rather binary choice we're given in this referendum. I don't want scooters to do whatever they wants on pavements, but banning them is not the priority," Pierre Waeckerle, 35, said.
Opioid overdose deaths topped 79,000 for the first nine months of 2022 — the grim number driven by fentanylflooding in over the southern border.
The Biden administration response? Stop calling it drug abuse.
That’s right.
As tens of thousand die from this poison,the feds are lobbying to change the name of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to the Substance Use and Mental Health Services Administration.
Otherwise, you see, people dying from fentanyl might feel stigmatized.
On top of the name change, Biden’s budget would earmark almost $11 billion for SAMHSA,including major bucks for a “Community Harm Reduction and Engagement” program — and, for the first time, allow federal health-aid dollars to cover syringes for addicts.
This all suggests Biden wants to send the disastrous “safe” injection programs pioneered by San Francisco and New York national in some way.
In other words, substance abuse is never a victimless crime.
Just ask Jacqui Berlinn, whose son is lost in the state-sanctioned open-air drug markets of San Francisco’s Tenderloin.
Or the bereaved families of New York’s own recent overdose dead — who number in the thousands.
There’s no safe non-medical way to use fentanyl.REUTERS
Part of the reason Biden & Co. are pushing for these worse-than-the-disease cures is that taking real action on fentanyl would require Biden to admit the border catastrophe is genuine.
But the central cause is the president’s surrender to the progressives in his party, for whom the specious idea of harm “reduction” — as with their deadly criminal justice “reforms” — is a policy prerogative.
How many more Americans must be sacrificed for an ideology that thinks the best answer to drug abuse is to not call it by its name?
Japan has begun purchasingRussian crude oilabove the $60-a-barrel cap, breaking with western allies thanks to an exception authorized by the United States.
As many European nations weaned themselves off Russian oil in response to the invasion of Ukraine, Japan stepped up its purchase of Russian natural gas.
The vessel ANSHUN II with "Yokohama" fenders prepared and pipelines connected to receive another tanker and transfer Russian crude oil, 20 miles off Ceuta, on March 5, 2023, in Ceuta, Spain. (Antonio Sempere/Europa Press via Getty Images / Getty Images)
Japan has almost none of its own fossil fuels, heavily relying on imports for much of its energy needs. Some analysts believe this dependency heavily influenced Japan’s hesitancy to fully back Ukraine against Russia. To date, Japan is the only Group of Seven members to supply Ukraine with lethal weapons.
Despite the concession, Russian natural-gas imports to Japan are relatively small, accounting for around one-tenth of Japan’s supply and a fraction of Russia’s output, The Wall Journal reports. Most of what Russia imports to Japan comes from the Sakhalin-2 project in Russia’s Far East.
The G7 nations and Australia agreed to a $60 per barrel price cap on Russian seaborne crude oil to reduce Russia’s income from selling oil while preventing a spike in global oil prices.
FILE: An aerial view shows the Vladimir Arsenyev tanker at the crude oil terminal Kozmino on the shore of Nakhodka Bay near the port city of Nakhodka, Russia August 12, 2022. (REUTERS/Tatiana Meel / Reuters Photos)
The price cap allowed non-EU countries to continue importing Russian crude oil, but prohibited shipping, insurance, and re-insurance companies from handling cargoes of Russian crude around the globe, unless it is sold for less than the price cap.
The nations granted an exception to the $60-a-barrel cap through September for oil purchased by Japan. And in the first two months of this year, Japan bought around 748,000 barrels of Russian oil for approximately $70 a barrel.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, has signed into law a measure that requires the state’s public pension funds to make investment decisions on financial risks and returns, rather than environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors.
Beshear signed House Bill 236 into law on March 24, mandating the state’s fiduciaries to solely consider factors that have a “direct and material connection to the financial risk or financial return of an investment,” according to the language of the bill.
It bans actions on “nonpecuniary interests,” including “environmental, social, political, or ideological interest” without a connection to the financial performance of an asset.
State Treasurer Allison Ball, a Republican, touted the new law, saying “Kentucky now has the strongest anti-ESG legislation in the nation,” Just the News reported on March 28.
“For many years, pension investments were about maximizing returns,” Ball added. “Recently, however, there has been a destructive shift in investment methodology to use the savings of Americans as financial muscle to push ideological causes through the ESG movement.
“Kentucky has said no to this shift by passing HB 236, which clarifies that pension fiduciaries must base investment decisions solely on financial metrics, not politics.”
The state’s House passed the legislation 77–17 on March 2 and the state’s Senate passed it on March 13 after a 32–5 vote. Republicans hold supermajorities in both chambers of the state legislature.
Heritage Action for America, a grassroots conservative advocacy group, issued a statement on March 24 applauding the Kentucky General Assembly and Ball for “their efforts to protect citizens from the harms of the radical ESG movement.”
“With the ESG movement infiltrating businesses and threatening Americans’ finances, it’s now more important than ever to ensure that asset managers are following through with their fiduciary responsibilities,” said Jessica Anderson, the group’s executive director. “As the first bill of its kind to be enacted, HB 236 will require asset managers to prioritize the investment returns and financial interests of Kentuckians.”
Anderson added, “This is a historic victory for Kentucky and will be an example for other states to follow as they look to protect their state industries, investments, and workers.”
“We look forward to even more states across the country adopting this approach and taking additional steps to rid our states of woke finance.”
Ball was in Washington on March 9, taking part in a bill-signing ceremony held by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). That day, McCarthy signed a resolution introduced by Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) to block a Labor Department rule that allows pension fund managers to consider ESG factors in investment decisions.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), with Kentucky State Treasurer Allison Ball standing behind him (far right), signs a resolution to block a Biden administration rule encouraging retirement managers to consider environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) factors when making investment decisions, during a bill signing ceremony at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on March 9, 2023. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
“I’m here to support what is happening as a Kentucky and as the state treasurer of Kentucky,” Ball said at the ceremony. “I have been fighting to make sure our pension systems are strong and people can retire, so I’ve been pushing back against the ESG movement.”
“We don’t need to push ideological agendas. We don’t need to push anything that is progressive,” she added. “We need to focus on getting good returns so people can retire at the end of their work life.”
However, President Joe Biden vetoed the resolution on March 20, saying the measure would “put at risk the retirement savings of individuals across the country.”
The House failed to override Biden’s veto after a 219–200 vote on March 23, falling short of the two-thirds majority threshold needed.
After Biden’s veto, Ball took to Twitter to express her disappointment.
“He believes political agendas are more important than returns. In reality, ESG funds have underperformed the broader market over the past 5 years. Retirements are about returns, not politics,” she wrote.
Ball, who has been the state treasurer since 2016, is currently running to be Kentucky’s next state auditor. Meanwhile, Beshear is running for re-election as the governor of Kentucky.
Sen.John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who was released from the hospital last week following treatment for clinical depression, detailed the “downward spiral” that led to him seeking help for his depression in February.
“It’s like, you just won the biggest race in the country,” Fetterman said to CBS Sunday Morning in his first interview since checking into treatment. “And the whole thing about depression is that objectively, you may have won, but depression can absolutely convince you that you actually lost. And that’s exactly what happened. And that was the start of a downward spiral.”
Fetterman, who defeated Mehmet Oz in one of the most closely-watched and high stakes Senate races in 2022, was released from the hospital on Friday and will spend time with his family at home in Pennsylvania while the Senate is on a two week recess. The win over Oz helped Democrats secure a majority in the pivotal upper chamber.
Fetterman said he expects to be back in the Senate when it reconvenes the week of April 17.
Fetterman suffered a stroke during his campaign in May. He ultimately remained in the race and won, but had to rely on communication aids to help him in his recovery.
Fetterman spoke with CBS two days before he left the hospital and he said he was looking forward to returning home for the first time with his depression in remission.
“I can’t wait til what it really feels like to take it all in and to start making up any lost time,” Fetterman said.
Fetterman’s decision to check himself into the hospital to seek treatment was met with an outpouring of support from both sides of the aisle in Congress and the White House. Fetterman said his message coming out of the hospital is not a political one.
“My message right now isn’t political,” Fetterman said. “I’m just somebody that’s suffering from depression.”
Candida auris, which mainly spreads in health care settings like hospitals or nursing homes, can cause serious and invasive infections, according to the CDC.
The fungus is especially dangerous because it is resistant to antifungal drugs, making it hard to treat.
“If you get infected with this pathogen that’s resistant to any treatment, there’s no treatment we can give you to help combat it. You’re all on your own,” Melissa Nolan, an assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of South Carolina, said.
That means it’s up to your immune system to fight off the infection. Someone with a healthy immune system will have an easier time beating back Candida auris than someone who is immunocompromised. Unfortunately, the pathogen is most likely to spread to people with compromised immune systems because it often enters the body through invasive medical devices like catheters or PICC lines.
The CDC estimates that “based on information from a limited number of patients, 30–60% of people with C. auris infections have died. However, many of these people had other serious illnesses that also increased their risk of death.”
Another reason Candida auris is so concerning is because of how well it has adapted to surviving on surfaces, Nolan said.
“It’s really good at just being, generally speaking, in the environment,” Nolan explained. “So if you have it on a patient’s bed for example, on the railing, and you go to wipe everything down, if in whatever way maybe a couple of pathogens didn’t get cleared, then they’re becoming resistant. And so over time, they can kind of grow and populate in that hospital environment.”
Because it has evolved to survive that sort of routine hospital disinfectant, the CDC considers Candida auris an “urgent antimicrobial resistance (AR) threat.”
Another reason Candida auris is so dangerous is it can be hard to identify with standard lab tests, making it even more difficult to treat properly and early.
“The rapid rise and geographic spread of cases is concerning and emphasizes the need for continued surveillance, expanded lab capacity, quicker diagnostic tests, and adherence to proven infection prevention and control,” CDC epidemiologist Dr. Meghan Lyman said in a press release.
“I think we need to do a better job of predicting,” Nolan said. “Moving forward [we need] more funding to support quality surveillance of these potential infectious strains so that we can know in advance, and we can do a better job of stopping disease spread before it becomes a problem.”
