Went up almost one percent with solid gains by Bank of America borrowers, and well, pizza companies and the US market did much the same thing last night, so has the crisis passed? Well, there’s still one more American bank to sort out.
It’s called First Republic Bank, and its share price has crashed 90 percent, including 47 last night, after a rescue attempt by some other banks depositing 30 billion dollars into it didn’t work. Now they’re trying to come up with a new plan, which will probably involve killing it instead.
Apart from that, there’s some blood on the carpet in Switzerland. UBS shareholders aren’t happy about being forced to buy the crippled Credit Suisse. So its share price has dropped by 20. Also, Credit Suisse bond holders are being wiped out in the deal, so that’s 17 billion dollars. Up in smoke, and they’re not pleased.
They say it’s being stolen by the government. One beneficiary of the 2023 banking crisis has been gold, up 11 in a couple of weeks to above two thousand dollars. U.S. announced and it’s closing in on an all-time high, but guess what’s gone up more Bitcoin, sometimes called “digital gold,” is up 70 this year, including 35 in a couple of weeks.
The Australian dollar was steady at just under 67 U.S. cents, and the minutes of the last Reserve Bank board meeting came out today, confirming that they are thinking about pausing the rate hikes.
Oh, and one more thing: A global housing affordability survey came out last night, measured by median house price times, median income. Sydney is the second-least affordable city in the world, at 13.3 times higher than Hong Kong. Melbourne is ninth, and that’s in Finance.
