STOCK BRIEFS

Washington turns to Wall Street to help rescue dying bank

In a scene reminiscent of the last financial crisis, the

vered her purpose for giving ck to the community through r outreach and mission with arkville Strong, Brandi Herngton has been in charge the nonprofit organization nce 2020.

For this week's program for e Starkville Rotary Club on onday, Herrington and her sistant director Cate Van alsema both spoke to the club out what Starkville Strong es in the community in adessing its needs.

When she stepped up to e podium, Herrington first ared with the Rotarians that e was glad to be in their esence on Monday because assion drives us all.” “Whether it's in your pernal life or your professional e, if you're not passionate, u can become complacent. o passion within myself, evy single team member, volnteer, and everyone who is th us, that is what continues drive us,” Herrington said. In March of 2020, Starkville rong was formed by Jimmy edd, geared towards helping mall businesses going through e trials and tribulations of the ndemic.

Two months later, the orgazation's Facebook group grew around 6,000 members to e point where Redd could not federal government turned to Wall Street this week for help with a blossoming emergency in the banking sector. The anxiety centered on First Republic Bank in

y g

Strong. Luckily, he knew someone who was able to do such.

“If you know Jimmy Redd, you know that he has about 10 different jobs and a couple extra side hustles on top of that. So he offered it to me, and I am glad every day that I said yes,” said Herrington. “Whenever I took it over, we changed the mission. The mission went from helping small businesses to helping our neighbors in need because without our neighbors being supported, they cannot support small businesses.”

Starkville Strong has four main areas of focus: food insecurity, housing instability, homelessness, and community advocacy. Herrington says all four of those focal points tie together in a “neat little bow.”

“You may have noticed what look like large bird houses

San Francisco, which was reeling after customers withdrew billions of dollars. The result was a swift agreement among the nation's leading banks to lay aside competitive

have food and hygiene items them. Those are our free lit food pantries and we now ha seven of them across town,” sa Herrington. “We fill the sev little food pantries three tim daily, we have helped Ca serole Kitchen as a seconda distribution site, we've creat programs like Adopt-a-fam ily, and we do food drives an other things.”

In terms of housing inst bility, Starkville Strong h three main concerns whi are affordability, habitabili and availability, which are equally important.

“When housing is co cerned, they don't alwa have access to habitable adequate housing whe their stove works, whe there's not a draft com ing through their windo or where there's no mo growing on their ceiling. they do find something a fordable and habitable, it's n always available,” said He rington. “So we assist peop with their rent, their mor gage, and their utility pa ments, but we also educa them. There's a huge inform tional gap in Starkville abo knowing what resources a available, then leading t horse to the water to find t resources, and then helpi instincts to come to First Republic's aid. With Washington greasing the wheels, a coalition of lenders put $30 billion in uninsured deposits into the Californiabased bank as a show of support. The money gives First Republic a lifeline while it reportedly seeks a buyer.

Biden calls for tougher penalties for execs of failed banks

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is calling on Congress to allow regulators to impose tougher penalties on the executives of failed banks, including clawing back compensation and making it easier to bar them from working in the industry. Biden wants the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to be able to force the return of compensation paid to executives at a broader range of banks should they fail, and to lower the threshold for the regulator to impose fines and bar executives from working at another bank. He called on Congress to grant the FDIC those powers after the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank sent shockwaves through the global banking industry.

Near ‘cliff’s edge,’ Credit Suisse not seen as systemic risk

GENEVA (AP) — Longtime troubles at Credit Suisse have come to a head this week with a record stock plunge that spread fears of a banking crisis jumping from the U.S. to Europe. But the problems have been building for years at Switzerland's second-largest bank, ranging from bad bets on hedge funds to a spying scandal involving rival bank UBS. Experts say the upheaval is largely a byproduct of Credit Suisse's troubles in recent years — making it look relatively vulnerable — and investor worries about the health of Western banks in general following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in the United States.

Stocks fall to cap chaotic week driven by fears about banks

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street's week of turmoil closed with drops for stocks. The S&P 500 fell 1.1% Friday, led by declines in First Republic and other banks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq composite also pulled back. This week has been a whipsaw for global markets as concerns worsen about banks following the second- and third-largest U.S. bank failures in history. The fear is that the trouble for banks caused by fast-rising interest rates could drag the economy into a recession.treasury yields sank again Friday in part on such fears, along with easing inflation expectations and falling confidence among U.S. households.

Elizabeth Holmes returns to court in bid to avoid prison

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes has made what might be her final court appearance before beginning a 11-year prison sentence. That's unless a federal judge grants her request to remain free while her lawyers appeal her conviction for masterminding a blood-testing hoax. The hearing came four months after Holmes' last court hearing, when a judge sentenced her for duping investors in Theranos. The company was a startup Holmes founded 20 years ago and then rode to fleeting fame and fortune. The judge says he expects to issue a ruling in early April. If he rejects Holmes request, she is due to report to prison April 27.

The bitcoin bounce: what comes next?

Markets this year are roiling, uncertainty abounds and the U.S. government has had to step in to rescue two large American banks in recent days. So why is Bitcoin, considered among the riskiest bets of them all, rising so fast? Just a few months after it seemed the entire crypto world was aflame, the original cryptocurrency climbed another 8% on Friday to more than $27,000, its highest level since summer. It's up more than 60% this year, after dipping to a three-year low following the collapse of crypto trading firm FTX in November. AP explains what happened, and what may be ahead.

Experts, banks look for ideas to stop next bank failure

WASHINGTON (AP) — The warning signs were all there. Silicon Valley Bank was expanding at a breakneck pace and pursuing wildly risky investments in the bond market. The vast majority of its deposits were uninsured by the federal government, leaving its customers exposed to a crisis. None of this was a secret. Yet bank supervisors at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and the state of California did nothing as the bank rolled over the cliff. The search for causes and culprits – and solutions — is refocusing attention on a 2018 federal law that rolled back tough bank regulations put in place after the 2008-2009 financial crisis and, perhaps even more, on the way regulators wrote the rules that put that law in place.

After last year’s stunning failure, bonds show up for safety

NEW YORK (AP) — Suddenly, bonds are again living up to their reputation as the safe part of an investor's portfolio. As stocks sank worldwide over the last week on worries about the banking system, bonds shot up in price. That offered some protection to any investor with a mixed set of stocks and bonds in their portfolio, as most advisers suggest. It's a sharp turnaround from last year. That's when bonds plunged in tandem with stocks on fears about the highest inflation in generations and what the Federal Reserve was doing about it.