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🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 4.98 minutes to read.

“Never put off to tomorrow what you can do to-day.”

–Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

On Friday, US regulators shut down Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), the 16th-largest bank in the country, after a historic bank run the previous day left it completely insolvent. It represents the second-largest failure of a financial institution in American history, following the collapse of Washington Mutual in 2008.

⏪ Let’s start at the beginning: In early 2020, SVB started buying large amounts of longer-term, government-backed mortgage securities. Its portfolio rose from $27 billion in Q1 of 2020, to $128 billion by the end of 2021.

• These securities carry virtually no risk of defaulting, since they’re backed by the government. They pay out a fixed interest rate for years (sometimes decades), though the initial investment remains inaccessible over that time period.

But since the Federal Reserve’s recent spate of interest-rate hikes began after SVB purchased those securities, the assets are currently worth less on the open market than what SVB initially paid for them – with potential buyers able to find better (aka higher) rates elsewhere.

📉 That isn’t necessarily a problem… unless the bank gets into a pinch and needs to suddenly sell the securities to access capital – which is exactly what happened last Wednesday. After SVB saw a larger-than-expected decline in customer deposits over the past year, the bank was forced to sell a bundle of securities at a post-tax loss of ~$1.8 billion, along with announcing $2+ billion in new funding to shore up its capital reserves.

The announcement caused SVB’s stock price to drop 60+% the following day. This prompted several large VC firms to advise their companies to withdraw deposits from SVB, leading to the largest bank run in modern US history. The bank counted nearly half of all VC-backed US companies as customers.

• On Thursday, SVB’s customers ran ran ran faster than the gingerbread man to try and withdraw $42 billion of deposits – about a quarter of the bank’s overall total, and $25+ billion more than the second-largest bank run in the modern era (Washington Mutual).
• By noon on Friday, SVB was completely insolvent.

🗣️ Also worth mentioning: Under federal law, banks with at least $250 billion in deposits are required to run stress tests to see how they would perform under different hypothetical crises, such as higher interest rates combined with shrinking deposits, but “smaller” banks like SVB don’t. Plus, SVB reportedly didn’t have a Chief Risk Officer for the eight months leading up to last week’s collapse.

🤔 What happens next?... On Sunday, US regulators announced an emergency measure that will make all individuals and companies with an account at SVB whole by this morning – regardless of whether their funds were insured by the FDIC under its $250,000-per-account guarantee.

Had they not, regulators would have begun to sell off SVB’s assets to pay back uninsured depositors. But the payments likely wouldn’t have come soon enough to avoid paycheck delays for many of the estimated 100,000+ employees whose companies banked at SVB.

📊 Flash poll: Do you agree with US regulators’ decision to fully backstop all client deposits at the now-defunct Silicon Valley Bank?

Yes

No

Unsure/other

🇨🇳 On Friday, Xi Jinping officially secured an unprecedented third term as China’s president. Xi, 69, had previously named himself to another five-year term as leader of China’s ruling Communist Party last October, breaking with a tradition that started after Chairman Mao Zedong where leaders retire from office once they’ve served for a decade. The move has fueled widespread speculation that Xi will be the first Chinese leader since Mao to stay in power for life.

🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia had a big weekend. And as they say, things come in threes: 1. The country agreed on Saturday to resume diplomatic relations with Iran after seven years of estrangement. The surprise deal, which was brokered by China, marks a significant blow to Israel’s key foreign policy goal of establishing relations with Saudi Arabia, since the Israeli government considers Iran to be its top global enemy. 2. On Sunday, Saudi Arabia’s state-run Aramco oil company reported $161 billion in net income for 2022, up 46.5% from the previous year and the highest annual amount ever for an energy firm. 3. Also on Sunday, the Saudi government unveiled a new state-backed international airline called Riyadh Air, which is reportedly close to signing a $35 billion deal to purchase Boeing aircraft.

🌎🌀 The global weather phenomenon known as La Niña has come to an end after three years, per US weather officials. La Niña – which refers to the periodic cooling of ocean surface temperatures in the central and east-central Pacific Ocean – typically results in colder and wetter conditions in the northern US, as well as warmer and drier conditions across the South. The NOAA said it expects El Niño, the opposite of La Niña, to begin at some point this summer or fall. Once that occurs, Americans can expect warmer and drier conditions in the North and colder and wetter conditions in the South for the next year or so.

What we feed our pups is important, but how it's made matters, too. Kibble, for instance, is commonly produced with a process called “extrusion.” What that means is they basically force together a bunch of raw ingredients, quickly cook it with hot water/steam, and trim it into kibble-shaped pieces.

While that doesn’t exactly sound appetizing, the process is reported to remove up to 40% of minerals and vitamins, too. But as long as it meets AAFFCO’s standards for a balanced dog diet it should be fine, right?

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Everything Everywhere All At Once made history at last night’s Oscars, becoming the first film featuring a romance between two people with hot-dog fingers to win Best Picture.

It gets better – the two actresses with the hot-dog fingers each won, too – Jamie Lee Curtis for Best Supporting Actress, and Michelle Yeoh for Best Actress. Yeoh is the first self-identified Asian woman to win the award in the 95-year history of The Oscars.

The surreal multiverse comedy ended the night with seven Oscars, making it the most-awarded Best Picture winner since Slumdog Millionaire in 2008.

• Director duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert won Best Original Screenplay and Best Director, the first time a duo has ever won the award.
• Ke Huy Quan, the former child star from The Goonies and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, won Best Supporting Actor.

🏆🍿 Elsewhere: Other highlights from the night included: plenty of jokes about last year’s Slap fiasco, Disney premiered a trailer for its upcoming live-action musical rendition of The Little Mermaid film, and Brendan Fraser won Best Actor for his portrayal of a 600-lb professor in The Whale.

And if you still need a little more EEAAO, you can purchase hot-dog finger gloves for the reasonable price of $36.

💬 Quoted… "Absolutely nothing about the work itself. I miss the people and the friendships.”

• An ongoing Harvard study on friendships, which first began in 1935 and is based on health records from 724 people from all over the world, recently found the No. 1 challenge people faced in retirement was being unable to replace the social connections that had sustained them for so long at work.

🏘️📉 Stat of the Day: Luxury home sales in the US dropped 45% over the three months that ended in January when compared to the same period last year, per new data from Redfin. The hardest hit areas? Miami and New York’s Nassau County-Suffolk County region on Long Island, aka the Hamptons. Sales of non-luxury homes were down ~38% over the same period.

🤯 Did You Know?... “V” is the only letter in the English language that’s never silent, according to Merriam-Webster.

📖 Worth a Read: Why some travelers fly across the world without leaving the airport → (The Hustle)

😪 Jobs, kids, animals, alarms... ugh, who needs enemies when you have to wake up to all of that? But fear not, my sleep-deprived friend, because The Daily Good is here to rescue you! It's like a warm, comforting hug in the form of a 30-second newsletter.

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• ☝️ A new monument honoring famed abolitionist Harriet Tubman was unveiled on Thursday by the city of Newark, NJ.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 💰 US markets closed down across the board on Friday (S&P: -1.5%; Dow: -1.1%; Nasdaq: -1.8%).
• 🚫🏦 US regulators on Sunday shut down Signature Bank, a top crypto lender, citing systemic risk similar to Silicon Valley Bank; clients with deposits at Signature Bank will be made whole by this morning under the same emergency measure as SVB.
• 💼 311,000 new jobs were added in February, the Labor Department reported Friday; that’s 38% higher than the 225,000 expected by the Dow Jones.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🍿 Scream VI topped the box office this weekend with over $44 million in domestic sales; the film set an opening weekend record for the franchise, which was previously held by the 2000 title Scream 3 ($34 million).
• ⚾️ Team USA beat Great Britain and lost to Mexico in its first two games at the World Baseball Classic over the weekend.
• 🏀 The NCAA March Madness brackets were released yesterday; check out the men’s; check out the women’s.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🤕 The FDA on Thursday approved a first-of-its-kind nasal spray developed by Pfizer that was shown in human trials to treat the symptoms of migraine headaches.
• 🧑‍🚀 Four astronauts, including two Americans, splashed down safely in the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday after completing a five-month mission aboard the ISS.
• 🫀🐁 Israeli researchers successfully treated heart attacks in mice – months before they ever happened, per a new study published in Nature Cardiovascular Research.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• ⛈️❄️ Severe weather alert: California Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency in 21 counties due to intense rainfall – and accompanying flooding – that began on Friday and is projected to last through Wednesday; a separate storm system dumped snow on the Midwest over the weekend, before hitting the Northeast starting late last night.
• 🚂 US railroad operators pulled a combined 675 railway cars from service over the weekend; the move came after Norfolk Southern discovered loose wheels on some of its cars during the cleanup of its most recent derailment in Ohio.
• 🏛️🦠 The House on Friday voted unanimously to declassify US intelligence information about the origins of the Covid pandemic, sending the bill to President Biden's desk for final approval.

CLICKBAIT

• 💰🏙 The salary you need to live comfortably in the US' largest 25 metro areas.

On Friday, we covered a breakthrough at a new nuclear fission power plant in Georgia, which means the first US-made nuclear plant in nearly three decades will be able to power a quarter-million homes by late spring.

❓ Our question to you: In general, how do you feel about using nuclear energy as a source of electricity in the US?

• 👍 Strongly agree: 43%
• 📈 Agree/Somewhat agree: 26%
• 🤷 Neutral: 10%
• 📉 Disagree/Somewhat disagree: 13%
• 👎 Strongly disagree: 8%

Click here to read some of the best responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 9,409 votes and 882 longform responses.

Monday: First weekday of Daylight Saving Time, Japan will lift most Covid mask mandates

Tuesday: Pi Day; Consumer Price Index for February drops; March Madness First Four tips off

Wednesday: The Ides of March; the World Baseball Classic enters its knockout round

Thursday: March Madness full bracket tips off

Friday: St. Patrick’s Day

Jonathan Turtle is a passionate farmer.

👨‍🌾 Check out his wheels... The UK resident lives with cerebral palsy – but thanks to his adaptable wheelchair, his condition has never slowed him down. 

• Jonathan's custom wheelchair has tow attachments that allow him to pull small farming machinery, transport hay bales, and traverse uneven farmland.

🌾 Find your passion... He may be nonverbal, but Jonathan's joy is clear when he's out on the farm. 

"Farming is a huge part of his identity," said Jonathan's sister Glenda. "When he's farming he's in his happy place and the smile on his face when he's out in the fields just brings me so much happiness."

Guess the definitions of the following Greek/Latin root words.

1. Ment
2. Null
3. Kilo
4. Hum
5. Vert

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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1. Ment = Mind (e.g., demented, mentality)
2. Null = Nothing (nullify)
3. Kilo = Thousand (kilogram, kilometer)
4. Hum = Ground (exhuminate, inhume)
5. Vert = Turn (convert, invert)