After hearing rumors of a "soft landing" from the Federal Reserve for the past year, an old-fashioned bank run has raised the odds considerably of the outcome from its aggressive rate-hike program ushering in a much harder one. Although Fed Chairman Jerome Powell warned us that the road ahead will be "bumpy" during his testimony before Congress last Tuesday, a bank contagion beginning just a few days later is not what investors had in mind. As I was typing my column last Friday, California banking regulators moved quickly to close Silicon Valley Banking Financial Group (SVB) in what became the second largest bank ... (full story)