News for the week of Mar 20

You may find it a bit hard to keep up with the financial bombshells happening right now on a daily basis. Let me see if I can help you get a 50,000 foot view of the most important political and economic ones.

• ?? The #1 and #2 largest Swiss banks spent the weekend 'haggling' (phrase used by The Economist) to shore up Credit Suisse's finances by an acquisition by UBS (The Economist, UBS release)
• ?? In an appropriate response to the polarization of ESG by a few right-wing politicians in the US, Mars Chocolate's CEO hit out at Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson calling this escapade "nonsense" and that Mars staff “won’t stay with us if we don’t care about ESG or purpose or whatever we call it. So from my chair, I think it’s a nonsense conversation.” (Financial Times)
• ?? Paris is burning due to Macron using a special power to ram an unpopular plan through congress to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 (CNN)
• ?? 20 years ago today, the US invaded Iraq for 'weapons of mass destruction' on fabricated charges. Al Jazeera remembers the millions who protested in the U.S. and around the globe against the invasion. (Al Jazeera). I unfortunately bought into the U.S. narrative at that time, my better-half did not. I've grown quite a bit from that time.
• ?? President Xi Jinping forging global diplomacy? A Chinese-brokered deal for Iran and Saudi Arabia to re-establish diplomatic relations. Now Iran’s Raisi will visit Saudi Arabia (Al Jazeera)
• ? On top of Iran-Saudi relations, Xi Jinping declaring ‘irreversible’ shift to multipolar world ahead of his visit to Moscow this week (RT)
• ?? Trump motivates his base ahead of 2024-run on a rumored indictment charge for paying off sex-worker Stormy Daniels as a violation of U.S. campaign financing laws during his 2020 run. (The Guardian)
• ?? Elon Musk was reported by major news outlets as 'posting a cryptic' tweet to Bill Ackman about the U.S. financial system. As it seems too difficult for major news outlets to decipher, I broke out into a simple concept your 5-year old can understand (Twitter)