Morning! We’re The Neutral, your one stop shop for news without an agenda. Today we’re covering another bank at death’s door, March Madness, and much more. First time reader? Sign up here!

Business & Economy

*Big banks prevent a shutdown trifecta with a big loan. Eleven major banks decided to lend First Republic a helping hand in the form of a 30 billion dollar loan to help with liquidity issues.

Another one? What happened? Basically the same thing that caused the Silicon Valley and Signature banks to fail. A few customers got freaked out that they would lose their uninsured deposits so they started to pull all their cash out. As word got around more and more people started yanking their funds, which created a mass withdrawal event — referred to as a bank run. Pretty soon the banks used up their cash reserves and defaulted.

Looking ahead: Republic was poised to be the third victim of the financial grim reaper in less than a week before it was thrown a life raft. Officials at America’s largest banks said in a joint statement “Our actions reflect our confidence in the country’s banking system”, which is another way of saying “keep this bank run nonsense off our lawns”.

*Electric vehicle on the cheap. VW will be first to market with an affordable electric vehicle that costs $26,000. Take that Tesla! That’s the good news… the bad news is that it won’t be available stateside until 2025. In the meantime, keep scraping together your pennies and pray your ‘09 Civic holds on another year and a half.

Politics

*🤣 Reintroducing Florida Gov. “Ron DeSanctimonious”. Trump is back at it with the name calling and already playing offense against his likely opponent in the bid for the 2024 Presidential Republican nomination. His camp has carefully laid plans on how he wilI smear DeSantis who, until recently, was an ally. Oh, and for the record, DeSanctimonious hasn’t even announced his intention to run.

Sports

*Princeton earns early March Madness Cinderella status. It happens every year and the storyline never gets old — little guy takes down big guy. No. 15 seed Princeton stuns No. 2 Arizona in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Are they poised for a deep run or was this a one and done for the Tigers?

*Watch crazy ending to the No. 4 Virginia vs. No. 13 Furman game. (Via Youtube)

World

*French retirees will have to wait to call it quits. On Thursday, French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne pushed through an unpopular pension change that increases the retirement age from 62 to 64. Opponents of the change have been protesting for months and are furious with the government for approving the changes without a vote. However, France has one of the lowest retirement ages in the industrialized world and cannot continue to operate as it has without going into serious debt.

*UK government loses TikTok privileges. UK government employees will no longer be able to participate in TikTok challenges at work after the app was banned on government issued phones. Officials cited security risks as the reason for the new rule however, folks working for the crown can still have TikTok on their personal devices.

*Ukraine gifted Russian Planes. Ukraine will soon have around a dozen Soviet made fighter jets. That’s right, they will now be defending themselves against Russia with Russia’s own tech.

Extras

*Too close for comfort. Watch as Russian jet dumps fuel on U.S. drone during fly by.

*Nature is beyond cool. National Geographic’s photos of the year are incredible.

*Stay on the bus. The proven path to doing unique and meaningful work.