Another weekend, another mad scramble to prevent a banking crisis.

Just one week after US officials raced to backstop Silicon Valley Bank depositors, Swiss authorities sprinted to engineer a takeover of spiraling Credit Suisse before the markets opened on Monday.

They got it done: Swiss banking giant UBS will buy its rival Credit Suisse for more than $3 billion in a historic tie-up of the country’s storied banks. It’s one of the most significant banking events in years, marking the first merger between systemically important global banks since the 2008 financial crisis.

How we got here: Credit Suisse had experienced massive outflows last week (up to $10 billion per day, according to the WSJ) and was teetering on collapse. An uncontrolled implosion of Credit Suisse would have had “incalculable consequences for the country and the international financial system,” Swiss President Alain Berset said. In other words, if Credit Suisse came crashing down, it would have brought many others with it.

UBS didn’t exactly volunteer as tribute

Understanding the market calamity that would’ve occurred otherwise, Swiss regulators essentially forced UBS to go through with this purchase and offered the bank $108.8 billion in liquidity as a way of saying “thanks for preventing a global financial crisis .”

For Credit Suisse, it’s an inglorious end. The iconic financial institution had been badly mismanaged for years, and its measly sale price reflects its fall from grace. Valued at ~$8.5 billion at market close on Friday, Credit Suisse sold for significantly less than half of that.

• To put the price tag in perspective, Crocs is worth more than twice as much as what Credit Suisse was bought for.
• No disrespect to Crocs, but Credit Suisse has been around for 166 years and had $574 billion in total assets at the end of 2022. This is a stunning collapse of a once-revered bank.

So, what’s it all mean? Just like US authorities did last weekend, Swiss regulators moved rapidly to nip a spiraling crisis in the bud, employing a “let’s do what needs to be done and worry about the consequences later” approach. It’s unclear whether these last-ditch government efforts will shore up confidence in a sector that’s had its world turned upside down in less than two weeks.

Trump claims he’s going to be arrested. In a post on Truth Social, former President Donald Trump wrote (in all caps) that he expects to be arrested on Tuesday. His prediction was an apparent reference to the New York investigation into alleged hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels, and all signs point to an indictment shortly. But Trump had no direct knowledge of the timing of an arrest, a spokesperson for the former president said. Trump ended his post by urging his supporters to protest and “take our nation back!” in an echo of his rhetoric ahead of the attack on the Capitol.

Could the insured deposit cap get a lift? At least four US lawmakers—two from each side of the aisle—said they would support raising the cap on FDIC-insured deposits in order to reassure frazzled bank customers that their deposits are safe. The current cap is $250,000 (up from $100k pre-financial crisis), but Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren said bumping it up “is a good move.” Opponents of raising the cap say it would only increase risk-taking and bad behavior by banks. Some even argue we should lower it.

Taylor Swift kicked off her tour. The pop star began her Eras Tour in Arizona on Friday night, and if the first show is any indication, the hype is real. Swift performed 44 songs from her deep catalog across 3 hours and 15 minutes, delighting fans who she acknowledged went through “considerable effort” to be there (likely a swipe at Ticketmaster). USA Today wrote: “Not since the most vigorous days of Bruce Springsteen and his legendary live concerts has a mainstream artist packed so much music into one show.”

Seems like everyone is moving to Florida these days—including a gigantic blob of seaweed almost twice the width of the contiguous US.

The blob, comprised of 10 tons of sargassum algae, is trekking across the Caribbean toward Florida and is already washing up in places like Key West. Local communities across the Gulf of Mexico are worried the seaweed will force them to close popular tourism sites during the peak summer months.

That’s because when the seaweed piles up on a beach, it becomes a huge headache—literally.

• Out of the water, sargassum rots and releases chemicals that smell like rotten eggs. Those chemicals also present a risk for people with respiratory issues.
• And then there’s the sheer volume of seaweed. Sargassum is piling up five- to six feet deep on Caribbean beaches, and Barbados needs to employ 1,600 dump trucks a day to haul it away, Brian Lapointe, an oceanographer at Florida Atlantic University, told CNN.

Big picture: Sargassum blooms are not new, and they provide an important habitat for marine life as they move across the ocean. But, due to a variety of factors scientists haven’t fully grasped yet, the blobs have gotten much bigger since 2011. This year’s blob could break records.

A high-stakes Fed meeting: While many Fed meetings are ho-hum, the one on Wednesday will pack the drama of a prime-time Oprah interview. The central bank’s plan to continue raising interest rates has been upended by the banking turmoil, and experts now say there’s a chance the Fed will pause its rate hikes to shield the banking sector from further chaos.

TikTok CEO on Capitol Hill. TikTok boss Shou Zi Chew will testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday, where he’ll try to make the case that a sale won’t alleviate US lawmakers’ privacy concerns. The US has recently demanded Chinese-owned ByteDance sell its stake in TikTok or else it would ban the app.

Xi ​​Putin. Chinese President Xi Jinping will travel to Moscow today for a three-day meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. China has tried to play it neutral around the war in Ukraine, but Xi’s visit to Russia symbolizes the close ties between the two US adversaries.

Everything else…

• March Madness rolls on (it’s living up to its name this year).
• Islam’s holiest month, Ramadan, begins at sundown on Wednesday.
• On Friday, Keanu Reeves returns as John Wick for the fourth installment of the hitman franchise.

Stat: There’s so much less room for activities. The average apartment size in the US had its biggest drop on record last year, falling to 887 square feet from 917 in 2021, according to a RentCafe.com report. The average US apartment size is now down a full 54 square feet from 10 years ago. What’s behind the shrinkage? Primarily the historically large share of studio and one-bedroom apartments entering the market, RentCafe says.

Quote: “Your boss will soon be able to ask their Copilot to create a summary of who does the least work on average and have their termination letter already drafted in Outlook.”

Economist Samuel Hammond speculated on Twitter about how Microsoft’s workplace AI tools will change performance reviews forever.

Read: One Twitter user gave GPT-4 a budget of $100 and told it to make as much money as possible. Check out the progress. (Jackson Greathouse Fall)

Get smart about steak: I made beef stew this weekend and found this YouTube video to be an exceptional breakdown of the different cuts of meat.

They can’t all be bangers: Here are 50 genuinely horrible albums by otherwise brilliant artists.

Programming history: The rise and fall of Visual Basic, once the world’s most dominant programming environment.

The art of a glow up: Notes on Wikipedia’s 2023 redesign.

Cue the countdown: It’s < 30 days ’til Tax Day, and if that makes your palms sweaty, head over to TaxAct. They offer expert advice to help you complete those returns + a Maximum Refund Guarantee.*

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• Think you might owe the IRS in April? Here are 3 easy ways to lower your tax bill.
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