In another major warning sign for the state of the United States economy, shares of another major bank, PacWest Bancorp, were in freefall yesterday after the bank announced plans to sell its assets and transfer ownership.
The move would normally result in a stock bump, but as consumer confidence hits extreme lows, people are worried that it means the bank is going through financial difficulties.
The announcement of the sale resulted in the stock plummeting by nearly 70 percent, before stabilizing to a 50 percent loss in value on Thursday.
Financial and economic experts are starting to sound the alarm bell as the shock from the stock collapse reverberated across many other regional banks who also saw a decline in their stock price, such as Western Alliance who oversaw a similarly disastrous day on the stock market with a 60 percent drop in its prices.
The recent banking troubles come just over a month after other major banks such as Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) experienced a collapse that saw hundreds of billions of dollars in stock value evaporate overnight.
Some have said that recent banking troubles are reminiscent of the 2008 global recession as Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell struggles to contain the looming disaster, which he claims can still be tamed without a recession.
Breitbart Reports–
To put it lightly: Jerome Powell is not having a good week.
Shares of PacWest Bancorp plunged about an hour after the Federal Reserve chairman finished his press conference yesterday. Soon afterward, shares of many U.S. regional banks were indicated down steeply in after-hours trading. Although PacWest hoped to calm investors by issuing reassuring statements last night, their shares were down by nearly 60 percent after the first hour of trading this morning.
The market seems to be in full panic mode. What set off the sell-off on Wednesday evening was a relatively anodyne report that PacWest was “weighing strategic options,” which could include a sale of the bank or even a break-up. Normally, news that a company is considering a sale pumps up its share price. But in the midst of a crisis on confidence for banks, this has the opposite effect.
