Every single day there are more twists and turns to this new banking panic.  In fact, we just learned that the big banks have gotten together to save First Republic.  That is good news, because a collapse of First Republic would have been a major catastrophe.  But First Republic is just one in a very long list of banks that are in very serious jeopardy.  For months, I relentlessly warned that our financial system could not handle higher interest rates.  It was inevitable that financial institutions would start to break, and that is precisely what has happened.    We are in far more trouble than most people realize, and we are still only in the very early chapters of this crisis.

Initially, there were rumors that a buyer was being sought for First Republic, but instead the "too big to fail" banks agreed on a plan to deposit a total of 30 billion dollars into the troubled institution…