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Impacts of the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, housing market correction and tax return tips: Must-read business and investing stories

The shutdown of Silicon Valley Bank sent shockwaves across global markets and triggered a reassessment of future rate moves by central banks, including that of the Bank of Canada.DADO RUVIC/Reuters

Getting caught up on a week that got away? Here’s your weekly digest of the Globe’s most essential business and investing stories, with insights and analysis from the pros, stock tips, portfolio strategies and more.

Silicon Valley Bank has collapsed – now here’s the good news

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, one of the world’s most prominent technology financiers, marked the second-biggest bank failure in US history after

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Thanks to a slowing economy, SBA loans have been growing in popularity

As interest rates continue to increase and fears of a recession loom, it is becoming harder for some small businesses to get financing.

However, one very good option remains: the US Small Business Administration. Thanks to a slowing economy, SBA loans have been growing in popularity. In 2022 the agency approved about 57,000 loans totaling $35 billion, with about $1 billion specifically in Illinois and the numbers are already increasing so far in 2023.

“We’ve seen a lot more interest in these loans this year,” said Tom Huffman, a senior vice president at Wintrust Bank, which serves many businesses throughout

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Small business owner talks serving the community’s needs

Mar. 18—Most people, when they think about shopping local, they think about small businesses like boutiques and gift shops. However, there are many services and needs based businesses that are locally owned as well.

Athens’ newest laundromat, The Bubble Hut, just opened up at the beginning of the month on Highway 31.

“We just felt like there was an opportunity to provide something nice and new and modern to the community,” owner Ryan Dorminey said. “There was a building that we kind of had our eyes on.”

That building, of course, is none other than the old spot for a

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First Citizens Bank Charitable Foundation anounces donations

First Citizens Charitable Foundation, Inc. announced in a press release that 45 area organizations were the recipients of $149,950 in donations in December 2022 and January 2023.

Recipients include the following: Project Flo Association $2,000; Charles City Community Schools $1,000; Immaculate Conception School $2,000; Floyd County Historical Society $2,000; National 19th Amendment Society $5,000; Friends of Winnebago County Conservation Foundation, Inc. $5,000; YSS Francis Lauer $4,000; Mason City Fire Department $5,500; St. Ansgar Historic School Project (South Square) $1,000; Greater Iowa Youth For Christ $10,000; IOOF Home and Community Therapy Center $1,000; Grace Church $1,000; North Iowa Christian School $10,000;

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Are banks on the edge of another 2008-style precipice?

Northern Rock, Bear Stearns, Countrywide Financial and Alliance & Leicester. Back in late 2007 and early 2008, when they all failed or were rescued, none of the above was systemically important. And few observers would have predicted the nightmarish crisis that was to strike within the year, felling behemoths from Wall Street’s venerable Lehman Brothers to Royal Bank of Scotland, then the biggest bank in the world.

Fifteen years later, after a week in which four banks — Silicon Valley Bank, Signature and First Republic in the US, and Credit Suisse in Europe — teetered and were propped up in

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Time to become Virtually perfect

Some might believe that the COVID ’19 pandemic was the harbinger of a heightened digital health wave, while others might believe that the pandemic simply hastened the process of its evolution and adoption. I, for one, stand by the latter. The Digital Health market size was around US$ 195.1 billion in 2021, and is estimated to substantially grow to around US$ 780.05 billion by 2030¹. The spending on digital healthcare solutions is estimated to reach US$ 244 billion by 2025². Digital Health companies have been slowly simmering, brewing, adapting, and growing, and seizing the market when the time

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Westlock County unveils new strategic plan

WESTLOCK – Westlock County has a freshly-minted strategic plan, a 12-page document that presents a unified voice from councillors on what needs to be done at the municipality for the remainder of their four-year term and lays out an “ideal future” and the direction needed to get there.

At their Feb. 28 regular meeting, councilors voted 6-0 (Coun. Francis Cloutier was absent) to accept the 2023-2026 strategic plan, a document that was first talked about in the fall following the hiring of new CAO Tony Kulbisky. Work on the plan, which was crafted solely with input from councilors and compiled

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How Can We Stop Overthinking?


How many evenings have seemed endless due to the constant over-analyzing we do in our minds? If you belong to the category of “overthinkers”, you understand exactly what we mean. A simple and innocent thought can very easily become inflated and end up being a torture of our psychology. Most problems are created by ourselves in the first place, due to the fact that we often allow them to creep into us, focusing on the worst case scenario and not on their solution. This is how a person who analyzes everything functions. Except that in this case even an insignificant

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