Congressman Paul Says Fed Transparency Is His Goal

Fed throws euro banks a lifeline
For an outfit whose policies supposedly are plunging the world into unspeakable conflict, the Federal Reserve is doing an awful lot to avoid another meltdown. The Fed said Tuesday it would extend The Dollar swap lines it provides to Central Banks in Europe, Japan and Canada in a bid to avoid a cash crunch like the ones seen to such devastating effect in 2008. Your dollars, our problem? The swap lines, under which the Fed provides foreign central Bankers with essentially unlimited stocks of doll...

Fed throws euro banks a lifeline
For an outfit whose policies supposedly are plunging the world into unspeakable conflict, the Federal Reserve is doing an awful lot to avoid another meltdown. The Fed said Tuesday it would extend The Dollar swap lines it provides to Central Banks in Europe, Japan and Canada in a bid to avoid a cash crunch like the ones seen to such devastating effect in 2008. Your dollars, our problem? The swap lines, under which the Fed provides foreign central Bankers with essentially unlimited stocks of doll...

Federal Reserve Forces Official Bank of Jesus To Cancel Christmas
A small-town bank in Oklahoma is under siege by governmental secularizing forces this Holiday Season, as the Federal Reserve is very jealous of their impressive Jesus-themed bank and wants to ruin it for everyone. According to a local teevee news station website, the Fed comes ’round every four years with a list of Regulations to make sure banks are not just stealing their customers’ money or whatever, one of which prohibits discriminatory preference for the religion of some customer...

Lawmakers Call Out Bernanke After Feds Force Bank To Remove Crosses
WASHINGTON -- U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe and U.S. Rep. Frank Lucas issued a joint letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Friday over what the two view as a “distressing interpretation of Federal Reserve Regulation B” concerning a bank in Perkins. Dec. 17: Business Owner Shoots Burglar, Police Say Dec. 16: Okla. Executes Man With Controversial Drug Dec. 14: Police Raid 'Sex Abuse Compound,' Arrest 11 Slideshow:Who Got Arrested? Oklahoma Mugshots Get Wireless Alerts! Federal ...

Fed throws euro banks a lifeline
Fed throws euro banks a lifeline Posted by Colin Barr December 21, 2010 4:19 pm For an outfit whose policies supposedly are plunging the world into unspeakable conflict, the Federal Reserve is doing an awful lot to avoid another meltdown. The Fed said Tuesday it would extend The Dollar swap lines it provides to Central Banks in Europe, Japan and Canada in a bid to avoid a cash crunch like the ones seen to such devastating effect in 2008. Your dollars, our problem? The swap lines, under which...

Fed Extends Currency Swap Lines Over Eurobank Dollar Funding Concerns
The party line is everything is fine in bank land….even Eurobank land. But some recent developments suggest otherwise. The business news on Europe has pretty much daily updates on the unfolding and linked Sovereign Debt/ bank solvency crisis. The officialdom insists this looming problem can be resolved but most observers think it can’t be in the absence of a fiscal union, which is a political bridge too Far Right now. In a not-widely-noticed replay of pre-crisis conditions, the co...

US Fed extends dollar lifeline for central banks
The US Federal Reserve on Tuesday extended until August an emergency tool for other Central Banks to access US dollars, amid market jitters and high demand for the safe haven greenback. The deal, which had been due to expire in January, allows the Central Banks of Britain, Japan, Canada and Switzerland, as well as the European Central Bank, to exchange local currency for US dollars. The swap agreements were sealed in May, but as a Debt crisis and slow Economic Recovery continues to roil markets ...

FOREX-Euro helped by report China will buy Portugal's debt
Wed Dec 22, 2010 7:49am EST * Euro gets lift from report China will buy Portuguese Debt * ECB tender shows heavy reliance on cheap funding * Euro hovers near all-time low vs Swiss franc (Adds detail, updates prices) By Anirban Nag LONDON, Dec 22 (Reuters) - The euro gained against The Dollar and bounced from all-time lows against the Swiss franc on Wednesday, boosted by a news report that China was ready to buy significant amounts of Portuguese Sovereign Debt. The Jornal de Negocios daily rep...

Ron Paul vs. the Federal Reserve
Having recently been named head of the House subcommittee on domestic Monetary Policy, Ron Paul is looking forward to the chance to butt heads with the Federal Reserve, a longtime object of his scorn. The Texas congressman, who last year wrote the book End the Fed, fundamentally disagrees with the power that the system has over the value of paper money. "What I'm really asking for is competition, to get rid of the monopoly power of the Fed, because they don't have legitimate power to do what the...

U.S. Stock Futures Advance on Earnings Forecasts, Retail Data
Dec. 21 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. stock futures rose, indicating the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index may advance for a fourth day, as earnings forecasts from Adobe Systems Inc. to Jabil Circuit Inc. beat analyst estimates and a gauge of Retail Sales accelerated. Adobe, the top maker of graphic-design programs, and Jabil Circuit, an electronics manufacturer, rallied more than 5.7 percent. Macy’s Inc. and Abercrombie & Fitch Co. gained after the International Council of Shopping Centers ...

Oracles can be wrong
Well, between now and the close of the year all of our intellectual and insightful prognosticators will once again share their fortunetelling for 2011 and beyond. Prepare yourself for their well-thought-out social, economic and global predictions for our nation and abroad. The invention of science and statistics has replaced old-school fortunetelling in very insidious ways. Now, while careful to disclaim — past performance is no guarantee of future results — hucksters of all sorts try to s...

Ron Paul not ruling out 2012 presidential run, says decision to come at beginning of the year (Daily Caller)
On Sunday’s broadcast of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” 2008 Republican Presidential Candidate Rep. Ron Paul, a Libertarian favorite, addressed his 2012 prospects. He told NPR’s Guy Raz that a presidential run is still a possibility. “Well, it’s possible and I haven’t ruled it out, so I’ll probably be deciding at the beginning of the year,” Paul said. “And people ask me if I think about it a lot and I do because a lot of people ...

The Unsustainable Dollar Coming To Your Home Soon
All of us are quite aware of the continued Deficit spending that has gone on ever since the Republican majority Congress held the Clinton Administration expenditures to a Balanced Budget. However, once the Clinton White House left office under a deluge of law breaking accusations from the White Water Scandal to Monica Lewinski, from the missing Hard Drives at Los Alamos to Clinton’s midnight gravy train of faxed pardons, it began. Under George W. Bush, barely in office for a few months, 9-...

Saving Social Security: Stopping Obamas Next Bad Deal
President Obama insists that he is a really bad negotiator, therefore the deal he got on the two-year extension of the Bush Tax Cuts and the one-year extension of UI benefits was the best that he could do. This package also came with a one-year cut in the Social Security tax. This cut will seriously threaten the program’s finances if next year, the Republican Congress is no more willing to end a temporary tax cut than this year’s Democratic Congress. The logic here is straightforward...

A Stealth Attack on Financial Reform?
Tue Dec. 21, 2010 7:52 AM PST — Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), the incoming chair of the House Financial Services committee. Courtesy of Wikimedia commons. The campaign to kneecap the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform bill just keeps gaining steam. First, it was Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), the incoming chairman of the House Financial Services committee, who pledged to Repeal federal Regulators' power to dismantle "too big to fail" banks, as spelled out in Dodd-Frank. Bachus also trie...

Reserve Currency Roulette
Following up on our post from Friday, in which we illustrated the currency reserve and GDP market share of a number of different countries, a kind reader asked a question: “I wonder what percentage of the world’s foreign exchange reserves The Dollar had when it was redeemable among central banks in gold?” Our source for the graph, the IMF, only showed data going back to 1995, so we dug a little more and found the answer in a paper written by Barry Eichengreen of the University ...

EUR/CHF Continues To Make Historic Lows On Euro Zone Tensions
The euro is slightly firmer today vs. The Dollar today, but continues to make new historic lows vs. Swiss franc just below 1.25, suggesting that euro zone tensions remain strong. EM currencies continue to firm, suggesting a bit of decoupling from the euro zone crisis. However, trading ranges are fairly narrow as we head into the holiday weekend. The ECB said will lend out EUR149.5 bln in 3-month loans, and that 270 banks bid for the money. Banks need to repay EUR96.9 bln in maturing 12-month l...

China's forex inflows slow in November but still high
The amount of foreign currency flowing into China slowed in November but was still the second highest monthly total in 2010, the government said on Monday, amid official efforts to contain Inflation. Beijing has expressed concern about the flood of overseas money into the world's second-largest economy which it fears is fuelling inflation and helping to push property prices out of the reach of most ordinary Chinese. The large flow of foreign currency -- partly driven by strong demand for Chinese...

San Francisco Fed Offers Sympathy to Pre-Crisis Mortgage Lenders
By Michael S. Derby Mortgage lenders may deserve more sympathy for their performance in the years leading up to the Financial Crisis than they now get credit for, new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco argues. Bank Economist John Krainer , with Visiting Scholar Stephen LeRoy , argue in a note Monday that even though the market ended up blowing up, mortgage lenders had rationally priced in what was understood about Housing Market risk at the time they wrote the loans. That&#...

On Tuesdays Radio Show
• Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) joins Alan to discuss the end of the lame-duck session and his plans to tackle the Federal Reserve in the New Year. • The Washington Post reports that the government is building a vast domestic spying network. The ACLU’s Mike German , a former FBI agent, shares his concerns with Alan. • Could the New START Treaty be a defining moment for President Obama? Alan will have all the latest on the vote. ...

Question #10 for 2011: Monetary Policy
by CalculatedRisk on 12/21/2010 12:57:00 PM Over the weekend I posted some questions for next year: Ten Economic Questions for 2011. I'll try to add some predictions, or at least some thoughts for each question - working backwards - before the end of year. Remember, I have no crystal ball and I'm sure many people will disagree. Also many of the questions are interrelated. The question on Monetary Policy depends on Inflation (question #9) and the Unemployment Rate (question #6). And the unemplo...

Hedge funds may skirt direct Fed scrutiny: source
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve does not believe any one Hedge Fund can topple the Financial System and therefore the private pools of capital may escape direct supervision by the Central Bank, an industry source familiar with the Fed's position said. The newly created Financial Stability Oversight Council, which includes the Treasury Secretary and 14 U.S. supervisors, including the Fed, are in the early stages of determining which non-bank firms pose a threat to the financial system....

Extended Fed Currency Swaps Not Sign of Fresh Concern
By Michael S. Derby The Federal Reserve ’s extension of it currency swap arrangements with other major Central Bank reflects continued unease around the state of European Financial Markets. That said, the decision to maintain the swap lines with the Bank of Canada , Bank of England , the European Central Bank , the Bank of Japan and Swiss National Bank , should be viewed more as a protective action on the part of American officials. It is not, most Economists reckon, a sign that some new ...

Summary Box: Treasury flat in light trading
LIGHT TRADING: Treasurys traded in a tight range Tuesday. The 10-year note rose 34.3 cents for every $100 invested. That lowered the yield to 3.30 percent from 3.35 late Monday. MORE FED BUYING: The Fed bought $9.4 billion in Treasurys, including $1.61 billion in Inflation-indexed notes. The purchases are part of the Central Bank's $600 billion bond-buying program aimed at lowering long-term Interest Rates. FIGHTING THE FED: Yields have been rising steadily since early November, even after the...

The Federal Reserve: Aging Magician of the Welfare State
December Currency deposits__ supply_          growth rate        increase__              2005                       728.9              3,233.3 ...