Free Republic

The Federal Reserve bought bonds issued by companies including AT&T Inc., UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Walmart Inc. as part of its emergency lending program set up in response to the pandemic, according to new disclosures. On June 16, the U.S. central bank began purchasing securities of individual issuers as part of a broad index it created to include companies that were eligible for the program. The disclosures, posted Sunday, showed that of the $207 million of purchases made on the first day of buying, about 21% were of debt issued by firms in the consumer non-cyclical sector, while 15% were...

The winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize for literature says he has fulfilled a pre-election promise to cut up his green card and leave the United States if Donald Trump was elected president. “I have already done it, I have disengaged [from the United States]. I have done what I said I would do,” Wole Soyinka, an 82-year-old Nigerian poet and playwright, told Agence France-Presse at an education conference in South Africa on Thursday.

The first of many gold price upgrades is here, as Goldman's David Greely finally catches on to what has been all too obvious to anyone with a frontal lobe: "Gold prices hit a new record high last week, closing at $1,663/toz on August 3. Despite this rally, the rise in gold prices has continued to lag the plunge in US real interest rates, with 10-year TIPS yields trading below 30 bp. With our US economics team lowering their outlook for US economic growth, implying US real rates will remain lower for longer, and with sovereign debt issues in both the...

The Obama administration's pay czar is limiting the cash compensation for executives at companies that received the largest taxpayer bailouts to $500,000. The 25th through the 100th top earners at Citigroup, GMAC, American International Group and General Motors also must take more than half their compensation in stock, and at least half must be delayed for three or more years, said Kenneth Feinberg, the Treasury Department's Special Master for Executive Compensation.