Free Republic

Of all the purposes for which you might put U.S. taxpayer dollars at risk, helping wealthy petro-states borrow millions to buy Boeing jets would not rank among the most urgent. Yet that is what the Export-Import Bank does: In fiscal 2013, Ex-Im backed $8.3 billion in aircraft and related sales, including a $117.5 million loan guarantee to support Boeing 737 purchases by Dubai — a typical transaction for an agency that has, over the years, earned the sobriquet “Bank of Boeing,” though it does also support Caterpillar and General Electric, among others. Now Ex-Im suddenly faces extinction: Its charter expires...

The banking industry likes superfluous language. There's "quantitative finance" for example, which (given that finance isalready a quantitative subject) is a bit like saying "aerial flight" or "wet swimming". And then there's "forward guidance". What, as opposed to backward guidance? I mean, what other type of guidance is there? Last summer the Bank of England (BoE) decided it wanted to import the U.S. Federal Reserve's forward guidance policy. In short this went along the lines of "we'll link future moves in the base rate to other external market indicators, so that as these other indicators move then so will base...

In the six years since the financial crisis, the financial services world has seen all kinds of new institutions take over lending deals and clients that were once the domain of traditional banks. There has also been a parallel transformation: the mutation of bankers into shadow bankers, writes Patrick Jenkins in London. The bosses of many shadow banks – hedge funds, private equity and debt funds, tax-efficient “business development companies” and peer-to-peer lenders – seem increasingly to have been drawn from the upper ranks of the big traditional lenders. Many bankers have become disillusioned with the old ways of doing...

LONDON (MarketWatch) — Some leading central banks have become major players on world equity markets in a development that could potentially contribute to overheated asset prices. The buildup of central-banking interest in equities is one of the unexpected consequences of the last few years’ fall in interest rates, which has depressed the returns on central banks’ foreign exchange reserves and driven them to find alternative investment targets. In the years since the financial crisis, central banks have leapt to the forefront of public policy making. They have taken responsibility for lowering interest rates, for maintaining stability of financial institutions, and...

The European Central Bank’s (ECB) recent move to adopt what is described as “negative interest rates” to guard against deflation should lift stock prices, spur businesses to invest and help to aid lagging economic growth on the continent. With the U.S. Federal Reserve scaling back on its easy-money policies as the American economy recovers, the ECB seems focused on adopting some of the same methods that helped the United States. However, such policies are artificial ways to fuel the economy and encourage businesses to take on additional debt that may need to be paid off at much higher interest rates...

The Bank of International Settlements Even if Putin and Obama fail to realize the obvious, they are playing for the same team in a script that has been written for them to play out, the script will culminate in World War III. The grand master controlling the world’s central banks needs World War III to happen. They need a war to unify the planet, socially, politically, economically and religiously. We are soon to learn the meaning of the popular NWO phrase, “Out of chaos comes order”.The Death of the Dollar Is the Motivating Force Behind WW III Russia is...

We just reported about how the European Central Bank has instituted negative interest rates for member banks. This could soon spread to the US and also to consumer accounts. If so, you would find money taken out of your bank account each quarter unless you spend it. The idea is that if low rates are not yet persuading you to spend, then why not punish you even more for saving? To make this more effective, there would also be a push for all electronic money to keep you from stashing any away from the confiscation agents. Ken Rogoff, leading Harvard...

It is a rare occurrence for conversations about contemporary art to happen outside of the insular circles of the art world. Contemporary art, by and large, exists as a bubble. So it should come as no great surprise that other “bubbles” are the only thing that may collide with contemporary art. Like, for instance, the elite insider world of high finance that purchases much contemporary art at auction. Last week, one such collision came to light when Credit Suisse was criminally convicted for assisting tax evasion and further revealed what more and more people realize: art can be quite the...

TEHRAN, Iran – A billionaire businessman at the heart of a $2.6 billion state bank scam, the largest fraud case since the country's 1979 Islamic Revolution, was executed Saturday, state television reported. Authorities put Mahafarid Amir Khosravi, also known as Amir Mansour Aria, to death at Evin prison, just north of the capital, Tehran, the station reported. The report said the execution came after Iran's Supreme Court upheld his death sentence. Khosravi's lawyer, Gholam Ali Riahi, was quoted by news website khabaronline.ir as saying that his client was put to death without any notice.

TARP was the absolute height of crony capitalism. Many of the big banks should have gone down, but in the midst of a “Blackberry panic” – as David Stockman puts it – the masters of the masters of the universe lost sight of reality and the nature of markets. Yes, Goldman Sachs would have gone down. But this would have been a GOOD THING. The blood which should have filled the the streets of Downtown Manhattan would have washed the unsustainable leverage clean from the system (for a while.) Giants are meant to fall. It would have been good for...

<p>So the international sanctions aren’t working—don’t worry! If 1,000 years of Russian screw-ups are anything to go by, it won’t be long before Vladimir Putin brings himself down.</p> <p>Now that we’ve failed to use Russia’s corrupt and degenerating economy, subservience to the international banking system, and vulnerability to falling energy prices to pop Vladimir Putin like a zit, we’re going to have sit on our NATO, E.U., and OSCE duffs and take the long view of Russian imperialism.</p>

Colorado lawmakers approved the first financial system for the marijuana industry Wednesday, a network of uninsured cooperatives designed to give pot businesses a way to access basic banking services. The plan seeks to move the marijuana industry away from its cash-only roots. Banks routinely reject pot businesses for even basic services such as checking accounts because they fear running afoul of federal law, which considers marijuana and its proceeds illegal. The result: Pot shop owners deal in large amounts of cash, which makes them targets for criminals. Or they try to find ways around the problem, like drenching their proceeds...

Despite being in good financial standing, adult film performers and others in the porn industry have had bank accounts abruptly terminated—and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) may have had something to do with it. Under "Operation Choke Point," the DOJ and its allies are going after legal but subjectively undesirable business ventures by pressuring banks to terminate their bank accounts or refuse their business. The very premise is clearly chilling—the DOJ is coercing private businesses in an attempt to centrally engineer the American marketplace based on it's own politically biased moral judgements. Targeted business categories so far have included...

CODE RED: Central Banks Will Frantically Pound The Panic Button And Eventually Become Executioners To The World's Currencies John Mauldin, Thoughts From The FrontlineApr. 27, 2014, 9:21 AM (It is especially important to read the opening quotes this week. They set up the theme in the proper context.) “There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.” –...

Long before George Bailey wrestled with Mr. Potter in "It's a Wonderful Life," the public decried the pay of top executives in large financial institutions. Overpaid bank executives are the villains in regulatory morality tales and feed distorted public perceptions about bankers' pay. It is true that the very top bank executives make more in a year than most of us make in a lifetime, but compensation of this magnitude is rare. Most banks in this country are small businesses and pay employees modest salaries. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average annual salary of a bank employee...

On Tuesday morning, a plane owned in trust by the Bank of Utah showed up in a very visible area of the Mehrabad Airport in Tehran, the capital of the Islamic Republic of Iran. What was it doing there exactly? Nobody knows, reports The New York Times. Under President Barack Obama, the United States has eased some of the long-standing punitive economic sanctions against Iran. Still, very little American — or European — economic activity is allowed inside the religious theocracy. The Bank of Utah is certainly no Wells Fargo. The Ogden-based community bank has all of 13 branches including...

Who rules America? All the Presidents’ Bankers is a groundbreaking narrative of how an elite group of men transformed the American economy and government, dictated foreign and domestic policy, and shaped world history. Culled from original presidential archival documents, All the Presidents’ Bankers delivers an explosive account of the hundred-year interdependence between the White House and Wall Street that transcends a simple analysis of money driving politics—or greed driving bankers. Prins ushers us into the intimate world of exclusive clubs, vacation spots, and Ivy League universities that binds presidents and financiers. She unravels the multi-generational blood, intermarriage, and protégé relationships...

A Dutch former top banker who came under fire for taking a large pay-off after the nationalisation of his troubled bank was found dead along with his wife and daughter on Saturday in what police called a family tragedy. Jan Peter Schmittmann, 57, ran the domestic operations of Dutch bank ABN Amro between 2003 and 2007 and was widely criticised for landing an 8 million euro pay-off after the bank's collapse and subsequent nationalisation.

Yatsenyuk addressed the nation in a TV appearance: •*UKRAINE TO RAISE GAS, HEATING PRICES GRADUALLY, PREMIER SAYS •*UKRAINE TO RAISE HEATING PRICES 40% THIS YEAR, 40% NEXT YEAR •*UKRAINE TO RAISE HEATING PRICES 20% IN 2016 AND 20% IN 2017 So a 182% increase by 2017 •*YATSENYUK SAYS PRICE INCREASE WILL BRING IT TO MARKET LEVELS •*UKRAINE HOUSEHOLDS PAY $84 PER 1,000 CUBIC METERS GAS:YATSENYUK •*IMPORTED RUSSIAN GAS WILL BE ABOUT $500: YATSENYUK •*HOUSEHOLD RATE INCREASE IS `ONLY RIGHT DECISION:' YATSENYUK And then, via The Ukraine Central Bank, they implement tougher capital controls: •*UKRAINE CENTRAL BANK SETS LIMITS ON FOREIGN...

Hundreds of people rushed on Tuesday to withdraw money from branches of two small Chinese banks after rumours spread about solvency at one of them, reflecting growing anxiety among investors as regulators signal greater tolerance for credit defaults. The case highlights the urgency of plans to put in place a deposit insurance system to protect investors against bank insolvency, as Chinese grow increasingly nervous about the impact of slowing economic growth on financial institutions. Regulators have said they will roll out deposit insurance as soon as possible, without giving a firm deadline.