Free Republic

Financial Crisis: The Republican platform put forward in Cleveland is a lively and conservative document, full of great ideas to make America great again. But one thing stands out as a truly bad idea: reviving the partly-repealed Glass-Steagall Act. "We support reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act, which prohibits commercial banks from engaging in high risk activities," says the platform document. What? It was one of the Democrats' big talking points during the 2007-2008 financial crisis and after that a major cause of the panic was due to Bill Clinton in 1999 foolishly going along with the Republicans to get rid of...

Dodd-Frank has been a behemoth of costly red-tape and an elephant sitting atop American business since is passing. Could that finally be coming to an end?An opportunity to lighten the load could be voted on in the House Financial Services Committee as early as this week. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) has been working to undo Dodd-Frank and that moment is finally here. The Hensarling sponsored bill is called The Financial Choice Act. Listen to Rep. Hensarling himself describe what it does in his own words:The Financial CHOICE Act: Growth for All, Bailouts for None Americans and Conservatives have been starving...

WASHINGTON — The eleventh-hour move by the Donald Trump campaign to add a plan to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act to the Republican platform caught GOP lawmakers off guard, with some of them expressing disappointment with the decision. While the 1930s-era law, which separated commercial and investment banking activities, is strongly supported by progressive Democrats, it is not popular among most Republican policymakers. "I was completely surprised," Rep. Steve Stivers, R-Ohio, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, said in an interview here hours before Trump's formal nomination Tuesday evening. "It was a late addition. I am not sure how...

Former Senator Al D’Amato (R-NY) dropped a bomb on Sunday Morning Futures this AM. D’Amato told Maria Bartiromo that Hillary allowed Russia to take ownership of US uranium so they could sell it to Iran. Hillary made it possible for the Russians to take control of one of our huge uranium producers and allow them to own the company, export the uranium and who do they sell the uranium to? Iran! Now if people knew that and that the foundation as a result of that got $135 million. I think people would start saying, “What?” Former Senator Al D’Amato (R-NY)...

A former top Clinton administration diplomat who used his political sway to garner support for the Iran nuclear deal apparently was being bankrolled the entire time by Boeing -- which is set to make billions off a jet deal with Tehran now that sanctions have been lifted. ADVERTISEMENT Thomas Pickering, who also served as co-chairman of the board examining the Benghazi attack response, publicly pushed for the nuclear deal before its approval last year. He did so by penning op-eds, writing to high-level officials and even testifying before Congress. With the deal in place, Boeing has since moved forward on...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Rep. Scott Garrett (NJ-05) released the following statement in response to reports that Boeing has reached a multibillion-dollar deal to sell commercial passenger planes to Iran. Boeing is one of the largest beneficiaries of the Export-Import (Ex-Im) bank which perpetuates corporate welfare to mega corporations by handing out taxpayer-backed loans. "This agreement between Boeing and the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism is extremely troubling and shows that crony capitalism remains alive and well in Washington. Not only has Boeing lobbied for years to keep the taxpayer-backed Export Import bank alive, it now has also used its...

The largest U.S. financial institutions have enough armor to withstand the turmoil of a major and prolonged national and global recession, the Federal Reserve said Thursday. The central bank’s annual “stress tests” show that the 33 largest financial institutions — including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America and Wells Fargo — all hold more capital than at any time since the 2008 financial crisis. They also hold enough capital that, even if faced with billions of dollars in losses from loans as a result of an economic crisis, they would continue to function. The stress tests were created in the...

Elizabeth “Fauxcahontas” Warren is constantly mentioned as a top choice for Hillary Clinton’s ticket as vice president, but few have bothered to examine whether she would be a disastrous for an already troubled candidate. A Clinton-Warren ticket could actually make winning over the Democratic far-left harder for Clinton. Some argue that Warren, a popular progressive, could boost Clinton’s appeal to former supporters of Bernie Sanders, but a closer examination suggests a Clinton-Warren ticket could actually make winning over the Democratic far-left much harder for Clinton. [SNIP] Moreover, many Sanders supporters are angry at Warren for not endorsing him — shocked...

House Republicans are priming the pump for the next president to overhaul much of the financial regulation enacted in the aftermath of the 2008 global market downturn. The GOP plan would repeal and replace most of the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul with a more market-based regulatory scheme. As part of the GOP’s “A Better Way Agenda,” House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, was scheduled to unveil details of the simpler, yet stricter, regulation Tuesday morning at the Economic Club of New York. “In a phrase,” he said, summarizing the Republican plan in prepared remarks obtained by The Daily Signal, “we...

Editor's note: This column was co-authored by Stephen Moore. We are going to reveal the grand secret to getting rich by investing. It's a simple formula that has worked for Warren Buffett, Carl Icahn and all the greatest investment gurus over the years. Ready? Buy low, sell high. It turns out that Donald Trump has been very, very good at buying low and selling high, and it helps account for his amazing business success. But now Hillary Clinton seems to think it's a crime. Campaigning in California last week she wailed that Trump “actually said he was hoping for the...

Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) on Monday notched a major legal win when a U.S. appeals court overturned a $1.27 billion penalty handed down in a high-profile fraud case tied to mortgages sold by its Countrywide unit prior to the financial crisis of 2008.

The use of technology to better assess a potential borrower's risk profile and score borrowers who previously could not be scored-or were scored inaccurately-is one of the most exciting elements of marketplace lending. That is, of course, unless you are the U.S. Treasury Department, which according to its recently released report on marketplace lending worries that technology will make loan underwriting too good. That isn't a typo; the Treasury is worried that better underwriting may be "unfair" because it can disadvantage borrowers who are currently mischaracterized as low risk by making them pay higher (that is to say, correct) rates....

Financial Meltdown: Thanks to the media, many Americans believe that the financial crisis was a result of banking deregulation. A new study delivers a thorough debunking of that idea. A group of respected think tanks — the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute and the Mercatus Center — has issued a 208-page book titled “The Case Against Dodd-Frank: How The ‘Consumer Protection’ Law Endangers Americans.” It’s a devastating indictment of the law. The book crushes the conventional media and liberal political narrative that deregulation was at the heart of the crisis... ...the crisis “was principally the result...

<p>Reminds me of something Mike Murphy said about Trump in the aftermath of Jeb’s collapse. The logic in favor of nominating another Bush was always, er, complicated, but the logic against nominating a loose cannon is straightforward.</p> <p>I’ll bet even Murphy didn’t think Trump would advertise the possibility that America’s creditors might not receive payment in full in a Trump administration. Choose your own preferred term for what he’s recommending here — renegotiation, bankruptcy, default.</p>

The Big Short: As The Big Short is short on reality, Big Government is short on accountability If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.—Ronald Reagan Enter Dodd Frank: legislation named after Democrats’ Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank, which enacted 2,300 pages of banking regulations. What could have possibly gone wrong with 2,300 pages of new government regulations on banks? This:

Last week, President Obama and Vice President Biden held a hastily arranged secret meeting with Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen. According to the one paragraph statement released by the White House following the meeting, Yellen, Obama, and Biden simply "exchanged notes" about the economy and the progress of financial reform. Because the meeting was held behind closed doors, the American people have no way of knowing what else the three might have discussed. Yellen's secret meeting at the White House followed an emergency secret Federal Reserve Board meeting. The Fed then held another secret meeting to discuss bank reform. These...

Say what you want about Donald Trump, but he has an instinctive knack for zeroing in on an opponent's inherent weakness. With Jeb, it was "low energy." That term exploited a key perception problem of Jeb, and one he couldn't shake. So to did "Little Marco," which may have ended not only Marco Rubio's presidential campaign, but his political career . . . More heavyweights are jumping in to stomp Trump, including Elizabeth Warren. Asked about her jabs, he pounced: "I think it's wonderful because the Indians can now partake in the future of the country. She's got about as...

The Federal Reserve has put forward new rules aimed at addressing one of the primary causes of the 2008 financial crisis -- the financial exposures that the biggest banks had with each other. The Fed is proposing new limits on that exposure. It hopes the new rules will prevent the type of crisis that engulfed the U.S. financial system in September 2008 when the collapse of Lehman Brothers raised fears about the stability of other banks that had made loans to Lehman. [...] The rules would implement a portion of the Dodd-Frank Act passed by Congress in 2010 in response...

Echoing the recent sentiments of Steve Forbes, this week Republican presidential contender Ted Cruz told a group in New Hampshire: "Money is ... a unit of measurement. So, the reason why we see these rapid oscillations in commodities markets, it's because of unstable currencies. And it's why I think we should look at going toward rules-based money supply, ideally tied to gold, so you have stability." Perhaps this will trigger another flood of disagreement in the mainstream press, such as the recent New York Times item which reported that 40 out of 40 "leading economists" said that a gold standard...

The president has nominated attorney J. Mark McWatters for the bank board. However, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), chairman of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, has said he's "in no hurry" to hold a hearing or a vote on the nomination. Other pending confirmations take precedence, he said.The last of the 2015 lobbying reports are in, and the top corporate spender turns out to have been the Boeing Company, at $21.9 million. Not coincidentally, the aerospace giant also outranks thousands of other firms in profiting from the subsidies doled out by the Export-Import Bank. Last year, Boeing benefitted...