Free Republic

The Federal Reserve kept its pledge to keep interest rates anchored near zero and promised to keep rates there until inflation rises consistently. As the central bank concluded its two-day policy meeting Wednesday, it said short-term rates would remain targeted at 0%-0.25%. Officials also changed their economic forecasts to reflect a smaller decline in GDP and a lower unemployment rate in 2020. Projections from individual members also indicated that rates could stay anchored near zero through 2023. All but four members indicated they see zero rates through then. This was the first time the committee forecast its outlook for 2023....

On Wednesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) introduced a new bill that would require the Federal Reserve to make reducing racial employment and wage gaps a central part of its mission moving forward. The bill, which is co-sponsored by 18 other Democrats including Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), would require the Federal Reserve to have a Racial and Economic Equity Act that “minimizes and eliminates racial disparities in employment, wages, wealth, and access to affordable credit,” the proposed bill...

"Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and Randal Quarles, the Vice Chairman for Supervision at the Fed, have stated in testimony before Congress that they would be providing transaction level details of their Section 13(3) Emergency Lending Facilities on a regular, ongoing basis. But the three oldest of those facilities, the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF), the Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF), and the Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (MMLF), which were all created more than four months ago in mid-March, have yet to release any transaction level details to the public. The Fed is required to provide reports every...

Today we got a taste of things to come when White House China hawk Peter Navarro stated to the press that the US-China trade deal was “over”. Cue a plunge in stocks and in CNY and in bond yields and general risk off. Then cue the inevitable rapid winding-back of those comments from Navarro and Kudlow and Trump, with the former saying his comments had been taken “wildly out of context” (they hadn’t given he was talking about the total collapse of US trust in China) and the latter tweeting “The China Trade Deal is fully intact. Hopefully they will...

Powell to speak amid issues with QE acceleration, China, protests, riots & Twitter wars. On Friday, May 29, at 11:00 AM ET. Webcast.....

Bonds catch a bid on a day stocks are stuck in the mud. Bond exchange-traded funds roared higher Tuesday, the first day the Federal Reserve stepped into the market to help keep credit flowing in the aftermath of the coronavirus-induced March market shock.

The Federal Reserve made some changes to its Main Street Lending Program according to a Thursday press release by the central bank that will now extend a much-needed lifeline to the U.S. oil industry. As bankruptcies, capex cuts, and unfavorable financial reports from Q1 start to trickle into the US shale patch, more oil companies in peril will now be able to tap the Main Street fund that was set up to render aid to small and medium sized businesses. Prior to today, those funds were not available to companies who had more than 10,000 employees and $2.5 billion in...

The federal funds being sent to states to help deal with the COVID-19 pandemic shouldn’t be used on matters unrelated to the pandemic, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said. COVID-19 is a disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, a novel coronavirus from China. The $150 billion approved by Congress in legislation signed by President Donald Trump is being sent to states to cover CCP virus-related expenses, Mnuchin said during an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “We’ve been clear that to the extent people have to use police to enforce coronavirus issues, public safety, things like that, that they...

On Friday, U.S. bureaucrats passed the 2020 stimulus bill, which has become the largest cash injection package ever created by the federal government. However, following the bill making it through the Senate and House, Republican representative Thomas Massie told the public the stimulus bill bolsters a shroud of secrecy surrounding the Federal Reserve. Moreover, within the depths of the bill’s 880 pages, there’s a $454 billion slush fund available for Wall Street among many other types of pork-barrel funding.

On Thursday, knowing that a three-day Easter weekend was coming and the attention of the public would be elsewhere, the Federal Reserve announced that it would allow two of its emergency lending programs to begin buying junk bonds. Those are bonds with less than an investment-grade credit rating, meaning they have a greater likelihood of defaulting. The Fed is not simply accepting junk bonds as collateral for loans, it will actually be buying junk bonds — potentially hundreds of billions of dollars of them. Two of the popular junk bond ETFs, iShares iBoxx High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (symbol HYG)...

Calculating Second-Quarter Unemployment Rate These two numbers were obtained by applying different methodologies and classifications to two different datasets. This means that while there may be significant overlap, each measure will also be capturing some aspects that the other ignores.For this reason, we simply took the average of those two numbers as a point estimate for the total number of workers who will be laid off during the second quarter. This resulted in 47.05 million people being laid off during this period.Summing to the initial number of unemployed in February, this resulted in a total number of unemployed persons of...

President Donald Trump said at a White House briefing he expects a sharp economic rebound later in the year due to what he said is “tremendous pent-up demand” combined with massive stimulus efforts. Trump was asked by a reporter at an April 10 briefing of the White House COVID-19 task force what his top economic advisors thought of the new forecast by economists at JPMorgan, America’s biggest bank, that second-quarter output will nosedive by 40 percent. “My economic advisors are interested in the third quarter and, really, the fourth quarter. And I think we have a chance to do record...

The Federal Reserve on Thursday announced a bevy of new moves aimed at getting another $2.3 billion of financing into businesses and revenue-pinched governments. Among the Fed's measures were details regarding its Main Street business lending program and several other initiatives it is undertaking to backstop the reeling U.S. economy. The central bank also provided more detail on its market interventions, including plans to buy corporate bonds both at an investment-grade level as well as high-yield, or junk, bonds. Under provisions outlined for the first time, the loans would be geared toward businesses with up to 10,000 employees and less...

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned Thursday against prematurely breaking from social distancing practices as President Trump and other administration officials hope to reopen swaths of the economy by May. Powell said that while it was “time to have a serious conversation” about how to restart normal economic activity, the Fed chair warned against causing a spike in coronavirus cases that forces the U.S. into another stretch of business closures and layoffs. “We need to have a plan nationally for reopening the economy. We all want it to happen as quickly as possible,” Powell said in a Thursday video interview...

We’re living in truly extraordinary times — and no, I’m not talking about Netflix’s Tiger King documentary. I’m referring to the unprecedented actions taken by the Federal Reserve and national government to deal with the severe economic consequences of policymakers’ decision to shut down much of the U.S. economy to keep people safe from coronavirus. Over the past several weeks, the Fed has started to implement its plan to “print” trillions of dollars to bolster credit markets, and Congress and the Trump administration recently signed into law a gargantuan $2 trillion stimulus package. Even more incredibly, President Trump is now...

The U.S. recession is here. How long it will last will depend on the course of a viral pandemic that could still kill hundreds of thousands of Americans, and has most of the country under lockdowns aimed at slowing the infection's spread. But how quickly the world's biggest economy will recover will depend on how much aid the government gives it, and how effectively it can be used to stem what are already millions of job losses, Fed officials said on Thursday. "One thing we know from 2008, when you had millions and millions and millions of Americans losing their...

Constitutional Lawyer Edwin Vieira explains the history and legal structure of the Federal Reserve System. Intro by Wall Street legend Victor Sperandeo Epoch Times: Mr. Sperandeo and Mr. Vieira, you are the two co-authors of “Crash Maker,” an almost 1,500-page-long book, dealing with the Federal Reserve, an unstable financial system and gold. Why don’t we kick off talking about the book for a bit and recap themes still pertinent in today’s market and society. Victor Sperandeo: This book from 2000 is about a villain and it’s written as a fictional book. The villain is the chairman of the Federal Reserve...

The Fed announced Tuesday morning that it would be establishing a repurchase agreement facility for foreign and international monetary authorities (FIMA) that have accounts at the central bank’s New York branch. Through the FIMA repo facility, other central banks and monetary authorities unable to make smooth trades in the open market will be able to temporarily liquidate their positions in Treasuries.

The Federal Reserve has offered more than $3 trillion in loans and asset purchases in recent weeks to stop the U.S. financial system from seizing up, but it has not yet directly helped large swaths of the real economy: companies, municipalities and other borrowers with less than perfect credit. That is partly because America’s central bank is not allowed to take much credit risk itself, and loans to lower-rated borrowers have a higher chance of losses. The risk is exacerbated by the spread of coronavirus which have brought economic activity to a screeching halt. To alleviate that constraint, the U.S....

Support for critical market functioning. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) will purchase Treasury securities and agency mortgage-backed securities in the amounts needed to support smooth market functioning and effective transmission of monetary policy to broader financial conditions and the economy. The FOMC had previously announced it would purchase at least $500 billion of Treasury securities and at least $200 billion of mortgage-backed securities. In addition, the FOMC will include purchases of agency commercial mortgage-backed securities in its agency mortgage-backed security purchases. Supporting the flow of credit to employers, consumers, and businesses by establishing new programs that, taken together, will...