Free Republic

The White House projects that the federal deficit will surpass $1 trillion this year, the only time in the nation's history the deficit has exceeded that level, excluding the four-year period following the Great Recession. "The 2019 deficit has been revised to a projected $1.0 trillion," the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) wrote in its midyear review. As a candidate, President Trump promised to wipe out not only the deficit but the entire federal debt, which has surpassed $22 trillion. Republicans cast aside projections that their 2017 tax reform law would add $1.9 trillion to the deficit...

The Dow Jones Industrial Average topped 27,000 for the first time on Thursday as the top three equity benchmarks Opens a New Window. traded higher on Wall Street Opens a New Window. after Federal Reserve Opens a New Window. Chairman Jerome Powell Opens a New Window. signaled the central bank was still moving towards an interest rate cut due to trade uncertainties. Following several days of uneven trading activity over concerns that the Federal Reserve would withhold moving forward on the expected cuts, investors were optimistic after Powell’s remarks that the central bank’s outlook for the U.S. economy is weighed...

Strong jobs report, low inflation, and other countries around the world doing anything possible to take advantage of the United States, knowing that our Federal Reserve doesn’t have a clue! They raised rates too soon, too often, & tightened, while others did just the opposite.... ....As well as we are doing from the day after the great Election, when the Market shot right up, it could have been even better - massive additional wealth would have been created, & used very well. Our most difficult problem is not our competitors, it is the Federal Reserve!

In tapping Judy Shelton to become one of two Federal Reserve Board governors, President Donald Trump selected one of the minority of mainstream economists supportive of a return to the gold standard and critical of central bank activity. Shelton, who serves as the U.S. executive director at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, wrote as recently as last year in support of pegging the dollar to gold prices. Trump announced his intention to nominate both Shelton and St. Louis Fed economist Christopher Waller via tweet on Tuesday. Shelton’s unorthodox monetary beliefs will likely draw questions from Senate lawmakers, who...

* Fed sees case building for rate cuts this year * Financials fall; Energy up most among S&P sectors * Carnival Corp slides on 2019 profit warning * Indexes up: Dow 0.68%, S&P 0.59%, Nasdaq 0.59% (Updates prices, adds comments) By Shreyashi Sanyal June 20 (Reuters) - The S&P 500 index touched an all-time high on Thursday, after the Federal Reserve indicated that it could cut interest rates as early as July to combat growing risks to global and domestic growth. The U.S. central bank left rates unchanged at the end of its two-day June policy meeting on Wednesday, but...

(Kitco News) - Gold and silver prices are sharply higher in early morning U.S. trading Thursday. Gold powered to a five-year high, while silver prices hit a five-week high. Major central banks that are leaning easy on their monetary policies are boosting the metals and the raw commodity sector, in general. Gold is also seeing increased safe-haven buying interest as tensions in the Persian Gulf are on the rise. August gold futures were last up $37.50 an ounce at 1,386.50. July Comex silver prices were last up $0.417 at $15.385 an ounce. Traders and investors are still digesting Wednesday’s conclusion...

The Federal Reserve did not move on rates at the conclusion of its policysetting meeting June 19, but committed itself to acting “as appropriate to sustain the expansion.” The Fed elected to keep the benchmark interest rate within its target range of 2.25% to 2.5%, but new economic projections show more Fed officials seeing the case for a rate cut — or two — by the end of 2020. The Fed said it still sees a “sustained expansion of economic activity, strong labor market conditions, and inflation near” the committee’s 2% target, but added that “uncertainties about this outlook have...

While speaking at a meeting of Japanese business leaders in Tokyo, Trump said the stock market would be anywhere between 7,000 to 10,000 points higher if the U.S. central bank had chosen to keep interest rates steady. He also suggested that the growth rate in the U.S. would have exceeded 3 percent. "But they wanted to raise interest rates," he said. "You’ll explain that to me." Trump, despite hand-picking Chairman Jerome Powell more than a year ago, has been a frequent critic of the Fed, often urging policymakers to cut interest rates from the current target range of 2.25 percent...

There's an inherent conflict of interest that occurs when an agency serves as both a regulator and competitor. Unfortunately, that describes the present state of the Federal Reserve. But rather than reform the agency to eliminate sources of conflict, the Fed is proposing to expand its market activities by launching a real-time payments system to compete against the private sector. Anyone who has done any domestic banking is familiar with the need for faster clearing of interbank transfers. They're incredibly slow by digital age standards, sometimes taking several days to complete. It's even subpar by the standards of the European...

Why is President Trump calling on the Federal Reserve to cut the rate by a full percentage point, despite the robust jobs number for April and the strong GDP report last week? Wall Street and most economists can’t rationalize the demand and feel if the good data continues the next move by Jerome Powell may be to raise rates. What the “experts” are missing in the equation is the unprecedented events that will take place in the second quarter of this year well outside of the economy. What will investors do when the top intelligence officials from the Obama administration...

Moore came under intense scrutiny last week for his past writings on women, including several opinion pieces published on the website of the conservative National Review magazine in 2001, 2002 and 2003 in which he wrote that women should be banned from refereeing, announcing or bartending at men’s college basketball games. And in 2014, in a column he penned for National Review, Moore criticized a gender pay equality proposal from a Democratic senator, calling it a “laughably bad idea.” “The crisis in America today isn’t about women’s wages; it’s about men’s wages,” he wrote. “Men are still the chief breadwinners...

President says Moore has withdrawn from consideration https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1123987855053873154

The U.S. economy is off to its best start to a year since 2015 and White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow says Federal Reserve should still add stimulus by cutting interest rates. GDP grew by 3.2% in the first quarter, which Kudlow called “a blow out number.” He said the current economy is in a “prosperity cycle” that “is gaining momentum, not losing momentum” “The inflation rate continues to slip lower and lower,” Kudlow told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Friday. “Even according to the Fed’s own spokespeople, from the chairman on down, that could open the door to...

The opposition research creeps have been on the job. Now that Herman Cain has exited from President Trump's consideration for a Federal Reserve board seat, the long knives are now out for free market economist Stephen Moore. One media hit job after another is now rolling out against him in the press today, and none of it has to do with economics. The left has made a big deal about Moore's presence on the Fed board  a matter of 'politicizing' it, but this is what 'politicizing' really looks like. The New York Times, home of nasty, embittered columnist Paul Krugman, is...

A woman who once famously claimed she had a 13-year affair with Herman Cain said Thursday she would testify under oath against him unless he withdraws his campaign for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board. Ginger White of Atlanta said she is willing to even identify certain parts of Cain’s body to back up her accusations, which he has denied for years. “It’s time for you to be held accountable for your actions,” White said at a press conference in Manhattan, flanked by celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred. “Today more than ever, women are fighting back. We’re not going to...

It takes an awfully dubious nomination to rile up a bunch as obedient as the Senate GOP to the point where they’re not only willing to bork a Trump pick but to bork him before he’s even been formally nominated.I did not think they had it in ’em.Cain’s loss is *probably* Stephen Moore’s gain, though. It’s almost unimaginable that Republicans would embarrass Trump twice by rejecting both of his Fed nominees. North Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer said he wouldn’t back Cain if President Donald Trump nominates him to the Fed and hopes the president will make another choice.“If I...

WASHINGTON — Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer, N.D., on Thursday became the fourth member of his party’s caucus to tell reporters he would vote against a nomination for former pizza executive Herman Cain to join the board of the Federal Reserve. “If I had to [vote] today, I would vote no” on Cain, Cramer told reporters Thursday on Capitol Hill. Cain has yet to be formally nominated by President Donald Trump, but last week Trump announced that Cain was his pick to fill one of two open seats on the central bank’s board. Trump intends to nominate conservative economist and author...

Vice President Mike Pence said that despite his bullish view of the state of the economy, he backed the president’s calls for further rate cuts from the Federal Reserve. The comments came in response to a question from CNBC’s Joe Kernen, and will air 6 a.m. ET Thursday morning on Squawk Box. “If things are so great, I don’t understand ... At this point, people say we don’t have dry powder for the next slow down. Why would we cut rates again?” Kernen asked.

Herman Cain’s appointment as a Federal Reserve governor looks to be moving forward. The former Republican presidential candidate and Godfather’s Pizza founder was rumored to be under consideration for a central bank appointment in January. Axios first reported Thursday that President Donald Trump is just about ready to submit Cain’s name to the Senate but is awaiting the completion of a background check. Bloomberg News later confirmed Trump was selecting Cain. A source familiar with the matter did not deny the reports to CNBC. “He won’t formally announce until the vet is completed ... But he likes Cain and wants...

From the moment Heritage Foundation economist Stephen Moore’s imminent appointment to the Federal Reserve Board was announced by President Trump, Washington has been in full pearl-clutching mode. This week, the anti-Trump media found what they think is the smoking gun that will bring him down: a $75,000 tax lien. The only problem is that it’s the IRS that is wrong, not Steve Moore. First reported on Twitter by Heather Long of the Washington Post, Moore has an IRS tax lien filed against him totaling just over $75,000. The problem stems from a mistake Moore made on his taxes several years...