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Janet Yellen is very alarmed that some members of Congress want to conduct a comprehensive audit of the Federal Reserve for the first time since it was created. If the Fed is doing everything correctly, why should Yellen be alarmed? What does she have to hide? During testimony before Congress on Tuesday, she made “central bank independence” sound like it was the holy grail. Even though every other government function is debated politically in this country, Yellen insists that what the Federal Reserve does is “too important” to be influenced by the American people. Does any other government agency ever...

Rand Paul traveled to Des Moines, Iowa, recently and delivered a sure-fire applause line. “Anybody here want to audit the Fed?” the Kentucky senator asked. “Anybody feel that the Fed’s out to get us?” He followed it up with an op-ed comparing the Federal Reserve to Lehman Brothers and calling it essentially bankrupt. The bash-the-Fed routine, perfected by Paul’s father, former Texas congressman Ron Paul, is political gold with libertarian voters suspicious of all federal authority, especially a central bank with a $4.5 trillion balance sheet.

A long-running campaign to fully subject the Federal Reserve to outside review could come down to a handful of moderate Democrats. The “Audit the Fed” movement has grown from an oddball pet project of former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) into legislation that was passed with broad bipartisan majorities in the House two Congresses running, before stalling in Democratic-led Senates. With Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) looking to follow in his father’s footsteps with a new audit bill, the prospects of a GOP-controlled Congress actually sending a measure to the president is more real than it has ever been before. But clearing...

Sen. Rand Paul isn't happy that the Federal Reserve is mobilizing against his legislation that would subject the central bank's monetary policy decisions to an audit. "It is alarming that the Federal Reserve, which was granted Monopoly money-making power, is now specifically trying to stop my legislation," the Kentucky Republican wrote in a column published by the conservative publication Breitbart Tuesday. "The Fed, with unlimited ability to print money, now prints that money to lobby against congressional oversight," Paul added. "It is a disgrace and every citizen in the land should rise up and say: We the people are in...

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -- Illinois residents might not be able to use their driver's licenses at airports starting in 2016. The Daily Herald reports the licenses don't meet requirements set by the 2005 Real ID Act that were meant to increase security. Illinois doesn't require a birth certificate to get a driver's license, which Illinois Secretary of State spokesman Henry Haupt said is one of the law's mandates. Haupt said state legislators would have to approve funding for changes to driver's license requirements. He said he's not sure how much it would cost, but the Secretary of State's office previously estimated...

The Federal Reserve is lashing out at Sen. Rand Paul’s plan to give Congress more oversight over the central bank, a proposal that could gain traction in the new Republican-led Congress. The Kentucky Republican reintroduced his “Audit the Fed” legislation last month with 30 co-sponsors, including other potential 2016 GOP hopefuls, Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Marco Rubio (Fla.). [snip] On Wednesday, Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester criticized the legislation as “misguided” during public remarks in Columbus, Ohio. “They really are about allowing political considerations to influence monetary policy decisions,” Mester said in her speech. “This would be a tremendous...

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Stock markets didn't react well to a tight-lipped statement from the Federal Reserve that gave no clear signal as to when it would begin to hike interest rates. January's meeting announcement came with no accompanying press conference, leaving investors to comb the wording for clues as to when a rate hike could occur. "From the equity market perspective, this might be the least helpful the Fed has been," said Brean Capital's Peter Tchir. "They didn't even find a way to work 'considerable' language into this." The S&P 500 closed 1.2% lower, and the Nasdaq dropped 0.73%....

Senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz might end up running against each other for the Republican presidential nomination, but they can agree on one thing: their distrust of the Federal Reserve. On Wednesday, the two Republican senators introduced the Federal Reserve Transparency Act which Mr. Paul has been pushing for some time.Republicans have questioned the Fed’s moves to stimulate the economy since the financial crisis, arguing that the expansion of its balance sheet will create economic instability. In 2011, Gov. Rick Perry called the Fed’s monetary policies potentially “treasonous” and said that Ben S. Bernanke, the Fed chairman at the...

Fed’s $4 Trillion Holdings to Boost Growth Beyond End of QEQuantitative easing may turn out to be a gift that keeps on giving for the U.S. economy. As the Federal Reserve prepares to end its third round of bond buying next week, the central bank plans to hang on to the record$4.48 trillion balance sheet it has accumulated since announcing the first round of purchases in November 2008. That will continue to keep a lid on borrowing costs, helping the Fed lift inflation closer to its target and providing support to a five-year expansion facing headwinds abroad, from war in...

The NY Post tweeted that "Federal Reserve head Yellen announces bail-in in emergency meeting, rumored negative rate to be set at 4pm EST today," and US equity markets briefly started to rise... followed by a tweet that "The Fed would peg the Dollar to the Swiss Franc" and "Chinese anti-ship missile fired at USS George Washington." Both seemed odd and shortly after, The NY Post had deleted the tweets and explained that it had been hacked... The same tweets were also seen on the Twitter account of the wire service UPI.

Fed related publication warns of: http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2014/december/baby-boomers-retirement-stocks-aging/

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Telegraph (UK) January 1, 2015America’s closed economy can handle a surging dollar and a fresh cycle of rising interest rates. Large parts of the world cannot. That in a nutshell is the story of 2015. Tightening by the US Federal Reserve will have turbo-charged effects on a global financial system addicted to zero rates and dollar liquidity. Yields on 2-year US Treasuries have surged from 0.31pc to 0.74pc since October, and this is the driver of currency markets. Since the New Year ritual of predictions is a time to throw darts, here we go: the dollar will...

In a normal economic times falling energy costs would be considered unadulterated good news. The facts are simple. No one buys a barrel of oil to display above the mantle. No one derives happiness from a lump of coal. Energy is simply a means to do or get the things that we want. We use it to stay warm, to move from Point A to Point B, to transport our goods, to cook our food, and to power our homes, factories, theaters, offices, and stadiums. If we could do all these things without energy, we would happily never drill a...

The most powerful woman in the world, without an army, just propelled the Dow Jones to a two-day 700-point spike by saying “patience.�  Janet Yellen said the Federal Reserve, the quasi-agency that neither is “federal� nor has any “reserves," can be “patient� in their rate hikes in 2015. She was quick, and clumsy by other accounts, to confuse the rate hike issue, with language suggesting that it might not happen at all.  In the vein of the famous watering hole sign, “free beer tomorrow,� Yellen essentially gave the message that rates would go up in 2015, but they might...

U.S. stocks surged on Thursday, extending Wall Street's best day of the year, after the Federal Reserve said it would be patient in increasing interest rates. "The reality is markets were hit with we're not sure what's happening and why, as oil has been acting as something akin to a global interest rate. The good news is the Fed is aware of what is going on, and they want to be friendly, so people are hopefully in better cheer," said Jack Caffrey, equity portfolio manager at J.P. Morgan.

Nick at Sharelynx Gold, also known as Gold Charts "R" Us emailed an interesting chart last week showing gold drain at the New York Fed. Earmarked gold dropped 42 tonnes for the month of October as foreign countries repatriate their gold home. Here's a link to Earmarked Gold with a second chart that shows all Fed holdings. Gold Charts "R" Us has 1,000's of pages and over 10,000 charts on a subscription basis, but you can check out the site for free until December 14. Click on the first link at the top for a look. Where's the Gold Going?...

From the dawn of history, elites have always attempted to enslave humanity.  Yes, there have certainly been times when those in power have slaughtered vast numbers of people, but normally those in power find it much more beneficial to profit from the labor of those that they are able to subjugate.  If you are forced to build a pyramid, or pay a third of your crops in tribute, or hand over nearly half of your paycheck in taxes, that enriches those in power at your expense.  You become a “human resource� that is being exploited to serve the interests of...

John MauldinOctober 4, 2014“The significant problems that we have created cannot be solved at the level of thinking we were at when we created them.” – Albert Einstein “Generals are notorious for their tendency to ‘fight the last war’ – by using the strategies and tactics of the past to achieve victory in the present. Indeed, we all do this to some extent. Life's lessons are hard won, and we like to apply them – even when they don't apply. Sadly enough, fighting the last war is often a losing proposition. Conditions change. Objectives change. Strategies change. And you must...

Fed decides to keep near-zero interest rate for 'considerable time' after ending QE 2014/10/30 04:26 WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 (Yonhap) -- The U.S. Federal Reserve announced Wednesday it will keep its near-zero interest rate policy "for a considerable time" even as it puts an end to its bond-purchasing program aimed at stimulating the economy through low rates. The announcement corroborates views that the Fed is unlikely to raise the key rate before the middle of next year. A possible U.S. rate hike after the end of the bond-buying program, known as "quantitative easing," has been feared to lead to a capital...

By Michael Snyder October 26th, 2014 It is widely expected that the Federal Reserve is going to announce the end of quantitative easing this week. Will this represent a major turning point for the stock market? As you will see below, since 2008 stocks have risen dramatically throughout every stage of quantitative easing. But when the various phases of quantitative easing have ended, stocks have always responded by declining substantially. The only thing that caused stocks to eventually start rising again was a new round of quantitative easing. So what will happen this time? That is a very good question....

Recently Janet Yellen expressed both concern and puzzlement over the rising wealth inequality in America. I found her speech to be disingenuous and disturbing. Why? Because it is the Fed’s very own policies that are driving the expansion of the wealth gap. Read Yellen’s speech. Either Yellen thinks we cannot be trusted with the truth (worrisome), or the Fed is clueless as to how its own policies operate (scarier). SNIP In a speech at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Yellen said steady growth in inequality over the past several decades represents the most sustained rise since the 19th century....

WASHINGTON (AP) — Just how healthy is the U.S. job market? Despite steady hiring and falling unemployment, the question has provoked sharp debate and considerable uncertainty on the eve of the September jobs report. Will millions without jobs who aren't looking for one eventually start looking? Why aren't companies filling more of their openings? Why can many people find only part-time work? Much of the uncertainty flows from a big question: Does today's 6.1 percent unemployment rate, far below the 10 percent it hit in 2009, mean the job market is near full health? Or does the unemployment rate overstate...

For years, many people have suspected that the New York Fed is more or less controlled by the "too big to fail" banks. Well, now we have smoking gun evidence that this is indeed the case. A very brave lawyer named Carmen Segarra made a series of audio recordings while she was working for the New York Fed. The 46 hours of meetings and conversations that she recorded are being called "the Ray Rice video for the financial sector" because of the explosive content that they contain. What these recordings reveal are regulators that are deeply afraid to do anything...

Even after the Dow and the S&P 500 closed at new all-time highs, closely followed contrarian Marc Faber keeps sounding the alarm. "We have a bubble in everything, everywhere," the publisher of The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Friday. Faber has long argued that the Federal Reserve's massive asset purchasing programs and near-zero interest rates have inflated stock prices. The catalyst for a market decline, as he sees it, could be a "raise in interest rates, not engineered by the Fed," referring an increase in bond yields.

If, when in February Victoria Nuland infamously launched a (not so) covert campaign to replace the ruling Ukraine president oblivious to the human casualties, resulting in a civil war in east Ukraine, NATO encroachment along the borders of Russia, and a near-terminal escalation in hostilities between Ukraine, Russian, and various regional NATO members, the US intention was to provoke the Kremlin so hard that the nation with the world's largest reserves of mineral and energy resources would jettison the US Dollar and in the process begin the unraveling of the USD reserve currency status (as much as Jared Bernstein desires...

A toxic brew is bubbling in the housing market that will lead to a mortgage crisis by winter, banking analyst Dick Bove said. Now that the Federal Reserve is nearly done with its monthly bond-buying program, which includes mortgage-backed securities, and Washington continues on its quest to unwind Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, conditions could get dicey in the home loan market. Bove envisions a scenario in which long-term financing, like the ubiquitous 30-year mortgage, that has come with fixed interest rates is endangered as mortgage buyers dry up. As part of its quantitative easing program, the Fed had been...

The FDIC and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency are set to release new liquidity rules today. The rules will redefine the types of liquid assets giant Wall Street banks must hold to meet the new Basel III Liquidity Coverage Rule. The Federal regulators are expected to emphasize banks holding short-term U.S. Treasury securities in order to meet a bank run or credit crunch lasting 30 days. The state treasurers’ panic over the rule is justified. According to press reports, the Federal regulators may exclude municipal bonds issued by states, counties, cities and school districts from the category...

If the Obama administration used federal prosecutors to exact vengeance on Standard and Poor’s for downgrading the rating of federal debt, that would be a serious crime, an impeachable offense if it could be traced to the Attorney General or the President (not that anyone other than Democrats is interested in impeachment).  It would be evidence of thug government, where the rule of law has been replaced with the law of the jungle, using prosecutorial power as an instrument of political intimidation, as in Travis County, Texas. That’s why a recent court filing by Standard and Poor’s may lead to...

There's a lot of economic anxiety in America today, so it's no surprise that the Federal Reserve has discovered substantial pessimism about Americans' own personal financial situation. The Feds most recent survey shows that 1/3 of Americans believe themselves to be worse off 5 years after the recession ended.Wall Street Journal: More American households say they are worse off  rather than better five years after the recession, a new Federal Reserve survey found. The report, released for the first time on Thursday, found 34% of households said they were “somewhat worse� or “much worse� financially in 2013 compared to 2008....

US banks are steeling themselves for the possibility of losing as much as $1tn in deposits as the Federal Reserve reverses its emergency economic policies and raises interest rates. JPMorgan Chase, the biggest US bank by deposits, has estimated that money funds may withdraw $100bn in deposits in the second half of next year as the Fed uses a new tool to help wind down its asset purchase programme and normalise rates. Other banks including Citigroup, Bank of New York Mellon and PNC Financial Services have also said they are trying to gauge the potential effect of the Fed's exit...

The Federal Reserve created a monster $4.3 trillion balance sheet, up by $3 trillion from 2008, through quantitative easing. QE ends this fall. Now the Fed is trying to figure out what to do with this monster. Their thinking seems to be that they can maintain control over it by paying banks more money to not make loans. So let's get this right. Households and businesses are attempting to borrow money from banks. But the Federal Reserve may eventually pay banks $100 billion per year not to lend to Main Street. Politicians will have a field day with that. The...

Nearly half of all illegal immigrant children don’t show up for their deportation hearings, federal officials testified to Congress on Wednesday, underscoring just how easy it is for those surging across the border right now to disappear into the shadows. The number could be even higher for the current surge of unaccompanied children flooding across the border, who are often released to illegal immigrant parents who have no incentive to bring their children to immigration courts. And federal authorities specifically refuse to ask the legal status of the parents or relatives who come to claim the children, officials acknowledged. “We...

How does the U.S. economy do it? Europe is floundering. China faces slower growth. Japan is struggling to sustain tentative gains. Yet the U.S. job market is humming, and the pace of economic growth is steadily rising. Five full years after a devastating recession officially ended, the economy is finally showing the vigor that Americans have long awaited. Last month, employers added 288,000 jobs and helped reduce the unemployment rate to 6.1 percent, the lowest since September 2008. June capped a five-month stretch of 200,000-plus job gains - the first in nearly 15 years. After having shrunk at a 2.9...

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...

U.S. stocks climbed on Wednesday, lifting the S&P 500 to a record finish, after the Federal Reserve said the economy is rebounding and that interest rates would stay low for some time. "We are inching from unprecedented accommodation to policy tightening, even though it's not imminent," said Anastasia Amoroso, global market strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds. The Fed alluded to a slightly faster pace of interest rate increases next year, while suggesting benchmark borrowing costs in the longer term would be lower than the Fed has indicated before. Fed Chair Janet Yellen attempted to "introduce a degree of uncertainty into...

Joe WeisenthalMay 26, 2014, 11:11 AM At the end of last year, we wrote a post titled: Pretty Soon We Need To Talk About Inflation. The argument was not that inflation was going to be a problem, or that the Fed needed to tighten rates, or anything like that. It simply pointed out that since the crisis, there's been no legitimate reason to even be discussing inflation, since there wasn't any. But that that was about to change. And indeed, here in 2014, there are indeed a lot of people talking about inflation. Morgan Stanley's Vincent Reinhart writes in a...

Chriss W. Street 26 May 2014 After five years of the federal government telling the public that despite a $3.5 trillion increase in monetary expansion, the inflation rate is below +2%, the Department of Agriculture (DOA) just warned the American public that the consumer price index for food is up by 10% this year. The DOA tried to blame food inflation on the drought conditions in California, but last year’s drought was worse and food prices fell by -6%. The real problem is Federal Reserve monetary stimulus is stimulating inflation. I reported in "Food Price Inflation Scares the Fed” two...

The way Charles Plosser sees it, the Federal Reserve is sitting on a ticking time bomb that could severely damage the economy unless the central bank reacts quickly to defuse the looming threat. The Philadelphia Fed president, viewed as one of the bank’s leading hawks, is worried about some $2.5 trillion in “excess” reserves. That is, loanable funds available to individual or corporate borrowers through the nation’s banks. The Fed has created these reserves through unpredented purchases of U.S. Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities, a strategy known as quantatative easing. These reserves are just sitting in the bank system, basically doing...

Mises Institute: How would you translate your new book’s title into English? Andreas Marquant: I would like to say The State Causes the Poverty It Later Claims to Solve. This is the title of my article on mises.org last December. An even better title could be The Austrian Answer to Thomas Piketty. MI: Your book addresses the issue of income inequality. Is income inequality a bad thing? AM: First of all, inequality and income inequality are natural phenomena because people are different. They all have different talents and that is a reason for the division of labor. It’s also a...

An ABC News investigation found that a badly-flawed and archaic government recall system has permitted millions of potentially dangerous tires to remain in use, on store shelves for sale or simply unaccounted for.

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...

“Got a buck? you’re in luck!” This jingle was a staple for you ever since your parents started giving you an allowance. At the time, you got maybe $5 a week to spend or save as you pleased. Although this was a fortune as far as you were concerned, a fiver tends to evaporate quickly, and your snack options were limited. One of the few exceptions to this was McDonalds. For just a dollar and change you could get a double cheeseburger or even hot fudge sundaes. Fast forward 5 years. You’re paying a lot for college, so the Dollar...

A school district in Chicago’s northwest suburbs is quitting the National School Lunch Program over new regulations championed by first lady Michelle Obama. The so-called Smart Snacks in School policy, set to take effect on July 1, is the latest attempt by our Regulator-in-Chief to dictate every aspect of Americans’ behavior. It dictates strict calorie, sodium, fat, and sugar guidelines for any food sold in schools during the day. That even includes the ubiquitous bake sales and other fundraisers. Instead of forcing the school district’s 500 low income kids and others to eat “healthier,” however, the administration is only creating...

In testimony before a Senate committee on Thursday, Fed Chair Yellen said a minimum wage increase would likely have some negative effects on jobs, though it´s not clear how large. Still, boosting the federal minimum wage, which has remained at $7.25 per hour since mid-2009, would benefit some people, she added. In recent months, the federal minimum wage has been a hot-button issue. In February, President Barack Obama boosted the minimum pay for federal contractors hired in the future to $10.10 per hour. He´s also voiced his support for the federal level for all workers to rise to $10.10 from

Gold is falling after Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen gave an upbeat assessment of the U.S. economy and said that inflation remains low. […] Yellen’s comments suggest that the Federal Reserve is set to continue reducing its economic stimulus, lessening the threat of rising prices. Investors typically buy gold as a hedge against inflation. …

When it comes to the San Francisco Fed, it is best known throughout the financial community as the group of crack economists who spend millions of taxpayer funds to investigate such probing, for kindergarteners at least, topics as: is water wet, do trees make a sound when they fall in the forest, is it still worth going to college, and are hedge funds important in a crisis. Little did we know that, at least some of them, are homicidal psychopaths with suicidal tendencies. Because this is precisely what was revealed moments ago when Bloomberg reported that the chief operating officer...

The Fed Could Have Bought California & Texas… or All of China & Japan's Treasuries With QE Money Phoenix Capital Research 05/06/2014 12:31 The Federal Reserve has spent over $3.2 trillion in the post-Crisis era. The bulk of this money printing has gone towards buying garbage mortgage securities or US Treasuries from Wall Street. Because we’ve reached a point in time at which $1 trillion no longer sounds like a lot of money, we thought we’d go through the exercise of assessing just what the Fed could have done with this money besides give it to Wall Street. With $3.2...

Foreign individuals and businesses long ago cut back on their purchases of U.S. bonds. Their place was taken by foreign central banks. The central banks simply created money in their own currency and used it to buy our bonds.The Federal Reserve always knew that we couldn’t rely on foreign central banks to buy our bonds forever. This may be the main reason it began the program called quantitative easing, in which the Fed created money out of thin air specifically to buy back U.S. debt.Quantitative easing may have been intended to be a kind of insurance policy. If foreign central...

Armed federal agents deployed last week to northeast Clark County, Nev., for what can only be described as a major escalation in a decades-long standoff between a local cattle rancher and the U.S. government. .Cliven Bundy, the last remaining rancher in the southern Nevada county, stands in defiance of a 2013 court order demanding that he remove his cattle from public land managed by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management. The 67-year-old veteran rancher, who has compared the situation to similar confrontations with government officials in Ruby Ridge and Waco, Texas, told TheBlaze that his family...

Last week, St. Louis Fed Director of Research David Andolfatto released a presentation on Bitcoin, becoming one of the most prominent central bank officials to study the cryptocurrency. We caught up with Andolfatto to ask him about why he put this deck together, where he thinks Bitcoin is going, and whether he personally has anything invested in it. Business Insider: What was the genesis for this presentation? David Andolfatto: Its genesis was a blog post I'd started, addressing arguments that gold bugs frequently put forth, that gold is superior money. Of course, Bitcoin was in the news — I read...