Free Republic

A report in the Daily Mail says that Republicans in Congress are investigating more than ten banks “for colluding with the federal government to spy on Americans after the January 6 protests.” The alleged witch hunt was in search of “‘extremism’ indicators.” You won’t be surprised at all to learn what qualifies as an “extremism indicator.” Fox News reported on January 17: Federal investigators asked banks to search and filter customer transactions by using terms like “MAGA” and “Trump” as part of an investigation into Jan. 6, warning that purchases of “religious texts” could indicate “extremism,” the House Judiciary Committee...

Meantime the central bank seeks to palm off on the public the idea that its staggering negative capital is a ‘deferred asset.’ Hold up your hand if you think that the aggregate losses of an organization are an asset of that organization. No hands at all? Absolutely right. Losses are not an asset. That’s accounting 101. Yet the greatest central bank in the world, the Federal Reserve, insists on claiming that its continuing losses, which have accumulated to the staggering sum of $164 billion, are an accounting asset. The Fed seeks to palm off this accounting entry as a “Deferred...

James O’Keefe’s O’Keefe Media Group has released undercover footage of a Federal Reserve employee admitting to how Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell sabotaged President Trump and wants to go down in history as “someone who held the line against Trump.” Principal Economist Aurel Hizmo, a self-proclaimed liberal, told an undercover journalist more about Powell’s hatred for Trump, saying, “As soon as he became Chair, Trump wanted him to lower interest rates. Because when you lower interest rates, it stimulates the economy, and Trump was President. He wanted to stimulate the economy, but he wouldn’t do it. And he started raising...

Hidden Camera captures Principal Economist @federalreserve talking about Jerome Powell’s legacy as “somebody who held the line against like, Trump.” The influential agency responsible for maintaining a stable monetary system appears to not just be establishing interest rates, but to be setting policies for desired social outcomes. “Under Powell, the Fed has changed to think about equity issues, like racial issues, think about wealth inequality as part of the mandate, as part of the things we are following. Think about climate change.” Aurel Hizmo, Principal Economist at the Federal Reserve, who prior to working at the Fed was an Assistant...

The consumer price index, a key inflation gauge, rose 3.5% in March, higher than expectations and marking an acceleration for inflation. Shelter and energy costs drove the increase. Energy rose 1.1% after increasing 2.3% in February, while shelter costs were higher by 0.4% on the month and up 5.7% from a year ago. Following the report, traders pushed the first expected rate cut out to September, according to CME Group calculations.

We are living in the USA where corruption, favoritism, open borders and an out-of-control Federal budget and debt are destroying this once great nation. Former Kansas City Fed President Thomas M. Hoenig was absolutely right when he said recently that The Federal Reserve panders to Wall Street, Congress and special interest groups, prioritizing immediate relief over financial stability. Bernanke’s zero-interest rate policies (ZIRP) and Quantitative Easing (QE) were short-term fixes that never went away. Indeed, since the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008-2009, US Dollar purchasing power is DOWN -32% and M2 Money is up a staggering 177%. While Yellen stuck...

The Federal Reserve has created America’s version of India’s caste system. At the top of the neo American caste system are bankers and the political donor class. The top 1%. The other 99% are losing ground to the Brahmin Banker Class. In 1913, Woodrow Wilson and his progressives promised that the Federal Reserve would avert both depressions and inflation, while preventing the wealthy from controlling America’s financial markets at the expense of the poor, the new untouchable class. More than a century later, it’s clear that was all a lie, and the Fed has helped create a permanent American underclass...

Jerome Powell and The Federal Reserve have to make a decision about tightening monetary policy or loosening it. It’s a Presidential election year and The Fed will probably do what is necessary to support The Biden Administration’s re-election. But let’s look at the various conflicting economic indicators that are causing confusion at The Fed. First, the Federal Reserve’s preferred gauge of inflation wasn’t hotter than expected in February, which could keep a mid year interest rate cut on the table. The year-over-year change in the so-called “core” Personal Consumption Expenditures index — which excludes volatile food and energy prices —...

The Federal Reserve said Tuesday that it officially saw a net negative income of $114.3 billion in 2023, a record loss tied to expenses related to managing the central bank’s short-term interest rate target. The loss last year follows $58.8 billion in net income in 2022, the Fed said. The numbers released were an audited tally following preliminary numbers reported earlier this year. The Fed has stressed repeatedly that net negative income does not impede its ability to operate or conduct monetary policy. By law, the Fed hands over any profits after covering operational expenses to the Treasury.

Correlation does not imply causation, but timing is everything, and this looks really bad. Two sayings are pertinent to this essay. The first is that correlation does not imply causation. Just because two events seem connected doesn’t mean they are. The second is that timing is everything. Think about both as you consider the Department of Justice’s decision to dismiss a massive corporate fraud lawsuit a short time after the corporation’s founder made a sizable donation to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. DISH Network is an American satellite network. In 2015, the DOJ sued DISH under the False Claims Act. The...

My post yesterday on oldest poster uncovered "SuperLuminal", who is still kickin at 90. There may be someone older. Now, who is youngest? Anyone know?

Unlike what Grand-dad Joey Biden screamed at the State of The Union (SOTU) address, inflation is NOT been defeated. In fact, inflation has defeated Biden and The Federal Reserve. After January’s surprised upside shift, expectations have been adjusted up over the last month for another sizable MoM move in headline CPI. But that was not enough as the 0.4% MoM rise in the headline (as expected – highest since August) lifted CPI YoY up to +3.2% (hotter than the 3.1% exp)… Source: Bloomberg The 3-month annualized CPI rate was rose to 2.8% from 1.9%. The 6-month annualized core rate dropped...

Two crypto influencers on X have called on their followers to snap up Bitcoin BTC, gold and silver, citing the risk of rising national debt in the United States. In an X post on March 11, entrepreneur and angel investor Balaji Srinivasan argued that Bitcoin is the only realistic solution to escape the inevitability of unsustainable government spending and potential asset confiscation. “We’re in the looting-the-treasury phase of imperial collapse,” the former Coinbase chief technology officer told his 994,000 followers. Srinivasan argued that government debt and wasteful spending continue to grow rapidly at unsustainable levels. U.S. national debt is currently...

The Federal Reserve Board on Wednesday [ed: Jan 24] announced that the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP) will cease making new loans as scheduled on March 11. The program will continue to make loans until that time and is available as an additional source of liquidity for eligible institutions. During a period of stress last spring, the Bank Term Funding Program helped assure the stability of the banking system and provide support for the economy. After March 11, banks and other depository institutions will continue to have ready access to the discount window to meet liquidity needs. As the program...

Well, this might keep The Fed talking heads up at night. Over the past year or so, the Fed has been intensely discussing inflation in “core services,” which is where inflation had shifted to in 2022, from goods inflation which had spiked into mid-2022 but then cooled dramatically. So “core services” is where it’s at. Core services is where consumers spend the majority of their money. Core services are all services except energy services. Core services inflation has been behaving badly for months, and in January, it spiked out the wazoo. The “core services” PCE price index spiked to 7.15%...

Last week, Bitcoin broke the $52,000 mark, underscoring a double standard in the U.S. financial system. A gaggle of federal financial regulators largely known by their abbreviations (the FRB, FDIC, OCC, NCUA, SEC, FHFA, CFTC, CFPB and FSOC) and an array of regulators in each of the 50 states expend precious resources competing with one another to regulate every aspect and movement by banks. However, financial companies that are not banks but engage in bank-like activities — and make up most of the financial services market — are barely regulated when it comes to their financial health and strength. Bitcoin...

The Fed’s love potion #9: Printing endless supplies of money. But it still isn’t creating a large enough growth in new homes. The Fed’s money printing has helped drive housing prices up 32.7% under Biden, making housing unaffordable for millions of households. But how about NEW homes? New home sales rose in January, but less than expected. After December’s 8.0% surprise jump was revised down to +7.2% MoM, January sales rose just 1.5% MoM (half the 3.0% expected). In fact all three of the last months’ data was revised lower… The downward revision and disappointment reduced the YoY sales growth...

The Hollies said it best: Stop, stop, stop. FIAT Money Printing that is. Typically, we look at M2 Money Velocity (GDP/M2) as a measure of how much the economy grows by expanding the money supply. Perhaps a more interest velocity is DEBT velocity (GDP/DEBT). Under Biden’s Reign of Error, Federal debt has increased by $6,539,359 million while real GDP has increased by only $1,948.731 billion (or roughly $2 trillion in GDP growth after $6.54 trillion in debt). Or a DEBT velocity of 0.3. Yikes! No wonder China is bailing on US debt! What about The Federal Reserve? It was created...

According to mythology, Hades made King Sisyphus roll a huge boulder endlessly up a steep hill in Tartarus. Unfortunately, the modern day version of Sisyphus is the middle class pushing a boulder endlessly up a steep hill while the top 1% (the elite class) horde more and more wealth. An example of the Sisyphus economy? The top 1% of earners (blue line) have seen an incredible increase in net worth, particularly after Fed Chair Alan Greenspan’s big rate cuts (green line) from 2000 to 2004. Each subsequent rate cuts under Bernanke (2007-2008) and Yellen (who just kept rates too low...

The Federal Reserve (aka, The Keep) is back in the saddle again. The Fed has been unable to control inflation since Federal government spending was so fast and furious after Covid that little thought was given to the long-term ramifications of insane spending. Example? Home price growth is rising again. Home prices in traditional “bubble cities” out west were cooling, but are reaccelerating. Even Detroit and Cleveland are seeing rapid home price acceleration. In retrospect, this wholesale dovish euphoria may have been rather short sighted, because after several strong economist reports hit the tape (with the Nov 2024 election growing...