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President Barack Obama is hailing the confirmation of Janet Yellen as chair of the Federal Reserve. He says she will be a “fierce champion” for the American people. The Senate on Monday voted 56-26 to confirm her, with several senators absent due to flight delays. …

Woodrow Wilson is widely disparaged as an ineffectual dreamer. But as A. Scott Berg’s newly published biography of the 28th President of the United States (excerpted recently on these pages) makes clear, Wilson was in fact an exceptional leader. He founded the Federal Reserve, enacted the Clayton Antitrust Act, reduced tariffs, and tried admirably to veto the lunacy of Prohibition. He is rivaled only by Thomas Jefferson, and perhaps John Quincy Adams, as the greatest intellect ever to occupy the White House. He composed his own speeches and delivered them ex tempore — often with overpowering eloquence. More important, Wilson...

the bogey man known as “systemic risk” to gain advantage over the other creditors . ... In order for the OTC casino to work, the derivatives contracts had to be given special priority in bankruptcy. Speculative derivative instruments such as credit default swaps (CDS), which caused the failure and government bailout of American International Group, could never exist in significant size were in not for the safe harbor from bankruptcy for derivatives created by Congress in the 1980s and 1990s. Members of Congress from both parties were paid very well for their treachery. ... The intellectual author of the “systemic...

The Collapse of The American Dream Explained in Animation

It is little wonder that early Democrats garnered such popular support and would demand Andrew Jackson end America’s experiment with central banking. Jackson called it “dangerous to the liberty of the American people because it represented a fantastic centralization of economic and political power under private control.” It’s hard to believe that guy who said that is now on the $20 bill. Jackson also warned that the Bank of the United States was “a vast electioneering engine” that could “control the Government and change its character.” These sentiments were echoed by Roger Taney, Jackson’s Treasury Secretary, who talked of the...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://www.frontpagemag.com - Killing the Middle ClassPosted By Arnold Ahlert On December 20, 2013 @ 12:50 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments If one takes the mainstream media seriously, Ben Bernanke’s announcement that the Federal Reserve would begin “tapering” its purchase of government bonds and mortgage securities by $10 billion dollars per month was the reason for Wall Street’s rally on Wednesday. Yet as the chart here reveals, the reaction to the Fed’s decision was a rapid and precipitous drop first, followed by a large rally, when Bernanke dropped the far more important shoe: interest rates would remain near zero for the foreseeable...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Dow and the S&P 500 closed at all-time highs on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve announced a small reduction in its stimulus program, confirming that the U.S. economy was on firm footing.

The recent confusion from The Fed over the future of quantitative easing (or money printing) can be addressed with a few charts. Here is a chart of real GDP growth PER CAPITA since 1960. Real, of course, indicates that it is Gross Domestic Product adjusted for inflation. Note that Q1 1984 was the peak of real GDP growth … and it has been a steady decline since then. realgdppercap I added the S&P 500 index to the real GDP per capita chart and you can see that the S&P 500 index spikes when real GDP growth is higher than average...

Yellen currently serves as vice chairman of the Fed and as a reliable dove would represent continuity with Bernanke. She has consistently supported Bernanke’s easy-money policies and even seems open to more aggressive moves to fight stubbornly-high unemployment. "I consider it imperative that we do what we can to promote a very strong recovery," Yellen said during her confirmation hearing. Yet Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced plans on Thursday to enact the so-called "nuclear option," which would change Senate rules to allow him to approve certain motions with a simple majority rather than 60 votes. Yellen, who was among...

Vice Chairman Yellen’s testimony before the Senate this morning moves us to oppose her confirmation to succeed Chairman Bernanke at the Federal Reserve. We don’t mind saying it’s an odd position for us, since we have great regard for her capacity as a forecaster, her character, and her comportment. She displays none of condescension that Mr. Bernanke so often allowed to show (we once expressed surprise that he wasn’t held in contempt). What transports us into the opposition is Mrs. Yellen’s truculence on the issue of auditing the Fed. ... Senator Vitter .. speaks for a faction in the upper...

President Obama has nominated Janet Yellen to be the next Federal Reserve Chairman. We need to know what she stands for if we want to predict what the central bank will do to us next. Clearly, Yellen will continue Bernanke’s Quantitative Easing, but her papers and speeches show that she is quite different from her predecessor. … … Yellen is all central planner. She gets her ideas, not from Friedman, but from John Maynard Keynes. Keynes did not trust markets, preferring government intervention. His prescribed solution to recession and unemployment is for the government to increase spending and the central...

Sen. Ted Cruz announced Wednesday that he is backing an effort by fellow Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky to get a vote on auditing the Federal Reserve as a condition for considering the nomination of Janet L. Yellen to be chairwoman of the Fed. “I agree with Rand Paul: before the Senate votes on whether to confirm Janet Yellen, we should at the very least allow a vote on the Audit the Fed bill,” the Texas Republican said in a statement. “The Federal Reserve has expanded our money supply by trillions, benefiting Wall Street but making life harder for millions...

... The Federal Reserve is the most important economic planning agency in the world. It's charged with promoting full employment, stabilizing prices, and overseeing the financial sector. So the new chair's theoretical views, management style, and personality quirks could affect trillions of dollars of economic activity. Is it wise to hand such extraordinary power to an elite cadre of economists and bureaucrats? The pretenses of top-down planning have been debunked by history. Throughout the last century, every nation that adopted central planning had its economy flounder. Even at the microeconomic level, the limits of top-down planning are increasingly obvious.

Since Ben Bernanke has been in control of the Federal Reserve, inflation has increased 43 percent more under President Barack Obama than George W. Bush, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Inflation can be defined as the overall general upward price improvement of goods and services in an economy,” the Bureau said. By evaluating the Consumer Price Index (CPI) data, increases in inflation can be evaluated. …

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve extended its support for a slowing U.S. economy on Wednesday, sounding a bit less optimistic about growth and saying it will keep buying $85 billion in bonds per month for the time being. In announcing the widely expected decision, Fed officials nodded to weaker economic prospects due in part to a fiscal fight in Washington that shuttered much of the government for 16 days earlier this month. The Fed indicated the recovery in housing had lost some steam, while noting some reversal in a recent spike in borrowing costs. "Available data suggest that household...

I've always avoided reporting on the Federal Reserve. I know it's more important than much of the stuff I cover, but it's so boring. How can I succeed on TV reporting on the Fed? Fed chairs even work at being dull. Alan Greenspan said he tried to be obscure because he didn't want to spook markets. He called his obfuscation "Fedspeak." It's a far cry from the clarity of his language -- and principles -- when he was young and a disciple of libertarian Ayn Rand. Outgoing Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his likely successor, Janet Yellen, are almost as...

Senator Rand Paul has already threatened to put a hold on the nomination of Janet Yellen, President Obama’s choice to replace Ben Bernanke at the helm of the Federal Reserve. The Kentucky Republican says he is willing to vote in favor of Yellen, but only if he gets a vote on a bi-partisan bill that he’s sponsored to put the Fed under greater congressional oversight and public scrutiny. … Although Yellen is still expected to win confirmation, the process is now expected to be contentious. Many Republicans, not just Paul, have consistently criticized the central bank’s aggressive monetary policy and...

WASHINGTON — Inflation is widely reviled as a kind of tax on modern life, but as Federal Reserve policy makers prepare to meet this week, there is growing concern inside and outside the Fed that inflation is not rising fast enough. Some economists say more inflation is just what the American economy needs to escape from a half-decade of sluggish growth and high unemployment. The Fed has worked for decades to suppress inflation, but economists, including Janet Yellen, President Obama’s nominee to lead the Fed starting next year, have long argued that a little inflation is particularly valuable when the...

The European Union’s financial services chief warned of tit-for-tat action if the United States pushes ahead with plans to impose extra capital requirements on foreign banks. In December, Federal Reserve Board Governor Daniel Tarullo said foreign banks should be required to hold as much capital as their U.S. counterparts, regardless of how their overseas parent companies are funded. The EU fears this will fragment global capital markets and its financial services commissioner Michel Barnier said big European banks were as well-capitalized as American banks. “I don’t want to be forced to do the same as the Americans,” Barnier told reporters...

Complete Title:Alan Greenspan: What Went Wrong The Former Fed chairman on Where the Economy Went Wrong, Where He Went wrong—and Ayn Rand. Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, goes to a lot of parties. He and his wife, the TV journalist Andrea Mitchell, "sort of get invited everywhere," he says, sitting in front of the long bay window in his office on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, D.C. Lately, though, cocktails and dinners seem to have guest lists drawn almost exclusively from one political party or the other. "It used to be a ritualistic 50-50 at parties—the doyennes...