Free Republic

What were you expecting? We refer here to that dustup last week over an official MSNBC pre-Super Bowl tweet about a Cheerios commercial that featured a bi-racial family. The tweet read: Maybe the rightwing will hate it, but everyone else will go awww: the adorable new #Cheerios ad w/ biracial family, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus picked up the phone and protested directly to MSNBC president Phil Griffin. Griffin apologized, the tweet was deleted and the employee fired. Nothing to see here, folks, move on. Not so fast. Again, what were you expecting? What else could possibly make some MSNBC employee...

A person begins heavy drinking in order to get drunk and stay drunk. Eventually, unless he stops and deals with reality, he drinks just to stay sane—until his health collapses. Likewise, a person may get high from heroin but later need the drug just to stay functional. Creating continual flows of new currency “stimulus” works in a similar fashion on the economy. Thus far, the Fed’s (now slightly reduced) monetary stimulus has kept the stock market rising. But there are signs that the drug may no longer work to get Wall Street high. According to the Financial Times, “Stocks suffer...

Retiring Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who was replaced by Janet Yellen as of today, is leaving the Federal Reserve with an unprecedented $4,102,138,000,000 in total assets on its balance sheet, up 391 percent from the $834,663,000,000 in total assets the Fed showed on its balance sheet when Bernanke took over as chairman in February 2006. Much of the increase in the Fed’s assets has come in the form of U.S. Treasury securities and Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae mortgage-backed securities that the Fed purchased over the last five years in its attempts to stimulate the economy. …

The stock market has been mixed lately as a result of the Federal Reserve Bank’s (Fed) announcement that it will reduce its bond buying activities, which started December. Because tapering or reducing the purchase of government debt at very low interest rates is not good for stocks, and will cause the market to decline overtime, the Fed sugar coated its announcement of an exit from the bond market to ease market concerns. It gave market investors an organized plan of exiting the bond market over the next 12 months, and sugar coated the exit by saying if the unemployment rates...

The Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) released the public portions of resolution plans for 116 institutions that submitted plans for the first time in December 2013, a group comprising smaller banks affected by Dodd-Frank requirements for winding-up plans. The Dodd-Frank Act requires that bank holding companies (and foreign companies treated as bank holding companies) with total consolidated assets of $50 billion or more and non-bank financial companies designated for enhanced prudential supervision by the Financial Stability Oversight Council periodically submit resolution plans to the Federal Reserve Board and the FDIC. Each plan must describe the...

The Federal Reserve did something completely unpredicted on Wednesday; nothing. So called “tapering” of QE was indefinitely placed in deep freeze………until such time as the U.S. economy is more robust. Most asset classes shot up energetically. Both the S&P and the Dow closed at all-time highs. SNIP The question to be asked is did these asset classes all react rationally. Continuing to effectively print $85 billion per month of new money after months of telegraphing at least a modicum of reduction can only translate that our economy is frail and infirm, languid if you will. SNIP Up until ten years...

Some may have forgotten, or not be aware, that the Federal Reserve system has its own police force. Well, it does: "The U.S. Federal Reserve Police is the law enforcement arm of the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States.... Officers are certified to carry a variety of weapons systems (depending on assignment) including semi-automatic pistols, assault rifles, submachine guns, shotguns, less-lethal weapons, pepper spray, batons and other standard police equipment. Officers also wear bullet resistant vests/body armor. On October 12, 2010 President Barack Obama signed into law S.B. 1132 the "Law Enforcement Officers' Safety Act...

The Senate confirmed Janet Yellen on Monday as the first woman to lead the Federal Reserve, elevating an advocate of fighting unemployment and a backer of the central bank's efforts to spur the economy with low interest rates and massive bond purchases. Yellen, 67, will replace Ben Bernanke, who is stepping down after serving as chairman for eight years dominated by the Great Recession and the Fed's efforts to combat it. Senators confirmed her by 56-26, with numerous absences caused by airline flight delays forced by arctic temperatures around much of the country. All 45 voting Democrats were joined by...

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...