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Stock markets around the world fell today, led by the 246 point dive, or 1.5%, for the U.S. Dow Jones Industrial Average and the 1.9% drop for German stock market index.  Analysts generally pointed to worries about a shrinking Chinese lending and the potential trade war between Russia and the West, but I am more concerned that since the beginning of 2014 food prices have skyrocketed.  The Federal Reserve must be concerned that their international support for “cheap money policies” to stimulate economic growth may be funding commodity speculation that is driving prices higher and creating wide spread misery. If...

The Federal Reserve’s seemingly endless program of quantitative easing (QE) begun under Ben Bernanke, and continuing at a slightly slower pace under Janet Yellen, has some of the punditry and much of the electorate up in arms. With good reason. Implicit in quantitative easing is the horribly obtuse notion that central banks can produce real economic growth through their monetary machinations. If only life were so simple. Back in the world of the reasonable, the sole purpose of money is as a stable measure of value that facilitates the exchange of goods and investment. Quantitative easing, by its very name,...

Like John Stossel and Thomas Sowell, I’m not a big fan of the Federal Reserve. It’s not just that I’m a libertarian who fantasizes about the denationalization of money. I also think the Fed hasn’t done a good job, even by its own metrics. There’s very little doubt, for instance, that easy-money policies last decade played a major role in creating the housing bubble and causing the financial crisis. Yes, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac played a big role, but it was the Fed that provided the excess liquidity that the GSEs used to subsidize the subprime lending orgy. But...

A US senator is asking the federal government to take this remarkable step: completely ban Bitcoin. Joe Manchin, a Democratic senator representing West Virginia, sent a letter Wednesday to the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, and other regulators characterizing the virtual currency as encouraging "illicit activity" as well as being "highly unstable and disruptive to our economy."

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve should be willing to let inflation temporarily run above its target level so as to more quickly bring the economy back to health, a top Fed official said on Friday, even as a second policymaker signaled the very idea left him cold. The debate, between Chicago Fed President Charles Evans and Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser, underscored a fundamental disagreement over the central bank's optimal approach to policy under new Fed Chair Janet Yellen. To Evans, one of the Fed's most dovish policymakers, allowing inflation to run above the Fed's 2-percent target would...

A British man accused of hacking into U.S. government computer networks was charged in a new indictment unsealed Thursday with infiltrating the Federal Reserve’s computers. Lauri Love, 28, of Stradishall, England, was charged with computer hacking and aggravated identity theft, which carry a potential penalty of up to 12 years in prison. He initially was arrested in Great Britain in October and released on bail after he was charged under a United Kingdom law that permits the arrest of anyone who starts attacks from the U.K. on computers anywhere in the world. …

The Federal Reserve Board doesn't have the authority to regulate bitcoin, Fed Chair Janet Yellen said Thursday. "To the best of my knowledge, there's no intersection at all in any way between bitcoin and banks the Federal Reserve has the ability to supervise or regulate," Yellen told members of the Senate Banking Committee. "The Federal Reserve simply does not have authority to supervise or regulate bitcoin in any way." Yellen was responding to questioning from Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who sent the Fed and other banking regulators a letter on Wednesday calling on them to ban—or at least curb—the decentralized,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. central bankers thought they should get more regulatory powers in return for providing cheap cash to Wall Street banks during the 2008 credit crisis, according to Federal Reserve transcripts released on Friday. Powerful investment banks such as Goldman Sachs (NYS:GS - News) and Morgan Stanley (NYS:MS - News) had access to a raft of measures to prop up markets during the 2008 credit meltdown, but the Federal Reserve had little say over them. "I am just a little worried about being taken advantage of here," Richard Fisher, head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, said...

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