Free Republic

Federal regulators need to explain why they’ve granted a perpetually-floundering California credit union that serves organized labor permission to raise money from investors—especially considering those regulators haven’t given the same green light to a strong and growing credit union that serves rural Idahoans. Credit unions are member-owned nonprofits and generally can use only retained earnings for expansion plans. If a credit union wants to grow using secondary capital from investors, it must first seek permission from the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), which is supposed to evaluate the credit union’s stability and financial position before giving the green light. A...

While speaking at a meeting of Japanese business leaders in Tokyo, Trump said the stock market would be anywhere between 7,000 to 10,000 points higher if the U.S. central bank had chosen to keep interest rates steady. He also suggested that the growth rate in the U.S. would have exceeded 3 percent. "But they wanted to raise interest rates," he said. "You’ll explain that to me." Trump, despite hand-picking Chairman Jerome Powell more than a year ago, has been a frequent critic of the Fed, often urging policymakers to cut interest rates from the current target range of 2.25 percent...

Alice Rivlin, a leading expert on US budget policy who served as the first director of the Congressional Budget Office, has died at the age of 88. The economist, who in the 1990s became the first woman to be White House budget director and vice-chair of the Federal Reserve Board, died of cancer on Tuesday morning in Washington DC, according to the Brookings Institution think-tank, where she was a senior fellow.  Rivlin “made great and lasting contributions as a leader and economic policymaker and broke barriers as a woman in the economics profession,” Fed chair Jay Powell said in a...

Famous Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is calling a new government-controlled socialist banking system in the United States.Twitter celebrity AOC suggested that the failing US Postal Service could be used as a model for her govt-run bank idea.

There's an inherent conflict of interest that occurs when an agency serves as both a regulator and competitor. Unfortunately, that describes the present state of the Federal Reserve. But rather than reform the agency to eliminate sources of conflict, the Fed is proposing to expand its market activities by launching a real-time payments system to compete against the private sector. Anyone who has done any domestic banking is familiar with the need for faster clearing of interbank transfers. They're incredibly slow by digital age standards, sometimes taking several days to complete. It's even subpar by the standards of the European...

President says Moore has withdrawn from consideration https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1123987855053873154

Moore came under intense scrutiny last week for his past writings on women, including several opinion pieces published on the website of the conservative National Review magazine in 2001, 2002 and 2003 in which he wrote that women should be banned from refereeing, announcing or bartending at men’s college basketball games. And in 2014, in a column he penned for National Review, Moore criticized a gender pay equality proposal from a Democratic senator, calling it a “laughably bad idea.” “The crisis in America today isn’t about women’s wages; it’s about men’s wages,” he wrote. “Men are still the chief breadwinners...

China is adding great stimulus to its economy while at the same time keeping interest rates low. Our Federal Reserve has incessantly lifted interest rates, even though inflation is very low, and instituted a very big dose of quantitative tightening. We have the potential to go up like a rocket if we did some lowering of rates, like one point, and some quantitative easing. Yes, we are doing very well at 3.2% GDP, but with our wonderfully low inflation, we could be setting major records &, at the same time, make our National Debt start to look small!

These are tough times if you are a big-government, economic liberal. Since President Trump has taken office, unemployment rates have remained below 4%, hiring among African Americans are at their highest levels in decades, our energy and manufacturing sectors are booming, and employers are scrambling to fill millions of job vacancies by offering competitive salaries. So what can the frustrated liberal do if he wants to criticize the presidentÂ’s economic policies? He personally vilifies the people the president wants on his team to further improve our economy, protect American jobs, and generate greater wealth for all. Enter Stephen Moore, who...

Republican senators on Tuesday began vocalizing their opposition to Stephen Moore, President Donald Trump’s nominee for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, amid widespread criticism that the economic commentator is unfit for the job. Sens. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) both told reporters that they’re not confident in Moore, whom many economists have called out as a partisan pick more known for promoting conservative fiscal policy than for having any economic expertise. Ernst, the first Republican to speak out, told CNN it was “very unlikely” that she’d support Moore’s nomination and that she didn’t believe he would be...

Controversy swirls around the nomination of Stephen Moore to the Fed. Full disclosure, in the tiny word of Supply-Side economics MooreÂ’s an old friend, a friendly rival, and occasional professional collaborator of mine. President TrumpÂ’s announced desire to nominate Moore raises questions of greater importance than merely of MooreÂ’s fate or even the fate of the Fed. MooreÂ’s nomination is, by far, the most important to date of the Trump administration. Let me reveal why. The Mandarin-classÂ’s mass hysteria over President TrumpÂ’s nomination of Moore resembles the recoil of a vampire from a crucifix more than it does a mere...

President Donald Trump’s effort to stack the Federal Reserve with ideological allies has run into a familiar foe: Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, who’s likely to continue to act as a bulwark against the central bank becoming a target for political appointees. Herman Cain’s decision Monday to withdraw his name from consideration as a Fed governor was largely academic. Romney and three other GOP senators already were poised to torpedo the former Kansas City Fed president and pizza CEO’s nomination if it was brought to a vote.

The opposition research creeps have been on the job. Now that Herman Cain has exited from President Trump's consideration for a Federal Reserve board seat, the long knives are now out for free market economist Stephen Moore. One media hit job after another is now rolling out against him in the press today, and none of it has to do with economics. The left has made a big deal about Moore's presence on the Fed board  a matter of 'politicizing' it, but this is what 'politicizing' really looks like. The New York Times, home of nasty, embittered columnist Paul Krugman, is...

President Donald Trump tweeted Monday that he will not nominate businessman and failed 2012 GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain to the Federal Reserve Board. "My friend Herman Cain, a truly wonderful man, has asked me not to nominate him for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board," Trump wrote. "I will respect his wishes. Herman is a great American who truly loves our Country!"

A growing headache for McConnell and maybe for Trump too. Actual headline from the Daily Beast this evening:I think when Trump first floated Cain’s name for a Fed slot, he expected Senate Republicans would go along without a fuss. And why not? That’s what they almost always do, especially with presidential nominations. In fact, they just got done nuking a Senate rule that required 30 hours of debate for certain nominees, replacing it with one that requires two hours instead. It seemed like they were building a conveyor belt to streamline confirmation of Trump’s picks for key vacancies.And then...

A woman who once famously claimed she had a 13-year affair with Herman Cain said Thursday she would testify under oath against him unless he withdraws his campaign for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board. Ginger White of Atlanta said she is willing to even identify certain parts of Cain’s body to back up her accusations, which he has denied for years. “It’s time for you to be held accountable for your actions,” White said at a press conference in Manhattan, flanked by celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred. “Today more than ever, women are fighting back. We’re not going to...

Democratic leaders slammed President Trump’s picks for the Federal Reserve Board, warning Thursday that the two men Mr. Trump has floated are unqualified and too political to help steer the U.S. economy. “With stiff competition, these two appointments to the Fed are the worst, ill-suited appointments that the president could come up with,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, told reporters. Earlier this month, Mr. Trump announced he was nominating Herman Cain, a former Republican presidential candidate and pizza company executive, to fill a vacancy to govern the country’s central bank. In March, he nominated economic analyst Stephen Moore, a...

It takes an awfully dubious nomination to rile up a bunch as obedient as the Senate GOP to the point where they’re not only willing to bork a Trump pick but to bork him before he’s even been formally nominated.I did not think they had it in ’em.Cain’s loss is *probably* Stephen Moore’s gain, though. It’s almost unimaginable that Republicans would embarrass Trump twice by rejecting both of his Fed nominees. North Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer said he wouldn’t back Cain if President Donald Trump nominates him to the Fed and hopes the president will make another choice.“If I...

WASHINGTON — Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer, N.D., on Thursday became the fourth member of his party’s caucus to tell reporters he would vote against a nomination for former pizza executive Herman Cain to join the board of the Federal Reserve. “If I had to [vote] today, I would vote no” on Cain, Cramer told reporters Thursday on Capitol Hill. Cain has yet to be formally nominated by President Donald Trump, but last week Trump announced that Cain was his pick to fill one of two open seats on the central bank’s board. Trump intends to nominate conservative economist and author...

As far as I know, the Federal Reserve — the world’s most important economic policy institution — doesn’t have an anthem. But if it were to adopt one now, the choice would be obvious: “Send In the Clowns.” You see, the Fed’s governing board currently has two vacancies, and Donald Trump has proposed filling those vacancies with ludicrous hacks. If he succeeds, one of our few remaining havens of serious, nonpartisan policymaking will be on its way toward becoming as corrupt and dysfunctional as the rest of the Trump administration. Stephen Moore and Herman Cain are, of course, completely unqualified...