Free Republic

Berlin: The state finance minister of Germany's Hesse region, which includes Frankfurt, has been found dead. Authorities said he appears to have killed himself and the state's governor suggested Sunday that he was in despair over the fallout from the coronavirus crisis. The body of Thomas Schaefer, a 54-year-old member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, was found Saturday on railway tracks at Hochheim, near Frankfurt. German minister Thomas Schaefer commits suicide over coronavirus worries, body found on railway tracks File image of Thomas Schäfer (CDU), Minister of Finance of Hesse. AP

According to the U.S. Treasury, as of February 29, 2020, there was $16.9 trillion in marketable U.S. Treasury securities outstanding. Of that amount, at the end of February, the Federal Reserve held $2.47 trillion or 14.6 percent – making it, by far, the largest single holder of U.S. Treasuries anywhere in the world. ...But exactly how can a so-called “free market” function smoothly if the country’s own central bank is cornering the market. Salomon Brothers paid a $290 million fine and came close to getting slapped with criminal charges by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1992 for manipulating prices...

American hedge fund boss Bill Ackman has made $2.6 billion by betting against the markets just days after stoking fears by saying 'hell is coming' and begging President Donald Trump to shut down the country amid the coronavirus pandemic. The Pershing Square Capital Management hedge fund manager said his firm had made $2.6billion from a one-off bet that the coronavirus outbreak would cause a global market crash. His firm seized upon bond market turmoil during the coronavirus crisis in buying 'credit protection on various global investment grade and high-yield credit indices'.

The coronavirus pandemic is shutting down entire sectors of the economy and putting millions of Americans out of work, but one corner of Wall Street may find opportunity amid the carnage: private equity. Private equity firms have been stockpiling cash in recent years as rising markets made it harder for them to invest, accumulating a record pile of “dry powder” for deals. The industry typically buys undervalued companies with borrowed money, taking them private to spruce up operations for an eventual sale. The high company valuations that kept them at bay collapsed this month amid widespread business closures and quarantines...

Campaign finance laws? What campaign finance laws? – Apparently, federal campaign finance laws never envisioned the scam just pulled off by Mini-Mike Bloomberg. I told you when he got into the race that this was all a scam, that he wasn’t really seriously seeking the nomination, and his actions since that time only made my case. Stop Dieting - Get Life Long Results Noom uses technology to help you get healthy. Learn more! Here’s how the scam worked: In most campaign seasons both the RNC and DNC are flush with money and able to throw millions around to vulnerable campaigns...

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is the latest regional agency to ask federal officials for a bail out, citing coronavirus related travel losses at all its facilities. The request for $1.9 billion was made in a letter to members of the New Jersey and New York congressional delegation Friday, citing a drop in traffic volume or ridership at all of its facilities as the reason. The coronavirus related fall off comes after the authority reported record volumes of traffic the its six bridges and tunnels, four airports, PATH rail system and cargo ports in 2019.

Italy’s crisis could soon become unmanageable, potentially causing mayhem in world financial markets. Italy needs a €500 to €700 billion ($572 billion to $801 billion) precautionary bailout package to help reassure financial markets that the Italian government and banks can meet their debt payment obligations as country’s economic and financial crisis digs in and becomes more fearsome. Just as the human costs of the coronavirus have grown alarmingly, Italy’s crisis could soon become unmanageable, potentially causing mayhem in world financial markets. This can’t just be left to the eurozone nations. Not only the International Monetary Fund but even the U.S....

The Fed said the “fundamentals of the U.S. economy remain strong” but that the coronavirus “poses evolving risks to economic activity.” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell will be holding a press conference at 11 a.m.

JPMorgan Chase announced Monday that it is planning to end loans to companies pursuing fossil fuel drilling in the Arctic Circle, according to reports. The Washington Post reported that the bank said that it will soon complete a 2017 commitment to help fund $200 billion in projects to help meet the U.N.'s sustainable development goals, as well as $50 billion for "green initiatives." The bank also plans to phase out all existing and future loans to the coal industry by 2024, and end the financing of oil and gas extraction projects in the Arctic, a region vulnerable to the effects...

Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg said at a private event in 2016 that his presidential campaign platform would have been to "defend the banks" and also labeled the progressive movement and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, now a rival for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, as "scary." When asked his views on the rise of the far right in Europe, Bloomberg warned about the rise of progressive politicians in the US, citing Warren. "The left is arising. The progressive movement is just as scary," he says. "Elizabeth Warren on one side. And whoever you want to pick on the...

Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) on Thursday said that he has written a letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) to voice concerns over the state's public pension fund chief and his connections with China. The Indiana congressman is calling out the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), the largest state pension fund in the U.S., for allegedly investing in numerous select blacklisted Chinese companies that manufacture military products. The California-based fund invested $3.1 billion into 172 different Chinese companies, Banks said in an appearance on Fox Business Network. He said that some of the companies invested in have been blacklisted...

I have devoted my entire adult life to learning about money. That might sound like cruel-and-unusual punishment, but I’ve mostly enjoyed it. For more than three decades, I’ve spent my days perusing the business pages, reading finance books, scanning academic studies and talking to countless folks about their finances. Yet, despite this intense financial education, it took me a decade or more to learn many of life’s most important money lessons and, indeed, some key insights have only come to me in recent years. Here are 10 things I wish I’d been told in my 20s—or told more loudly, so...

Former Goldman Sachs CEO and Chairman Lloyd Blankfein has said Russia should back Bernie Sanders for president in order to “best screw up the U.S.” Following his win in the New Hampshire primary last night, Sanders has emerged as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination to face President Donald Trump in November’s election. In a rare outburst on Twitter, Blankfein suggested that Sanders becoming the nominee would mean “the Russians will have to reconsider who to work for to best screw up the U.S.”

Imagine starting a business, risking everything and deciding to give it a go on your own. That entrepreneurial spirit is what sets the United States apart from most of the rest of the world; the American Spirit. Now imagine, after all that hard work and risk, some leftist decides they don’t like you or what you’re doing and sets out to ruin what you’ve built, to destroy you. It happens all the time, actually. The “cancel culture,” as it’s called, is just one of many tools in the progressive arsenal. And while stories like the attempted destruction of Gibson’s Bakery...

A Commerce Department official warned Congress recently that China is raising billions of dollars in U.S. capital markets and the activity could undermine American security. Nazak Nikakhtar, assistant secretary for international trade at the Commerce Department, testified last month that Chinese companies raised $48 billion from American capital markets from 2013 through the end of last year. Ms. Nikakhtar told the congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission that 172 Chinese companies in September were listed on the three largest U.S. exchanges — Nasdaq, the New York Stock Exchange and the NYSE American — with a total market capitalization of...

A group of 15 Democratic senators wrote to 11 major banks last week asking them to ban funding oil and gas drilling or exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. "The scale of your banks’ assets individually, let alone together, give you the ability to drive change in protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and in shifting towards a U.S. financial sector that effectively analyzes and plans for climate risks," the senators wrote. "We respectfully urge you to reassess your current environmental and climate policies and update them to include a prohibition on funding for oil and gas drilling or...

Climate crusaders are failing to persuade voters to limit fossil fuels, but they’re turning to coercion by other means. They’re having some success with U.S. banks and insurers that are caving to pressure to divest from carbon energy. The Hartford insurance group last month announced it will no longer insure or invest in companies that generate more than 25% of their revenues from coal mining or more than 25% of their energy from coal. It will also black-list companies that generate more than a quarter of their revenues from drilling in Canada’s Alberta oil sands. “As an insurer and asset...

As China struggles to deal with the slowdown of the world’s second-largest economy, it has embarked on a new strategy of placing financial experts in provinces to manage risks and rebuild regional economies. Since last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping has put 12 former executives at state-run financial institutions or regulators in top posts across the nation’s 31 provinces, regions and municipalities, including some who have grappled with banking and debt difficulties that have raised fears of a financial meltdown. Only two top provincial officials had such financial background before the last leadership reshuffle in 2012, according to Reuters research....

Hong Kong (CNN Business) Beijing is stepping up the battle to stop money flowing out of China as the country contends with economic woes and trade war tensions that have eased but show no sign of ending altogether. Money was leaving the country at a record clip earlier this year through unauthorized channels, according to analysts. That's bad news for China, which needs to keep financial reserves high to maintain confidence in its markets. Now Chinese officials are trying harder than ever to avoid a repeat of the financial scare four years ago that sapped its money reserves by hundreds...

Some critical thinking here, the author dissects "inflation" then concludes we need crypto currency