Free Republic

Let's take a break from Obamacare, shall we? Here’s big news: Turbo-Tax Timmy is definitely NOT going to replace the Bernanke as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. My that was good! I wonder what the private sector has to offer? He wanted to make some real money, so instead of just picking up another federal pension he’s going to go to work for Warburg Pincus LLC starting next spring! Right after the release of the book he’s been working on, “How I Saved Wall Street the Whole World from Financial Collapse with Your Tax Dollars.” Butt wait: Warburg Pincus? Aren’t...

After clearing the Senate on a 74 – 22 vote on March 14, SB 1813 is now headed for a vote in the House of Representatives, where it’s expected to encounter stiffer opposition among the GOP majority.

As we continue to watch the general uproar over the Operation Fast and Furious program, and specifically what Attorney General Holder knew and when he knew it, it needs to be noted that perjury is not the only apparent violation of law to have occurred. I refer to the apparent violation of at least one (probably two) major U.S. laws by the Holder Justice Department. A few years ago, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701, the follow-on to the Trading with the Enemy Act) was expanded in order to criminalize any transactions between U.S. entities — to...

The Daily, the tablet newspaper, named one of the women who filed a sexual harassment claim against Republican front-runner Herman Cain while he was CEO of the National Restaurant Association. The woman, identified by the paper as Karen Kraushaar, now works as communications director at the Treasury Department's Office of the Inspector General.Cain has sought to downplay the charge — calling it frivolous — saying she overreacted to a gesture comparing her height to his wife's.But the paper spoke to friends and family members of Kraushaar who vouch for her honesty — saying she is not the type to bring false allegations.“She wouldn’t...

Looks like no more official trips for G-Pap anywhere very soon: ECB'S WEIDMANN-IT IS WRONG TO ABANDON ALL PRINCIPLES OF MONETARY POLICY BY CITING A GENERAL EMERGENCY-SPIEGEL GERMAN CSU HEAD - IF GREECE CAN'T OR WON'T KEEP TRACK WITH RESCUE PLAN THAN AN EXIT FROM THE EURO ZONE IS CONCEIVABLE-SPIEGEL More from Reuters: European Central Bank Governing Council member Jens Weidmann told Germany's Spiegel magazine in an interview he considered it wrong to "throw out all established principles of monetary policy by citing a general emergency." In a preview of an interview to be published in the new edition of...

Link only.

Siren is up...

(CNSNews.com) - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told the House Small Business Committee on Wednesday that the Obama administration believes taxes on small business must increase so the administration does not have to “shrink the overall size of government programs.” The administration’s plan to raise the tax rate on small businesses is part of its plan to raise taxes on all Americans who make more than $250,000 per year—including businesses that file taxes the same way individuals and families do. [........] “We're not doing it because we want to do it, we're doing it because we see no alternative to a balanced approach to reduce our...

Geithner Says New Financial Crisis Coming Lloyd Grove, The Daily Beast May 19, 2011, 2:12 PM At a New York screening of the new HBO adaptation of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Too Big to Fail, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said that not only is our financial system not too large to go bust—but we’re headed for another crisis. The Wall Street meltdown of late 2008 was, in real life, a harrowing event, triggering a terrible recession from which we’re still recovering. In the HBO movie Too Big to Fail, it’s also a surprisingly gripping melodrama—a clash of greedheads and egomaniacs desperate...

By taking advantage of  “must-pass” pieces of legislation, Republicans have three chances this year to restrain the burden of government.  They didn’t do very well with the ‘CR fight” over appropriated spending for the rest of FY2011, which was their first opportunity. I was hoping for an extra-base hit off the fence, but the GOP was afraid of a government shutdown and negotiated from a position of weakness. As such, the best interpretation is that they eked out an infield single.The next chance to impose fiscal discipline will be the debt limit. Currently, the federal government “only” has the...

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Please use the link to reference this article. Do not copy & paste articles which is a breach of FT.com's Ts&Cs (www.ft.com/servicestools/help/terms) and is copyright infringement. Send a link for free or email ftsales.support@ft.com to purchase rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/03567a28-e8a3-11df-a383-00144feab49a.html#ixzz14WJKo1Eb China has curtly dismissed a US proposal to address global economic imbalances, setting the stage for a potential showdown at next week’s G20 meeting in Seoul. Cui Tiankai, a deputy foreign minister and one of China’s lead negotiators at the G20, said on Friday that the US plan for limiting current account surpluses and deficits to 4 per cent of gross domestic...

NOTE The following text is a quote: www.treas.gov/press/releases/tg894.htm October 6, 2010 TG-894 Secretary of Treasury Timothy F. Geithner Remarks at the Brookings Institution As Prepared for Delivery This weekend, finance officials from around the world will gather in Washington, along with the senior management of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The G-20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meet in Korea later this month, followed by the G-20 Heads of State in November. I want to outline our objectives for these meetings. A period of unprecedented international cooperation Two years ago, the world economy was in the grip...

Geithner Just Quashed Hopes Of A Bush Tax Cut Extension Gus Lubin Jul. 22, 2010, 2:09 PM Following comments from Senate Democrats expressing willingness to extend Bush tax cuts, the White House dispatched Tim Geithner to kill the buzz. Tim just announced Obama's plans to let the tax cuts expire for wealthy Americans in January, according to WSJ. Which is what people expected all along. WSJ: Mr. Geithner said there is "still some uncertainty about how strong the recovery is going to be," which may be impacting spending decisions by businesses and individuals. But he discounted that as a reason...

The "Discrimen" Of Change Is Near, As The Bernanke-Geithner-Keynes-Japanese Experiment Comes To An End Keith McCullough, Hedgeye Jun. 7, 2010, 10:00 AM“I will either find a way, or make one.”-Hannibal One of our most successful European clients recently sent me a book that I can’t put down: Tom Holland’s “Rubicon – The Last Years of The Roman Republic.” As a behavioral study, the parallels of power and politics between then and now are interesting to consider. The Rubicon is the river in northern Italy that Julius Caesar infamously crossed in 49BC to officially declare what was considered the unthinkable –...

Economy: A major problem this administration has is it continually downplays the power of free markets to right themselves. That was apparent in remarks made by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner on Thursday. Speaking on NBC's "Today" show, Geithner said the bailouts and buyouts and other aid to companies were "deeply unfair" — especially given the way it's played out. True enough, today many companies are reporting booming earnings. Even banks look healthier. Average joes don't look so good. More than 8 million have been laid off since the recession began in December 2007, and unemployment at 9.7% is "terribly high...

Billions of dollars were at stake when 21 executives of Goldman Sachs and the American International Group convened a conference call on Jan. 28, 2008, to try to resolve a rancorous dispute that had been escalating for months. A.I.G. had long insured complex mortgage securities owned by Goldman and other firms against possible defaults. With the housing crisis deepening, A.I.G., once the world’s biggest insurer, had already paid Goldman $2 billion to cover losses the bank said it might suffer. A.I.G. executives wanted some of its money back, insisting that Goldman — like a homeowner overestimating the damages in a...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will propose making a popular stimulus bond program permanent and expanding its use in the budget plan he presents on Monday, a U.S. Treasury Department official said on Saturday. He will also seek to lower the level of the rebate the U.S. government pays to issuers on taxable Build America Bonds to 28 percent, the official said. The bonds, created by economic stimulus legislation last year, currently give issuers a subsidy equal to 35 percent of their interest costs. The bonds "were successful in helping to repair a severely damaged municipal finance market, making...

No one has been less forgiving than Glenn Beck when it comes to Democrats with tax problems.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, then led by Timothy Geithner, told American International Group Inc. to withhold details from the public about the bailed-out insurer's payments to banks during the depths of the financial crisis, e-mails between the company and its regulator show. AIG said in a draft of a regulatory filing that the insurer paid banks, which included Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Societe Generale SA, 100 cents on the dollar for credit-default swaps they bought from the firm. The New York Fed crossed out the reference, according to the e-mails, and AIG excluded the language when...