Free Republic

A wide range of economists expect the Federal Reserve to restart balance-sheet-expanding bond buying in a bid to spark better growth rates, amid other, lesser stimulus options. For most forecasters, the release Friday morning of tepid-at-best August hiring data essentially seals the deal that when the central bank ends its two-day monetary-policy meeting next Thursday, it will in some fashion offer fresh stimulus to the economy. The way economists see it, comments by core central bank officials, most notably Chairman Ben Bernanke‘s speech a week ago, make some form of action very likely....

It's nearly impossible to find a subject on which the left and right agree in modern-day America. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I'm sure that the current Congressional gridlock is driving the centrists and moderates of both parties absolutely nuts. While the gridlock will undoubtedly remain until one party achieves some sort of clear edge in November, I believe that there are a few topics on which many on the left and the right do agree. First and foremost, there's the issue of corporate welfare. Chances are, you don't like corporate welfare. Neither do I. Nobody does, and who would? Big business...

Bicycles instead of cars? Dense apartment clusters instead of single homes? Community rituals instead of churches? "Human rights" instead of religious freedom? The UN Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) which met June 3-14 [1996]in Istanbul, painted an alarming picture of the 21st century community. The American ways-free speech, individualism, travel, and Christianity-are out. A new set of economic, environmental, and social guidelines are in. Citizenship, democracy, and education have been redefined. Handpicked civil leaders will implement UN "laws", bypassing state and national representatives to work directly with the UN. And politically correct "tolerance"-meaning "the rejection of dogmatism and absolutism"...

VAN SUSTEREN, FOX News: People think of him as hawkish on the budget, on expenses, but he voted for TARP. He voted for the auto bailout, voted for two stimulus in '08, voted against the '09 -- February '09 President Obama stimulus. How does -- I mean, how does he explain those, or I mean, how does -- politically, how does he sell that? BOEHNER: I mean, I think that he's a practical conservative. He's got a very conservative voting record, but he's not a knuckle-dragger, all right? He understood that TARP, while none of us wanted to do it,...

A recent column in which blogger Matt Lewis questioned the conservative credentials of Rep. Paul Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, got a lot of attention on our Web site. A number of Daily Caller readers have commented about Ryan, saying he has cast votes they disagree with, particularly in favor of the $700 billion TARP bailout for Wall Street, the auto bailouts and the taxes on AIG bonuses. Here’s how Lewis put it: "Though he talks like Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, some of Ryan’s most high-profile votes seem closer to Keynes than to Adam Smith. For example, in the span of...

There are a few hard, fast rules in politics when you're playing on the top of the ticket. The first is that picking someone that's dumber than a box-o-rocks may cost you the election, as the electorate may think about your untimely demise and whether they can live with the other party in the left seat. The second is that picking someone who's smarter than you are isn't that good of an idea either, because then the electorate may wonder if they made the wrong choice for the top of the ticket. And the third is that picking someone who's...

A top housing regulator on Tuesday spurned a proposal from President Obama and Democrats to let homeowners write down the principal on their mortgages. Edward DeMarco, the acting director of the federal agency that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, said the risk to taxpayers from the mortgage aid would far outweigh the benefits. “We concluded the potential benefit was too small and uncertain relative to unknown costs and risks,” DeMarco, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), said in a letter to Congress. DeMarco's move drew a swift rebuke from the Treasury Department, which had pushed FHFA...

Much has been made about Barofsky's criticism of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who told CBS News he is "deeply offended" by how he's portrayed in Barofsky's book Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street. Barofsky pulled no punches in our earlier segment about the ongoing rate-rigging scandal. (See: "I Hope We See People In Handcuffs": Neil Barofsky Weighs in on LIBOR Scandal) In the accompanying video, we focused more on TARP's failings to live up to its promise to help individual Americans, not just the big banks.

The government’s special inspector general in charge of oversight of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (the “TARP” bank bailouts) – Neil M. Barofsky – wrote a stunning editorial for Bloomberg yesterday, concluding: Americans should lose faith in their government. They should deplore the captured politicians and regulators who distributed tax dollars to the banks without insisting that they be accountable. The American people should be revolted by a financial system that rewards failure and protects those who drove it to the point of collapse and will undoubtedly do so again. Only with this appropriate and justified rage can we hope...

IT might seem remarkable that there’s more to say about our late Bailout Age. But there is more — a lot more. Nearly four years after Washington began its huge rescues of banks with taxpayer dollars, an important player in this, one of the great financial dramas of all time, is offering a damning account of how the Bush and Obama administrations handled the whole episode. He is Neil Barofsky. Remember him — the man whose job it was to police the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program? And his new account, a book titled “Bailout” (Free Press), to be...

The Government Accounting Office (GAO) released a report entitled “TROUBLED ASSET RELIEF PROGRAM: Further Actions Needed to Enhance Assessments and Transparency of Housing Programs.” The report is not a flattering portrayal of their efforts to provide transparency for TARP. I testified in the House of Representatives in 2008 on transparency for the $700 billion TARP saying that “Greater transparency about use of the TARP money can alleviate concerns among U.S. taxpayers and the investment community that the funds are being used appropriately and not being wasted.” Apparently, Secretary Geithner didn’t agree with my testimony. So, what did the GAO conclude...

President Barack Obama’s former auto industry adviser and two former Treasury Department officials cracked at the last minute before a House oversight committee subcommittee hearing and agreed to stop stonewalling an investigation into alleged union favoritism during the administration’s General Motors bailout. Ron Bloom, Obama’s former auto czar, and former Treasury officials Matt Feldman and Harry Wilson have refused to give interviews to the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) about their roles in topping up pensions for union workers while non-union workers lost nearly their entire pensions. The Treasury Department’s actions during the auto bailout...

Following the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve provided more than $4 trillion in near zero-interest loans and other help to banks and businesses whose executives also served as directors for the national bank. At least 18 current and former Fed regional bank directors had a direct stake in the trillion-dollar bailout given to teetering institutions, according to a report produced by the Government Accountability Office, but released by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont). "Snip" To bolster his case, Sanders cited the example of Jamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase. A director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New...

Mitt Romney is in favor of the $700 billion TARP corporate-welfare bailout.

<p>Ally Financial Inc.'s troubled mortgage subsidiary filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy early Monday, potentially paving the way for Ally to sever itself from substantial litigation that has been a drag on its other operations and prevented it from repaying the remainder of its government bailout.</p>

If you invested more than $100 in a company, would you be happy if your shares were worth only $36? By anyone’s definition that investment would have been a terrible failure. Yet, that is how the federal government’s investment in General Motors looks. The federal government has put in well over $100 billion into shoring up General Motors, but the entire company, not just what the government owns, was worth only $36 billion on Tuesday. GM sales have bounced around, rising in March and then falling in April, but investors’ best guesses for what future sales will be are already...

Obama's former "car czar" and Willett Advisors chairman Steven Rattner said now is not the time for the U.S. government to sell its stake in General Motors. Any sale should wait until 2013 or even 2014, said Rattner, who led the Obama administration's restructuring of General Motors (GM, Fortune 500) and Chrysler from 2008 through 2009.. "I personally believe there's a lot of value in GM stock that's been badly treated by Wall Street," he told CNNMoney at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles. Shares of GM have dropped roughly 30% since the automaker went public in November...

After 6 terms in the United States senate, long time RINO Orrin Hatch will face his first primary battle after failing to attain the necessary 60% of delegate votes at Saturday’s Utah Republican convention. After falling 32 votes short of the required total on the final ballot, Hatch will take on conservative Republican Dan Liljenquist on June 26th. In 2010 Hatch watched nervously as Utah colleague Robert Bennett was removed from the Senate in his own primary contest, a victim of having too often sold-out the conservative Republican base. Concerned with mounting criticism of his own predilection for confirming Marxists...

We are busy in Washington with a corrupt government, with a government that I said perhaps because of the money, the amount of TARP and stimulus funds, was going to be the most corrupt government history and it is proving to be just exactly that. This money going though the hands of political leaders is corrupting the process, whether it is Solyndra, GSA, or a number of other scandals. Our mandate is to go after the wrongful acts of government or to review for reorganization laws already passed."

Yesterday on Laura IngrahamÂ’s radio show, she asked Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell about a recent Roll Call article that framed me as one of the loud leaders of conservatives opposed to Mitch McConnell. The Senator from Kentucky responded that he had never heard of me and I did not have an audience. That sounds a bit like the child, when asked if he ate the cookie, replying that he had not and besides it did not taste good. If heÂ’d never heard of me, how can he comment on my audience? If he states plainly I have no audience,...