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Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen faced what may have seemed like an absurd line of questioning on Capitol Hill this week: Has the Fed considered negative interest rates? It's not a fantasy. At central banks around the world, negative benchmark interest rates have become the new normal, leading to some unusual paradoxes. In Denmark, instead of paying interest on their mortgages, many borrowers have been receiving payments from banks on their home loans. On the flip side, some Swiss bank customers have had to pay banks to keep cash in savings accounts. Yellen told Congress Thursday, following negative moves by central banks in Europe and elsewhere, the Fed has...

As recession fears mount in the U.S., Fed Chair Janet Yellen conceded there's a "chance" of a downturn ahead. Asked by Republican Sen. Bob Corker whether the monetary policy-making Federal Open Market Committee would consider going to negative interest rates, which would entail charging banks to store reserves at the Fed, Yellen left the door open. She repeated a statement she said Wednesday that the Fed had considered negative rates in 2010 but decided that wouldn't be the best course at that time. "We wouldn't take those off the table, but we have work to do to judge whether they...

For nearly one year, Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy has been Janet Yellen's nemesis over the ongoing probe into Fed leakage of material inside information via Medley Global and any other undisclosed channels, one which has seen subpoeans be lobbed at the Fed which has been doing everything in its power to stall said probe, and which cost Pedro da Costa his job when he dared to ask questions at a Fed presser that were not precleared by his WSJ "Fed mouthpiece" peers. Today, during Yellen's appearance before the House Financial Services committee, Duffy finally had enough, and in a heated...

... the Fed Funds rate just tumbled to 0.12%, far below the required 0.25% floor set by the Fed, and down 23 bps from the effective 0.35% Fed Funds rate set yesterday, confirming that indeed the rate hike corridor can and has been breached at least once, and just two weeks into the Fed's rate hike experiment.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen is stressing the need to review the unconventional monetary policies that central banks around the world deployed in response to the 2008 global financial crisis. She said Thursday that the post-crisis period offers policymakers an opportunity to assess the effectiveness of the tools and better understand the impact of new regulation. "Policymakers have to carefully weigh the advantages and disadvantages of alternative monetary implementation frameworks in the presence of new policy tools," Yellen said in remarks at a two-day research conference sponsored by the Fed. Policymakers should also be "mindful of new...

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on Wednesday pointed to a possible December interest rate "liftoff" but said rates would rise only slowly from then on to nurture the U.S. economic recovery. [...] Her remarks pushed bond yields higher and stocks lower. They also caused investors to reset their expectations of a December rate hike above 60 percent, a sign that markets are finally taking the Fed's language seriously after a period in which U.S. central bankers were frustrated by the gap between their own outlook and market bets about their likely course of action. ...

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One month ago, when the JOLTS data showed the highest number of job openings in history, rising by a near record 430,000 to 5.8 million vacant positions, most speculated that this data - considered to be Janet Yellen's favorite indicator of slack in the labor market now that the unemployment rate has become utterly unreliable due to the 94 million Americans out of the labor force - had sealed the fate of a September rate hike. It did not, as instead the Fed decided to shift to its 4th mandate (the 3rd being the stock market), namely the "global...

The Clinton Foundation invited everyone from Pope Francis and Leonardo DiCaprio to Bill de Blasio and Janet Yellen to its showcase gathering starting Saturday in New York City, according to multiple sources familiar with the planning. But those invitations were among the dozens turned down by all manner of celebrities, dignitaries and donors, according to the sources, who said the controversies swirling around the foundation and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign have made some bold-faced names and donors wary of the foundation. The glitzy Clinton Global Initiative gathering in New York, which has the lofty title “The Future of Impact,” was...

"Yes, I believe American people are intelligent enough to make decisions," said FEC chairwoman Ann Ravel. The chairwoman of the federal agency responsible for overseeing the nation's campaign finance laws has suggested that federal authorities should help Americans to make "thoughtful" political contributions. The comment came during a Thursday meeting of the Federal Election Commission. The agency was considering whether to issue an advisory decision for an organization called "Democracy Rules" that created a game-like platform for making political contributions. According to the rules of the platform, participants vote for one of a few issues in a given category, like...

Markets sold off sharply this summer over concerns about a slowdown in China and weak world growth, leaving Fed officials to vet whether that reflected a short-term correction or more fundamental problems on the horizon. "Financial markets tend to wax and wane, sometimes suddenly. Monetary policy needs to be more stable," said Bullard, who in prepared remarks here to the Community Bankers Association of Illinois said he did not think the Fed "provided a satisfactory answer" to why rates should stay near zero. The economy is near full employment, and inflation will almost certainly rise, Bullard said, leaving the Fed's...

Yellen has inherited a complete nightmare. Thursday’s decision to delay yet again the long-awaited liftoff from zero interest rates is illustrating that the world economy is totally screwed. There is a lot of speculation about why the Fed seems so reluctant to “normalize monetary policy”. There are of course the typical domestic issues that there is low inflation, weak wage gains in the face of strong job growth, a hike will increase the Federal deficit and then there is the argument that corporations that now have $12.5 trillion in debt. All that is nice, but with corporate debt, our clients...

U.S. stocks sank Friday, with the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing down for the week, as Federal Reserve’s decision to leave interest rates unchanged fueled fears about global economic growth. The central bank cited concerns about the global economy and a lack of inflation growth in its Thursday decision to leave interest rates unchanged. “Many are confused by the outcome of the recent Fed meeting,” said Kent Engelke, chief economic strategist at Capitol Securities Management. “Markets hate confusion and lack of clarity.” The S&P 500 skidded 32.16 points, or 1.6%, to close at 1,958.08 for a...

The market is calling the Fed’s bluff on raising interest rates. The Fed’s September meeting has come and gone, and interest rates remain at zero. The reasoning behind the Fed’s decision is sound. With emerging market economies in various states of disarray, global markets have responded by keeping energy prices low and the dollar strong. These forces have conspired to keep inflation here at home quite low. Federal Open Market Committee members’ median projection of inflation for 2015 is just 0.4%, well below it’s 2% target, which it has failed to reach for close to a decade.

In one of the most widely anticipated Federal Reserve decisions in decades, the U.S. central bank left interest rates unchanged Thursday. The Fed's pronouncement to leave rates at historic lows—where they’ve been since roughly the start of the Great Recession in 2008—signals that the U.S. economy has yet to fully recover from the near collapse. Market professionals are now looking ahead to a press conference from Fed Chair Janet Yellen at 2:30 p.m. EDT, searching for further hints as to the timing of the Fed’s future course of rate hikes. “Uncertainty from the Fed has been the biggest issue,” Stephen...

Fed decision day: The event traders across the globe have anticipated for months has finally arrived. As of 8:00 a.m. ET, Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were 43 points lower, or 0.26% to 16621. S&P 500 futures shed 6 points, or 0.31% to 1982, while Nasdaq 100 futures slid 10 points, or 0.24% to 4370. Today’s Markets Months of speculation about whether September was the month in which the Federal Reserve would begin to lift short-term interest rates is finally coming to a close. The Federal Open Market Committee meets for the final day of its two-day policy-setting meeting, which...

The amusement is strong from this one.... The economy has made great gains and is approaching an acceptable normal. Policy should shortly acknowledge this reality. The Fed took extraordinary policy measures in response to extraordinary economic conditions. Conditions are no longer extraordinary. Compared to earlier in the year, we know a lot more and can shelve some concerns. We appear to be past the most acute concerns of a spillover from Europe. I have more confidence in the resilience of the economy today compared to even a few months ago. I am much less concerned about a reversal of economic...

The reason why Zero Hedge has been steadfast over the past 6 years in its accusation that the Fed is making a mockery of, and destroying not only the very fabric of capital markets (something which Citigroup now openly admits almost every week) but the US economy itself (as Goldman most recently hinted last week when it lowered its long-term "potential GDP" growth of the US by 0.5% to 1.75%), is simple: all along we knew we have been right, and all the career economists, Wall Street weathermen-cum-strategists, and "straight to CNBC" book-talking pundits were wrong. Not to mention the...

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on Wednesday described stock market valuations as high and said the central bank was carefully monitoring their impact on financial stability. "I would highlight that equity market valuations at this point generally are quite high," Yellen said in conversation with Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, at an economics conference. Coupled with weak economic reports in the morning, her remarks drove stocks broadly lower in Wednesday trading. Yellen added, however, that the overall risks to financial stability are "moderated, not elevated" and she does not see the hallmarks of any bubbles. She...

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said Tuesday at a Senate Banking Committee hearing that the U-6 unemployment rate--which includes people who are working part-time for economic reasons and those who are marginally attached to the labor force--“definitely shows a less rosy picture” of employment in the country. People "marginally attached" to the labor force "are those who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for one work sometime in the past 12 months." In January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the "U-3" unemployment...