Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Iran’s beleaguered economy will soon have “nothing to trade” in about two weeks after it makes its final oil deliveries, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed. Bessent assessed that the Islamic Republic is becoming desperate to make a deal because of its collapsing economy, hastened by Operation Economic Outcast, and warned that its problems will get dramatically worse in two weeks. “I am confident, given that there’s only 15 million more barrels of Iranian oil on the water, that Iran will have nothing left to trade for anything,” Bessent told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.” “Probably within the next...

Iranian airlines were forced to cancel some international flights on Wednesday after the U.S. tightened sanctions on Iran’s aviation industry in a new effort to cripple its economy. Georgia and Azerbaijan have officially confirmed suspending flights, and a travel agent in Tehran told AFP that flights to Baghdad, Muscat and Qatar were also halted, though routes to other destinations remained available, including China. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the new measures on Monday as part of an earlier threat to impose “economic D-Day” on Iran, an attempt to force it into submission following nearly seven months of war.

President Trump announced he was creating a new “AI Force” and designating a new AI “czar” Saturday to keep the industry from engaging in bad practices – after doubling down that fears of AI superintelligence are just another “hoax.” Trump compared a brewing panic over AI to a series of other events he has branded hoaxes. “Over the years, there have been many Hoaxes, all generated by the Radical Left Dumocrats, for purposes of destroying our Country,” he posted on Truth Social. “RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, UKRAINE, UKRAINE, UKRAINE, Global Warming, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, Men in Women’s Sports,...

Rumors are flying in China over Xi Jinping begin taken ill during his visit to India. They include claims that he suffered a minor illness to experiencing a stroke worsened by by failure to treat early. Some wild claims say rival group armies are mobilizing for civil war. No confirmation but Treasury Sec Bessent is meeting with Chinese counterparts today and we’ll see if the summit for Sept. 24 is still on

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent must be feeling chafed. Last month, amid rapidly rising interest rates on federal debt, he announced that his department would double its typical longer-term bond buybacks, from $2 billion to $4 billion. The idea was that, by boosting demand for Treasuries, yields might come down and the government would be able to borrow additional money at lower cost. And yields did come down a little bit — for about a day. Then they shot right back up to where they began.

Bonds sharply sold off and stocks tumbled Wednesday after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s latest effort to tamp down what he called market “fever” backfired. At 11 a.m. ET, the Treasury Department announced that it would repurchase $6 billion worth of 10- to 20-year government bonds, in the hope that fewer bonds on the market would drive up demand, pushing down rates, or yields, that have soared to levels not seen in decades. But that’s not what happened. Instead, most Treasury yields sharply jumped on the announcement. The 10-year bond yield surged to as high as 4.85%, its highest since November...

The federal workforce has contracted by 336,000 employees since President Donald Trump took office, reflecting his administration’s drive to reduce the size of the government bureaucracy. Federal government employment fell by another 5,000 in August to 2.674 million, the Labor Department said Friday. That is down from 3.010 million in January 2025, a decline of 11.2 percent. Over the past year, federal payrolls have shrunk by 242,000 workers. Excluding the U.S. Postal Service, the decline was even larger, at approximately 251,000. Postal Service employment increased by around 9,000 during the same period, partially offsetting the broader reduction. The contraction has...

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent sarcastically offered to give Sen. Elizabeth Warren a tutorial on “Foreign Exchange for Dummies” in a blistering response to her criticism of the government’s intervention to prop up the Japanese yen, The Post has learned. The lefty Massachusetts senator’s recent attack “unfortunately reveals that you know even less about foreign exchange markets than you do about banking,” Bessent wrote in a letter dated Thursday that was exclusively obtained by The Post. “Terrifyingly, the opening paragraph is wrong about where the money came [from], what the transaction was, and whether there was even a borrower,” he added....

Key Points The Treasury could use its General Account to help fund purchases of government bonds, according to two senior Treasury officials. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has built up the TGA to around $950 billion currently. The Treasury surprised markets last week by doubling the size of bond buybacks, but the impact on yields was short-lived because of skepticism over the firepower available to Bessent. ================================================================= The Treasury could use its near $1 trillion General Account to help fund its recently announced plans to increase purchases of government bonds, according to two senior Treasury officials. Using the TGA would provide...

Vice President Vance said Thursday night that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has a “very discreet plan” to shrink the nation’s debt. “He [Bessent] has had a very discreet plan, of course, supported by the president of the United States, to get the United States to a point where our economy is growing faster than our debt,” Vance said on Newsmax’s “Carl Higbie Frontline.” “And if you look, we are on track. So, even though the debt is too high, even though we inherited this debt bomb from the Biden administration, we actually do have a plan to get the economy...

...For 2025, we brought it down by more than a percent. ...

Bond yields climbed Thursday, erasing most of the pullback they saw the previous day after the Treasury Department announced an intervention aimed at easing pressure on longer-dated government debt. The yield on the 30-year U.S. Treasury bond — the primary focus of the accelerated buyback — was up more than 4 basis points at 5.236%. Yields on 10-year U.S. Treasurys — the main benchmark for mortgages, auto loans and credit card debt — moved more than 4 basis points higher to 4.696%. The 10- and 30-year yield levels were right around the level they held before the 8:30 a.m. announcement...

The Treasury Department on Wednesday said it will more than double the size of its government debt repurchases, sending yields sharply lower at a time of substantial market stress. With fixed income markets under pressure and yields surging to levels not seen in nearly 20 years, the announcement targets the sensitive longer-duration part of the Treasury market. Under the accelerated buyback, Treasury, led by Secretary Scott Bessent, will target the 10- to 20- year and 20- to 30-year portion of the market, which has seen a buyers’ strike since late June. The government will “at least double” the maximum size...

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is cutting illegal immigrants off from getting kickbacks from four major refundable tax credit programs – in a move that could save taxpayers an estimated $3 billion. The Treasury Department and IRS unveiled new rules on Wednesday to tighten the requirements for the adoption, child, American opportunity, and earned income tax credits so that only US citizens, US nationals, and qualified aliens can get them. “Under President Trump, the days of illegal aliens collecting taxpayer-funded benefits are over. The federal law is clear, and Treasury is enforcing it,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a...

Trump's policies are already delivering lower inflation and improving purchasing power for American workers — a recovery he portrayed as remarkable given the damage he said the administration inherited. Bessent's interview came as new federal data showed prescription drug costs saw their biggest decline in 60 years after President Trump made lowering prices a national priority. Bessent said Americans have legitimate reasons to remain frustrated after years of elevated prices. "People should be upset," Bessent said, arguing the Biden years left households facing a substantial loss of purchasing power, with working Americans hit especially hard by higher costs for automobiles,...

Iran knew remarkably specific details about Trump's stay in Ankara during the NATO summit, including where he was staying and even which floor of the building he was on, according to two U.S. officials. U.S. intelligence picked up multiple streams of information on July 8, including a specific threat against whichever aircraft was carrying the president and a report that someone near the summit had been spotted with a shoulder-fired missile. Air Force One departed separately with senior administration officials, government employees, military personnel, and JOURNALISTS aboard.

The two most senior members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, flew out of last month’s NATO summit in Turkey on what was effectively a decoy plane following an Iranian threat, while Trump was secretly moved to a smaller military jet, a senior U.S. official said Wednesday. The official, who was briefed on the situation and spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details of presidential travel, said Rubio was aware of the switch and details of the threat behind it but could or would not say why he had...

Japan and the US have confirmed that they jointly intervened last week to halt a slide in the yen after it fell to a fresh 40-year low. The joint intervention is the first since 2011, when both countries took coordinated action to weaken the yen after the devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit eastern Japan. Both Japan's Ministry of Finance and US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have said that they will not hesitate to conduct more joint interventions in the future. It highlights both countries' efforts to prevent a sell-off in the yen and Japanese government bonds from having an...

The Treasury Department has blocked nearly $100 million in taxpayer money from going to dead people since implementing a government-wide payment verification process last year, The Post has learned. The department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service discovered the money set to go to ghosts after a review of an eye-popping 885 million payments worth a total of nearly $2.7 trillion. Since March 2025, the screening has identified more than 4,900 disbursements, worth approximately $99 million, associated with deceased payees, according to the Treasury. The payments going to the dead – often indicative of fraud – were returned to the originating...

WASHINGTON (VINnews) – Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent disclosed publicly for the first time Thursday that he was the target of an alleged assassination plot just hours after being sworn into office. Speaking at a State Department ministerial on political terrorism, Bessent said he was the subject of an alleged assassination attempt “two hours after being sworn into my job,” adding that the case demonstrates that politically motivated violence remains a real threat. Federal prosecutors have charged Ryan Michael English, 24, of Massachusetts, in connection with the alleged plot. According to the Justice Department, English traveled to the U.S. Capitol on...