Free Republic

Billions in Russian oil sale profits are stuck in Indian banks, marking a blow to President Vladimir Putin's attempts to stop using the U.S. dollar for trade. ... ...accumulation of up to $1 billion each month in rupee assets in Indian banks that cannot be accessed due to restrictions by the Reserve Bank of India, which prevent Russian companies from transferring rupees stored in bank accounts in India to Russia and converting them into rubles, Bloomberg reported. ... "India operates a partially convertible capital account, which entails that the [Indian rupee] can be swapped for foreign currencies and vice-versa for...

Killington, Vermont-AP -- Next time you visit the popular ski resort of Killington, Vermont, it could be in New Hampshire. Officials in Killington want the town to secede from Vermont and join the neighboring state because of a dispute over taxes. They say the town's restaurants, inns and other businesses rake in ten million dollars a year for the state -- but gets just a million dollars of state aid in return. Then there's the property tax imposed in 1997 to fund schools. The town says the state's method of assessing local properties is "arbitrary and capricious." The state Supreme...

Feds tell Freddie Mac to oust CEO Regulators push mortgage company to remove Parseghian over accounting scandal, news reports say. August 22, 2003: 9:24 AM EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal regulators have told Freddie Mac it must remove Greg Parseghian as the company's chief executive due to his role in improper accounting practices at the U.S. mortgage finance company, according to reports published Friday. Citing sources, a report in the Washington Post said regulators from the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) told Shaun O'Malley, the chairman of the company's board of directors, and at least one other director,...

<p>"Are you one of the many libertarian, anti-war writers who do not believe in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance? I sure hope not. You are living in the greatest country ever, or don't you believe that either?"</p> <p>Since this guy does not have a clue as to the history and true meaning of the Pledge of Allegiance, I will enlighten him. (He also doesn't have a clue as to what I think about this country.) He also doesn't understand what a non sequitur is. What does reciting the Pledge of Allegiance have to do with living in the greatest country ever? Or does he believe that pledging allegiance to a piece of cloth automatically leads to living in a great country? There is something missing in his chain of logic.</p>

In his testimony to the Joint Economic Committee on May 21st, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Alan Greenspan, said that the Fed views deflation as a potential threat to the economy. For the time being, however, the Fed Chairman believes that the likelihood of deflation is not very high. Moreover, if deflation were to strike, Greenspan has assured us that the U.S. central bank has all the necessary means to tackle this phenomenon. Also, according to most experts on the present paper standard, as opposed to the gold standard, deflation can be easily countered by central bank monetary...

It has been interesting to read reactions to the recent speech (Deflation: Making Sure "It" Doesn't Happen Here) given by Fed Governor Ben S. Bernanke before the National Economists Club in Washington, D.C., on November 21, 2002. Most commentators have focused, with merit, on Bernanke's alarmingly sanguine approach to monetary inflation as a tool to combat evils and achieve all manner of economic good (as discerned, of course, by "policymakers"). Bernanke said: The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at...

The Great Milk Fiasco by Robbie Blevins [Posted November 27, 2002] Roosevelt-era farm policy lives! Consider: dairy farmers in northern New England dumped 80,000 pounds of fresh milk in a protest against low milk prices. The farmers evidently favor the price-support program that ended last year, because it worked as a kind of minimum wage program: keeping their incomes high and competitors out of the market. Now these farmers must face the mean forces of supply and demand, and they don't like it one bit. Contrast this strange behavior with the largely free-market IT industry. Imagine if you heard that...

“Don’t fight the Fed”! Those were the words we heard over and over again on commercials, which were promoting a well-known market strategist who was a frequent guest on the TV show, Wall Street Week. This was one of his famous rules on trading the stock market. This mantra became so popular that virtually everyone we talked to before the last couple of years believed that all you had to do was buy stocks when the Fed was lowering rates. It not only seemed to make sense, but also had history on its side. Every time the Fed lowered rates...

The Fed is Culpable by Hans F. Sennholz [Posted November 12, 2002] It is surely more shameful to lose a good reputation than never to have had one. During the great equity bubble of the 1990s Alan Greenspan acquired an illustrious reputation as the world's greatest central banker and staunch guardian of the U.S. dollar. His admirers in the U.S. Congress never tired of applauding him and Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom joined them by knighting him. But since the collapse of the bubble and the $8 trillion decline in equity wealth since 2000 he may have lost some...