Free Republic

The Federal Reserve is expected to keep interest rates unchanged at the end of its two-day policy meeting on Wednesday, but policymakers may signal fresh monetary action in the next few months, perhaps in June. The Fed will issue its policy statement at 2 p.m. ET, along with new economic forecasts. Fed Chairwoman will hold a news conference at 2:30 p.m. The central bank raised rates for the first time in nearly a decade in December. But financial market turmoil, perhaps partially fueled by that December move, along with weaker economic data spurred policymakers to hold off on further tightening...

Central Banks Have Signed Their Death Warrants During the past year U.S. consumption spending for health care rose by 5%. Spending at restaurants and bars were up by 9%, while spending for gasoline and other energy products was down by 22%. This was Mr. Market at work--millions of households reallocating their spending in response to relative price changes. It had nothing to do with a macroeconomic abstraction called "weak demand". Actually, the medical care component of the CPI rose 3.3% last year. Housing and shelter were up by 3.2%, while gasoline prices were down by 7.3%. It all added up...

Ever since the financial crisis, many outside the wealthy elite (sometimes referred to as populists) have argued that the largest banks are too big and too risky. Minneapolis Federal Reserve president Neel Kashkari recently echoed those beliefs.Yet if a new Federal Reserve proposal goes through, Wells Fargo and other large banks might get even bigger and riskier, adding billions to their balance sheets that could increase the banks’ risk profiles.The Federal Reserve says the proposal, which specifies the amount and kind of debt that systemically important large banks must hold, could help make sure that those banks can be wound...

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...

Roughly 2 1/2 years ago ; readers were introduced to a paradigm of crime, corruption, and control which they now know as "the One Bank". First they were presented with a definition and description of this crime syndicate. That definition came via a massive computer model constructed by a trio of Swiss academics, and cited with favor by Forbes magazine . The computer model was based upon data involving more than 10 million "economic actors", both individuals and corporations, and the conclusions which that model produced were nothing less than shocking. The One Bank is "a super-entity" comprised of 144...

Will the crash of 2016 be worse than 2008? Central banks have failed to solve the crisis, and instead have taken on more debt than any time in history. At the same time, western institutions are welcoming in Islamic money. Does this mean Sharia-compliant finance? Listen here: http://usatransnationalreport.org/2016/02/13/usa-transnational-report-february-13-2016-guest-charles-ortel/ While European banks, such as Deutsche Bank, falter, what does this mean for the U.S. economy? And what does the future look like? Charles Ortel is an investor and writer interested in economics, geo-politics, history, travel and just, lasting peace. He has done extensive research on the fraudulent activities of the Clinton...

If Ben Bernanke's epitaph is going to be "We could raise interest in 11 minutes if we have to," what will be written on his successor's tombstone? How about "Blames World." That is the headline up today on the Drudge Report. It links to a dispatch of the Agence France Press on Janet Yellen's growing concerns over a worsening financial situation less than two months after she raised interest rates as a sign of confidence in the improving economy. What an opportunity for Senator Ted Cruz... The story, pegged to Mrs. Yellen's semi-annual testimony yesterday to the House Financial Services...

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...

After someone decided to dump $1.2 billion notional in gold futures this morning as the jobs data hit - sparking a $20 tumble in the precious metal - it appears stock sellers are greatly rotating to the safety of bullion (over bonds)...

The Fed may "seriously consider" negative rates after moving rates back to zero, reintroducing forward guidance and making "stronger pleas" to Congress for fiscal policy action as there are complications for money markets, according to BofAML strategist Mark Cabana. This would not be a total surprise as Mises Institute's Joseph Salerno warns recent Fed commentary suggests they want to test-drive negative interest rates... In 2016, the Fed's annual stress test on banks will include a scenario in which the interest rate on the three-month U.S. Treasury bill becomes negative in the second quarter of 2016 and then declines to -0.5%,...

The Federal Reserve started raising official interest rates in December. But in the stress tests that large U.S. banks have to undergo, the central bank is hypothesizing that short-term Treasury yields could drop below zero. The European Central Bank and, since Friday, the Bank of Japan are trying it with policy benchmarks. Though negative U.S. interest rates are for now only in the Fed's worst-case scenario, they are becoming a plausible downturn assumption.

Early in the new year, on Sunday, Jan. 3, Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer delivered a hawkish speech to the American Economic Association. Completely misreading the economy, which is woefully weak while inflation is virtually nil, Fischer strongly hinted that the Fed would be raising its target rate by a quarter of a percent every quarter for the next three years. The next day, Standard & Poor's 500 index dropped 1.5%. In the week that followed, the broad index fell 6%. The week after that, it fell over 2%. During that two-week period, the Dow Jones dropped 1,437 points....

Federal Reserve Bank of New York officials secretly conducted real-time exercises during the 2011 and 2013 debt-limit crisis that demonstrated the federal government could function during a temporary shutdown by prioritizing spending, even as Treasury Secretary Jack Lew publicly claimed many times that such efforts were "unworkable," according to a new report by the House Financial Services Committee obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The staff report, to be released Tuesday, charges that Lew and other Obama administration officials deliberately misled Congress and the public during the federal budget and debt limit showdowns in both years. The committee will...

Federal Reserve Bank of New York officials secretly conducted real-time exercises during the 2011 and 2013 debt-limit crisis that demonstrated the federal government could function during a temporary shutdown by prioritizing spending, even as Treasury Secretary Jack Lew publicly claimed many times that such efforts were “unworkable,” according to a new report by the House Financial Services Committee obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The staff report, to be released Tuesday, charges that Lew and other Obama administration officials deliberately misled Congress and the public during the federal budget and debt limit showdowns in both years. The committee will...

The Federal Reserve this week will update its assessment of the U.S. economy and could take note of recent volatility in global financial markets. But any move or definite signal on interest rates is extremely unlikely. All the action will come in Wednesday’s policy statement, due out at 2 p.m. EST, since Chairwoman Janet Yellen isn’t scheduled to hold a press conference and officials won’t release updated economic projections until March. Here are five things to watch out of the two-day policy meeting that starts Tuesday. 1 Flexible Messaging The Fed won’t raise its benchmark federal-funds rate on Wednesday... 2...

Well, I guess we can rule out another rate hike in January. That's what economists are saying, not that anyone seriously believed that the Federal Reserve was going to engage in back-to-back hikes after promising that rates would go up only gradually in the months ahead. With Wall Street off to its worst annual start in history, stock prices have been but one indicator that the economy could slow in the weeks and months ahead. That should give the Fed pause. Stocks, of course, have not been the only market-based gauge to suggest that both the domestic, and global, economies...

WASHINGTON - The Federal Reserve handed over a record $97.7 billion in profits to the Treasury Department in 2015, according to preliminary figures released Monday.

As we’ve been warning for quite a while (too long for my taste): the world’s grand experiment with debt has come to an end. And it’s now unraveling. Just in the two weeks since the start of 2016, the US equity markets are down almost 10%. Their worst start to the year in history. Many other markets across the world are suffering worse. If you watched stock prices today, you likely had flashbacks to the financial crisis of 2008. At one point the Dow was down over 500 points, the S&P cracked below key support at 1,900, and the price...

With less than half an hour until the close, we asked the Atlanta Fed - the most accurate predictor of GDP - which was scheduled to post an update of its Q4 GDP NowCast following today's ugly economic data, if it was was planning on releasing its latest Q4 GDP estimate before or after the close, something it usually does just before noon.

In 2016, the Federal Reserve will pay at least $12.2 billion to U.S. and foreign banks to keep the money created via its quantitative easing programs out of the economy. If the Fed raises rates as expected next year, the amount nearly doubles to $23.1 billion. From 2008 to 2015, the Fed purchased over $4 trillion worth of bonds to stimulate growth in the economy. Risk markets responded, as is demonstrated by the close correlation between the S&P 500 and growth of the Fed's balance sheet through its bond purchases.