Free Republic

After presiding over the biggest Federal Reserve failure in 40 years and with inflation rating as the top concern among Americans, Jerome Powell's nomination to a second term as chairman was approved this past week by the Senate, 80 to 19. I know the usual arguments for ignoring the Fed's spectacular errors, even at a time when inflation is such an issue. Most common are that other candidates would be even worse or that we need continuity. Maybe. The truth, though, is that a good person facing bad incentives in that job will make poor choices. Add in a lack...

The Senate on Tuesday confirmed Dr. Lisa Cook, who has a history of Black Lives Matter bullying and radical monetary policy beliefs, to the Federal Reserve board of governors. The Senate voted 51-50 to confirm Cook, with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking the tie.

It has been a miserable day for markets as The Federal Reserve struggles to get inflation under control. The Dow fell over 1,000 points today and NASDAQ was down a cool 5%. Is the Hinderburg Omen back in fashion? Better yet, the Powell-Yellenburg Omen? While equity markets have gotten clobbered by Powell and the Gang, commodities at least rallied in the afternoon.

Technological innovation always drives disruption, creates fear and panic among powerful incumbents and forces the globally connected to lock arms in defense of their supremacy. This isn’t theory, conjecture or hypothesis, it’s merely a truth observed and recorded over thousands of years of history. This very short video clip perfectly explains how technological disruption eventually breaks through barriers of resistance. FUD is an acronym that stands for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. FUD is used in many forms to distract, divert, diminish and discourage the general public from understanding truth, embracing change, making rational/objective decisions to alter the “status quo” and/or...

This piece was co-authored by Mr. James Hop and Mr. Jared La Rue.Milton Friedman determined the root cause of inflation to be government monetary policy and famously opined: "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon that is produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than output (goods, services, and/or assets).” A 1976 Nobel Prize winner in Economics for his pioneering work on monetary policy, inflation, and the business cycle, Friedman established a strong correlation between excessive government spending and monetary policy, its over-stimulation of the U.S. economy and the economic contractions that followed. Unfortunately,...

On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks stated that while there is inflation taking place everywhere in the world, America’s inflation numbers are “significantly higher” than the numbers in most of the other comparable countries and this is due to both Federal Reserve policy and “our extremely expansionary fiscal policy, federal spending.”

As we are all aware, The Federal Reserve launched its monetary “stimulypto” in March 2020 to combat the Covid virus. Coupled with the surge in Federal stimulus, we have seen home prices rise over 20% since February 2020. Specifically, New York City home prices are up 26.3% since February 2020, Chicago home prices are up 21.7%, and Los Angeles home prices are up 32.5%. Fed monetary stimulypto is up 113% since February 2020. Of course, this has resulted in soaring PROPERTY TAXES as well. According to Attom Data Services, “Among 1,481 U.S. counties with at least 10,000 single-family homes in...

President Joe Biden has nominated Michael Barr, one of the designers of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act that overhauled the financial regulatory system, to serve as the Federal Reserve’s top banking regulator. Barr previously served as assistant treasury secretary for financial institutions under former President Barack Obama ...a Yale graduate and Rhodes scholar, currently serves as the dean of the University of Michigan’s public policy school.

WASHINGTON, April 13 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday appealed to China to take action to help end Russia's war in Ukraine, warning in a landmark speech that Beijing's standing in the world would suffer if it fails to do so.In remarks prepared for delivery at the Atlantic Council in Washington, Yellen said she "fervently" hoped that China would make something positive out of its "special relationship" with Russia and help end the war.

Friends, perhaps today’s Greatest Deception is Central Bankers, Governments & the Corporate/BlackRock Media Empire are selling to the world a requirement for a brand new form of digital currencies, one which the world’s central banksters will define, produce, distribute, regulate and CONTROL. 100% of digital currency rule making, ownership, taxation & control will rest in the hands of the same centralized control freak & issuers of the fiat currencies in use today. “We the people” the world over will merely be “allowed”, conditionally, to use their digital currencies according the rules, controls, restrictions, fees, terms & conditions of the central...

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) publicly slammed President Joe Biden for Tuesday’s terrible inflation numbers. “It is a disservice to the American people to act as if inflation is a new phenomenon,” Manchin wrote in a press release. “The Federal Reserve and the Administration failed to act fast enough, and today’s data is a snapshot in time of the consequences being felt across the country.”

A Washington Post columnist suggested Monday that the magic solution to rampant inflation and supply chain impediments would be to allow more illegal immigrants into the country. Catherine Rampell wrote a piece titled that “Democrats are missing the bigger immigration issue,” noting that “Democrats are terrified that a coming border surge might tank their midterm chances.” She then went on to suggest that problems will occur not with “too many immigrants” but rather “too few.” Rampell claims, without any evidence or authority, that inflation will start to recede if there are more migrants “who can fill critical labor-market shortages.” She...

The only thing surprising about the freight market slowdown is the speed at which it’s unfolding. The supply chain “bullwhip effect” is both predictable and expected. The surge of inventories and declining freight costs/capacity imbalances will be deflationary. The trucking market has slowed. Demand for trucks usually surges during the Spring, but this year, demand for truckload freight has broken out of this typical seasonal pattern.Outbound Tender Volume Index (OTVI) is an index which measures the volume of truckload order requests in the contract truckload market. The OTVI chart shows year over year activity from 2018 to this year.The bullwhip...

As we are painfully aware, The Fed’s exaggerated monetary flood combined with Federal stimulus spending has led to horrible inflation. Yes, despite what government talking heads say, Federal stimulus increases demand for goods, the supply is generally slow to respond resulting in rising prices. Then government policies driving up energy prices also leads to highers prices. Throw in Federal Reserve monetary stimulypto and we have this chart from hell from Penn-Wharton. The chart shows that households earning less that $60,000 experience higher expenses due to rising prices than their gain in earnings. Another chart from hell is the Russian USD...

Despite the biggest increase in average hourly wages for production and non-supervisory workers in 40 years, these people are actually worse off. Why? Rising prices are eating up their income gains. Year-over-year, average hourly wages for production and nonsupervisory employees were up 6.7% in March, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Other than the lockdown distortions in April and May of 2020, this was the biggest gain since 1982. This includes jobs in all industries that are non-management, ranging from assembly line workers to computer coders. In dollar terms, the average wage of Production and Nonsupervisory Employees increased by...

The United States Senate on Tuesday voted to advance Lisa Cook’s nomination by President Biden to the Federal Reserve Board after a committee deadlocked on her nomination earlier this month. Cook is currently an Executive Committee member of the regional Chicago Federal Reserve Bank Board of Directors. As a member of the national Federal Reserve Board, she would have key influence on the Fed’s monetary policy, which is supposed to be about price stability, i.e., controlling inflation. In 2020, you may recall that the Chicago Fed bowed to the cancel mob in a particularly egregious manner by cutting ties...

Homebuyers have faced a tough proposition during the pandemic: Swallow rapid price increases and forgo typical steps like house inspections, or risk getting left out of the real estate market. Those dynamics have caused some observers to question whether the U.S. is repeating the housing bubble of the early 2000s, which led to a painful housing crash in 2006 and the Great Recession the following year. The answer, warns the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, is that the market is showing "signs of a brewing U.S. housing bubble."

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate on Tuesday agreed to consider the nomination of Lisa Cook for a position on the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors on a 50-49 party-line vote. The result suggests that there is sufficient support in the evenly-divided Senate to approve Cook, who would be the first Black woman to serve on the Fed’s powerful board in its 108-year history. All 50 Senate Democrats voted in favor, while all Republicans, except for Sen. John Kennedy, from Louisiana, voted against her nomination. Kennedy did not vote. “Professor Cook has nearly zero experience in monetary policy,” Toomey said before...

Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller on Friday played down the functionality of cryptocurrencies while again expressing his skepticism about adopting a central bank digital currency when consumers already have access to fast payment systems. “These things aren’t payment instruments at all,” Waller said of cryptocurrencies during a virtual panel on central bank digital currencies. “My view is these things are just electronic gold. They're forms of storage carrying wealth across time. Look at art, look at baseball cards. Look at all of this stuff that's intrinsically useless that people pay a lot of money and hold on to because they...

The Federal Reserve System is raising interest rates at last. It's about time. If you've been putting off refinancing your house, it's probably a good time for it; rates won't get any lower. The business pages say that the Federal Reserve is finally doing its job. They say that keeping inflation in check (well, really, keeping the dollar steady, stable and respected might be a better way to put it) is the Fed's purpose, and that is certainly true. But it's not the whole story... and if you believe the media line that rate hikes from the Fed alone will...