Free Republic

U.S. securities regulators originally treated the New York Federal Reserve's bid to keep secret many of the details of the American International Group bailout like a request to protect matters of national security, according to emails obtained by Reuters. CRISIS IN CREDIT The request to keep the details secret were made by the New York Federal Reserve -- a regulator that helped orchestrate the bailout -- and by the giant insurer itself, according to the emails. The emails from early last year reveal that officials at the New York Fed were only comfortable with AIG submitting a critical bailout-related document...

U.S. Court Skeptical of Fed Push for Bailout Secrecy Tuesday, 12 Jan 2010 07:02 AM A federal appeals court on Monday appeared skeptical of U.S. Federal Reserve efforts to prevent the press and the public from learning the names of participants in emergency lending programs designed to support and bail out the financial system. The central bank has argued that disclosure would cause "competitive and reputational harm" to participants, perhaps triggering bank runs, and impede its ability "to effectively manage the current, and any future, financial crisis." Bloomberg News and News Corp.'s Fox News Network LLC had sought details of...

Year-end is a time for family and traditions. It is also a time for reflection and preparation: looking back at your investment decisions in 2009, but more importantly, looking forward to prepare your portfolio to realize its maximum after-tax returns in 2010 and beyond. The following ideas may be helpful for utilizing investment losses, protecting earnings and mitigating risk.

1 in 4 Borrowers Under Water By RUTH SIMON and JAMES R. HAGERTY The proportion of U.S. homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than the properties are worth has swelled to about 23%, threatening prospects for a sustained housing recovery. Nearly 10.7 million households had negative equity in their homes in the third quarter, according to First American CoreLogic, a real-estate information company based in Santa Ana, Calif. These so-called underwater mortgages pose a roadblock to a housing recovery because the properties are more likely to fall into bank foreclosure and get dumped into an already saturated market. Economists...

Anyone trying to figure out what in the world is going on in today’s economy might remember Agatha Christie’s classic, Murder on the Orient Express. When master sleuth Hercule Poirot boarded that train, he’d no idea that before the night ended he’d face the most perplexing murder case ever. A carful of passengers, all of whom had motive and opportunity, maneuvered around so skillfully that even Christie’s brilliant Belgian couldn’t figure out whodunit. The best he could do was point a perfectly manicured finger at the most likely culprits — in the end, everybody walked away, except the luckless victim....

The Associated Press noted last week that the federal deficit reached a record $1.42 trillion for the fiscal year that ended September 30. Up until now, most of the mainstream media have either ignored the exploding deficits or declared them a good thing, since they were supposed to lift us out of the recession. But now that the full figures have come in even some Obama-friendly media stalwarts are struck by their enormity. Read the Full Article.

It's getting to the point where it makes little sense to listen to the President speak. He speaks in broad generalities about laws and regulations he wants to enact. Often the generalities are such that they are difficult to argue with in the manner he presents them. For example, he says he wants to protect against future crises, like the kind we have now. Well yeah, who wouldn't? But the devil is in the details, which the president never discusses. Yet, he has added a master "nudger", i.e. detail man, who thinks he knows more about how people should eat,...

"When normal people happen to "find" their own money, it might mean a twenty left in a winter coat, or discovering change beneath the sofa cushions. But if you're Charlie Rangel, it means doubling your net worth. "Earlier this month the Chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee "amended" his 2007 financial disclosure form—to the tune of more than a half-million dollars in previously unreported assets and income. That number may be as high as $780,000, because Congress's ethics rules only require the Members to report their finances within broad ranges. This voyage of personal financial discovery brings Mr....

Rielle Hunter, John Edwards' former mistress, went inside the federal courthouse in Raleigh Thursday morning. A grand jury is meeting in the courthouse. FBI agents escorted Hunter into a back entrance ... Edwards, a former U.S. senator from North Carolina and two-time presidential candidate, is under investigation to see if campaign funds were illegally paid to Hunter. There is also widespread speculation that Edwards fathered her child.

RALEIGH (AP) — The former mistress of John Edwards arrived at a federal courthouse in Raleigh where a grand jury was meeting Thursday — an appearance that comes as federal investigators examine the two-time presidential candidate's finances. Rielle Hunter walked into the building through a back entrance and holding a young child. Edwards adamantly denied during his confessional interview with ABC News last summer that he had fathered a child with Hunter, and he welcomed a paternity test. His wife, Elizabeth, has said while promoting her book that she doesn't know if her husband is the father.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama said on Monday that Wall Street banks had failed to show remorse for the "wild risks" that triggered a financial meltdown and helped to push the United States into recession. Obama unveiled a sweeping regulatory overhaul in June aimed at improving government oversight of banks and markets to avert a repeat of the financial crisis. "The problem that I've seen, at least, is you don't get a sense that folks on Wall Street feel any remorse for taking all these risks," Obama said in an interview with PBS television. "You don't get a sense that...

Brian Griffiths, Lord of Fforestfach and vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs International, says Pope Benedict's Caritas in Veritate offers the single best analysis of the current global economic crisis. The language may be dense, but the message is sufficiently rewarding. The encyclical analyses modern capitalism from an ethical and spiritual perspective as well as a technical one. As a result it makes the Government’s White Paper on financial reforms published two days later look embarrassingly one-dimensional and colourless.It is highly critical of today’s global economy but always positive. Its major concern is how to promote human development in the context of...

H.R. 1728 passed the House by an overwhelming majority in a record three days time. Now it’s in the Senate and is widely expected to pass quickly as well. Why the rush? Is AIG planning to hand out zillions in bonuses again? My guess would be that our elected representatives and their banking benefactors would prefer that we don’t know anything about it. Consider this scenario: You own a house. You want to sell it. Someone wants to buy it. You decide to sell it to the person who wants to buy it and carry the paper yourself for whatever...

House Judiciary Committee member Steve King (R-Iowa) is demanding congressional hearings about the twisted finances of the radical activist group ACORN. “This spider web, this myriad web of ACORN dollars and revenue streams, every bit of them should be looked at, all the corporations that they are networked with all of the boards of directors of those corporations, the inner locking connecting, the faces that are the same from board to board,” King said.

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WELLINGTON, New Zealand – Police launched an international search for two New Zealanders who allegedly took the money and ran after a bank mistakenly put 10 million New Zealand dollars ($6.1 million) into their account. The couple, who operated a gas station in the northern city of Rotorua, applied to Westpac Bank for a NZ$10,000 ($6,000) overdraft, but 1,000 times that amount was paid into their account. The two then withdrew some of the money and disappeared, Detective Senior Sgt. David Harvey said.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's personal finances appear to be on sound footing even as the nation's economy struggles, a financial report he released Friday shows. Obama and his wife Michelle have $1.4 million to $5.9 million in assets, not counting their Chicago home. Their holdings include up to $265,000 in checking accounts. The president's new financial disclosure report mirrors one he filed a few months ago. Much of the Obamas' wealth comes from the president's best-sellers. The books, "Dreams from My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope," brought in about $2.5 million in royalties last year, according to tax...

“The Obama Administration has reversed a ruling requiring labor unions and their leaders to report information about their finances and compensation”

Even in the best of times, couples regularly argue about finances. But at this juncture, when so many Americans are feeling stung and frustrated by a weak economy, a housing-price collapse, and a stock-market crash, it's particularly critical that newlyweds -- and even long-time spouses -- are on the same page when it comes to money. Of course, that's not always the case, because not everyone is knowledgeable about money. Sure, most people reflexively think they understand money, because just about everyone has been handling cash in some fashion since grade school. More likely, though, they have a basic understanding...

WASHINGTON -- Confidence in the overall financial system has failed and a major overhaul of regulations is needed, Treasury Sec. Tim Geithner told a House panel Thurday. Calling the U.S. financial system the most stable in the world, Geithner said dangerous levels of risk were taken for short-term gain. "Over the past 18 months, we have faced the most severe global financial crisis in generations," Geithner said in testimony to the House Financial Services Committee. "To address this will require comprehensive reform. Not modest repairs at the margin, but new rules of the game."