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Like many Freepers I have a significant IRA account in the stock market. The last couple of weeks have been absolutely brutal and I've watched my IRA shrink by.... A LOT. I'm dying to hit a liberal so damn hard right now. This is frustrating as all get out. I'm torn, part of me says "ride it out, the market will come back, be cool. It'll turn around in a day or two" and another part of me thinks that this corona scare downturn isn't near bottom. How are you Freeper, in the stock market, handling this? AND for you...

WASHINGTON - As part of a forthcoming package of proposed tax cuts, the White House is considering ways to incentivize U.S. households to invest in the stock market, according to four senior administration officials familiar with the discussions. The proposal, one of many new tax cuts under consideration, would see a portion of household income treated as tax-free for the purposes of investing outside a traditional 401(k). Under one scenario, a household earning up to $200,000 could invest $10,000 tax-free, although officials noted these numbers are fluid. "Nothing's ruled out," said one senior administration official. "Nothing's been ruled in, either."...

The U.S. budget deficit through the first three months of this budget year is up 11.8 percent from the same period a year ago, putting the country on track to record its first $1 trillion deficit in eight years.

Stocks are lurching toward fresh records to commence the first trading day in 2020, but that advance has raised some questions about the run-up in values for broad-market U.S. equity benchmarks. Indeed, the S&P 500’s recent gains have taken it to its priciest level relative to its hourly cost for the average worker on record. By that measure, Tuesday’s climb by the S&P 500 SPX, +0.84% to a peak at 3,250.04 would mean that the average employee, at an hourly wage of $28.29, would need to work 114.88 hours to buy a single unit of the index, representing one of...

President Trump on Friday signed two spending packages totaling $1.4 trillion, averting a government shutdown at midnight. The bills included all 12 annual appropriations bills for the 2020 fiscal year that started Oct. 1. They also included a slew of tax cuts, extending expiring and expired tax breaks and eliminating other taxes that amount to an additional $426 billion in lost revenue, bringing the total cost of the bill to more than $1.8 trillion. The government spent the first quarter of the fiscal year operating on stopgap funding that was set to expire on Friday. Trump reportedly signed the bill...

Stocks were on track Thursday to set fresh closing records, unfazed by President Donald Trump’s impeachment and finding support in the interim U.S.-China trade deal and improvements in the global economic outlook. What are stock indexes doing? The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, rose 125 points, or 0.4%, to 28,364, while the S&P 500 index SPX gained 13 points, or 0.4%, at 3,204. The Nasdaq Composite index COMP added 51 points, a gain of 0.6%, at 8,879. All three major benchmark stock indexes set new intraday highs Thursday morning. On Wednesday, the Dow and S&P 500 snapped a five-day winning...

It’s virtually undisputed that America faces a retirement problem, if not crisis. Many Americans lack sufficient savings to safeguard their retirement, according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve and others. A combination of low savings rates, longer life expectancy, and declining prevalence of corporate pensions are generating this crisis, which is coming to a head with 10,000 Baby Boomers turning 65 every day. An additional problem facing retirees is that their savings generate less income than in the past. In 2000, the 10-year treasury yielded over 7%; today it yields less than 2%. A retiree today needs to have three...

Thought provoking...  Now you know how the Fed prints money.https://banned.video/watch?id=5dcaf848708274001e99acb0  

he Federal Reserve on Tuesday injected longer-term cash into the U.S. banking system in an effort to meet the funding needs of banks and Wall Street following a bout of turbulence in money markets last week. The New York Federal Reserve added $30.0 billion cash into the banking system through 14-day loans to primary dealers. These 14-day term repurchase agreements (repo) were on top of the $75 billion in temporary cash through an overnight repo operation. Primary dealers, or the top 24 Wall Street firms that do business directly with Fed, borrow from the central bank by using their Treasuries...

President Donald Trump on Wednesday harshly rebuked the Federal Reserve, accusing the central bank and Fed Chair Jerome Powell of having “no guts” by not meting out a more aggressive interest rate cut as the global economy slows. The Federal Reserve on Wednesday cut interest rates again by 25 basis points to a new target range of 1.75% to 2%, and telegraphed a strong likelihood of one more rate cut by the end of the year. However, some on Wall Street anticipated a more aggressive easing of 50 basis points, particularly with financial markets conditions tightening. Indeed, markets sank to...

The Fed now expects GDP to grow at a 2.2% pace for 2019, versus the 2.1% forecast in June.The unemployment rate is expected to rise to 3.7% this year, slightly above the 3.6% projection in June. The Federal Reserve dialed up its growth expectations slightly while keeping its inflation projection unchanged, according to its Summary of Economic Projections.Source: Federal ReserveThe central bank now expects GDP to grow at a 2.2% pace for 2019, versus the 2.1% forecast in June. The unemployment rate is expected to rise to 3.7% this year, slightly above the 3.6% projection in June.The GDP outlook for 2020...

Dudley went so far as to suggest the Fed could — and should — try to influence the next election against Trump. “After all, Trump’s reelection arguably presents a threat to the U.S. and global economy, to the Fed’s independence and its ability to achieve its employment and inflation objectives,” he wrote.

As usual, the Fed did NOTHING! It is incredible that they can “speak” without knowing or asking what I am doing, which will be announced shortly. We have a very strong dollar and a very weak Fed. I will work “brilliantly” with both, and the U.S. will do great.. ....My only question is, who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powel or Chairman Xi? https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1164910399910817797andhttps://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1164910401584291848 

We are winning, big time, against China. Companies & jobs are fleeing. Prices to us have not gone up, and in some cases, have come down. China is not our problem, though Hong Kong is not helping. Our problem is with the Fed. Raised too much & too fast. Now too slow to cut.... ..Spread is way too much as other countries say THANK YOU to clueless Jay Powell and the Federal Reserve. Germany, and many others, are playing the game! CRAZY INVERTED YIELD CURVE! We should easily be reaping big Rewards & Gains, but the Fed is holding us...

Germany's biggest lender is rapidly slashing jobs, it's losing a ton of money and the stock is trading near all-time lows. Many of Deutsche Bank's problems are self-inflicted. It's been badly mismanaged. Deutsche Bank (DB) never fully cleaned up its crisis-era balance sheet. Restructuring efforts fell short. And its countless legal black eyes haven't helped matters. But Deutsche Bank's struggles have also been amplified by something the 149-year-old lender never imagined, mostly because it had never happened before in modern history: negative interest rates. In 2014, the European Central Bank wanted to boost the sluggish economy but interest rates were...

In tapping Judy Shelton to become one of two Federal Reserve Board governors, President Donald Trump selected one of the minority of mainstream economists supportive of a return to the gold standard and critical of central bank activity. Shelton, who serves as the U.S. executive director at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, wrote as recently as last year in support of pegging the dollar to gold prices. Trump announced his intention to nominate both Shelton and St. Louis Fed economist Christopher Waller via tweet on Tuesday. Shelton’s unorthodox monetary beliefs will likely draw questions from Senate lawmakers, who...

President Donald Trump is well aware that the U.S. economy is just a few short weeks away from setting a record for the longest expansion ever, but he knows the business cycle has not been repealed and the next economic downturn is always lurking. ItÂ’s a vicious circle: low interest rates entice the politicians to amass more deficits and debt, and the politicians want more spending given ultra-low borrowing costs. Profligate monetary policy enables profligate fiscal policy. If one happens before 2020, Trump fears his reelection bid chances will be slim-to-none, says former Deputy Assistant to George H.W. Bush,...

There's an inherent conflict of interest that occurs when an agency serves as both a regulator and competitor. Unfortunately, that describes the present state of the Federal Reserve. But rather than reform the agency to eliminate sources of conflict, the Fed is proposing to expand its market activities by launching a real-time payments system to compete against the private sector. Anyone who has done any domestic banking is familiar with the need for faster clearing of interbank transfers. They're incredibly slow by digital age standards, sometimes taking several days to complete. It's even subpar by the standards of the European...

One of President Donald Trump's picks to serve on the Federal Reserve Board has written that women should be banned from refereeing, announcing or beer vending at men's college basketball games, asking if there was any area in life "where men can take vacation from women." Stephen Moore, an economic commentator and former Trump campaign adviser, made those and similar comments in several columns reviewed by CNN's KFile that were published on the website of the conservative National Review magazine in 2001, twice in 2002 and 2003...

As far as I know, the Federal Reserve — the world’s most important economic policy institution — doesn’t have an anthem. But if it were to adopt one now, the choice would be obvious: “Send In the Clowns.” You see, the Fed’s governing board currently has two vacancies, and Donald Trump has proposed filling those vacancies with ludicrous hacks. If he succeeds, one of our few remaining havens of serious, nonpartisan policymaking will be on its way toward becoming as corrupt and dysfunctional as the rest of the Trump administration. Stephen Moore and Herman Cain are, of course, completely unqualified...