Free Republic

Two crypto influencers on X have called on their followers to snap up Bitcoin BTC, gold and silver, citing the risk of rising national debt in the United States. In an X post on March 11, entrepreneur and angel investor Balaji Srinivasan argued that Bitcoin is the only realistic solution to escape the inevitability of unsustainable government spending and potential asset confiscation. “We’re in the looting-the-treasury phase of imperial collapse,” the former Coinbase chief technology officer told his 994,000 followers. Srinivasan argued that government debt and wasteful spending continue to grow rapidly at unsustainable levels. U.S. national debt is currently...

This is sounds like gaslighting by the U.S. Mint while they look to make a tidy little profit too. Maybe the Mint ought to just call it the Lon Horiuchi federal marksmanship award?!? Here’s the description: Bronze miniature replica of the Congressional Gold Medal honoring the U.S. Capitol Police and those who protected the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. 1.5 inches in diameter. Every day, the United States Capitol Police protects the U.S. Capitol, Members of Congress, staff, journalists, and the visiting public. On January 6, 2021, a mob of insurrectionists forced its way into the U.S. Capitol building...

WASHINGTON — Plans announced Sunday to fully reimburse deposits made in the collapsed Silicon Valley Bank and the shuttered Signature Bank will rely on Wall Street and large financial institutions — not taxpayers — to foot the bill, Treasury officials said. “For the banks that were put into receivership, the FDIC will use funds from the Deposit Insurance Fund to ensure that all of its depositors are made whole,” said a senior Treasury Department official, who spoke to reporters Sunday about the plan on the condition of anonymity.

Media coverage of inflationary effects primarily focuses on the impact of rising price levels upon consumers and producers, but there are clearly effects beyond those. As monetary authorities initiate policies intending to stem the upward trend of prices, financial markets may become more volatile than normal. Should inflation prove stubborn, or particularly unpredictable and thus difficult for contractionary monetary policy to counteract, financial markets may become excessively volatile. High levels of volatility dissuade investment, and at very high levels, careening markets may pose a threat to financial stability. In either case, the prices that guide economic calculation become less reliable....

The global debt market is orders of magnitude larger than the stock market, and debt instruments across the globe have nearly reached the breaking point due to the Fed’s steady increase in interest rates this year (combined with seemingly endless money printing and other disastrous fiscal policies). Because bond values have an inverse relationship with interest rates, as interest rates go up, the value of bonds and other debt instruments already issued goes down. With each Fed rate increase, bond values are cratering, leaving debt investors holding substantial losses and leading to a collapse in the number of potential buyers...

The top Treasury Department employee who was arrested and charged by federal authorities with leaking confidential financial documents pertaining to former Trump officials was apprehended with a flash drive containing the allegedly pilfered information in her hand, prosecutors said Wednesday. The dramatic arrest came on the heels of other high-profile, leak-related prosecutions under the Trump administration, which has pledged to go on the offensive against leakers that the president has called "traitors and cowards." Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, 40, a senior official at the department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), is accused of illegally giving a reporter bank reports documenting...

A sophisticated hacking group backed by a foreign government stole information from the U.S. Treasury Department and a US agency responsible for deciding policy around the internet and telecommunications, according to people familiar with the matter.

Hackers backed by a foreign government have been monitoring internal email traffic at the U.S. Treasury Department and an agency that decides internet and telecommunications policy, according to people familiar with the matter. “The United States government is aware of these reports and we are taking all necessary steps to identify and remedy any possible issues related to this situation," said NSC spokesman John Ullyot. There is concern within the U.S. intelligence community that the hackers who targeted the Treasury Department and the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration used a similar tool to break into other government agencies,...

America, the Central Bank is dead. There is ZERO chance $30+ trillion in fiat debt will ever be repaid with more fiat dollars. We’re in technical default. And President Trump knows this. The Solution? US Treasury Notes issued by our US Treasury will soon replace the fraudulent, 98% devalued Federal Reserve debt contracts (dollars). America’s soon to be, newly issued, asset back currency and our revitalized “America First” economy will reverse Bretton Woods and the Federal Reserve‘s death grip will officially be removed from America‘s throat. Every new US Treasury note will equate to an inflated number of current fiat...

<p>Even the top federal agencies in the country couldn't find a clear-cut cause that triggered the whiplash in the U.S. Treasury bond market last October 15. The conclusion came from a report published Monday by five federal agencies, including the Federal Reserve and Securities and Exchange Commission.</p>

US Treasury Dept. designates China a currency manipulator.

Treasury Sanctions Venezuela's Military Counterintelligence Agency Following the Death of a Venezuelan Navy Captain U.S. Department of the Treasury July 11, 2019 Washington – Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated the Government of Venezuela's General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence, or La Dirección General de Contrainteligencia Militar, most commonly known as the DGCIM. This action, taken pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13850, as amended, targets the DGCIM for operating in Venezuela's defense and security sector. "The politically motivated arrest and tragic death of Captain Rafael Acosta was unwarranted and unacceptable," said Treasury Secretary...

As reported in Table IV of the Daily Treasury Statement, the U.S. Treasury collected approximately $21.672 billion in taxes on Christmas Eve, the first business day of the partial federal “shutdown” that began at midnight last Friday. Those Christmas Eve tax collections brought total federal tax revenues for fiscal 2019, which began on Oct. 1, to approximately $666.482 billion. On Friday, Dec. 21, the last day before the partial government shutdown, the Treasury collected approximately $10.876 billion in tax revenues, according to the Treasury statement for that day. That brought total tax collections for fiscal 2019 to approximately $644.811 billion—at...

A U.S. Treasury Department official has been criminally charged with leaking confidential documents relating to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, the Russian embassy and others, to a reporter from digital media company BuzzFeed, Manhattan federal prosecutors announced on Wednesday. Natalie May Edwards, a senior adviser in the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), was arrested on Tuesday and charged with unauthorized disclosure of suspicious activity reports, according to the office of U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman. She was expected to make an initial appearance in Virginia federal court later in the day.

A Treasury Department employee has been charged with leaking confidential banking reports of suspects charged in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Federal prosecutors say Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards is set to appear in court Wednesday in Virginia. The 40-year-old Edwards is a senior official at the department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. She’s accused of leaking the material to a journalist — who’s not named in court papers. Prosecutors say reports on Paul Manafort, Richard Gates and Maria Butina were among those leaked. …

The Obama administration granted a license letting Iran access the United States financial system despite officials’ pledges that they would prohibit it, according to a draft report from the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. “On Feb. 24, 2016, the Treasury Department issued a specific license to Bank Muscat to authorize the conversion of Iran’s rials to euros through ‘any United States depository institution …,’” the draft report said. “Even after the specific license was issued, U.S. government officials maintained in congressional testimony that Iran would not be granted access to the U.S. financial system.” “The Obama administration during the negotiation...

Putin controls the Russia's state institutions, its secret police and its big state companies. Together with a few old friends from St. Petersburg, the president is tapping the big state companies through overpriced no-bid procurement, transfer pricing, asset stripping and stock manipulation. They are also making money by extorting old oligarchs and taking loans from state banks, not to be returned. Overall assessments indicate a personal enrichment of Putin and his closest cronies of some $20 billion to $25 billion a year since 2006, a pilfering from Gazprom of $60 billion from 2004 to 2007...By now, this group would have...

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will check out the nation’s gold stash when he pays a rare official visit to Fort Knox on Monday -- while keeping an open mind for future film projects. “I assume the gold is still there,” the former Hollywood producer joked to an audience in Louisville, Kentucky, 40 miles (64 km) north of the U.S. Bullion Depository. “It would really be quite a movie if we walked in and there was no gold.” Fort Knox has been seared into the public imagination since the 1964 James Bond movie “Goldfinger,” in which the British spy, played...

U.S. President Donald Trump will order the Treasury on Friday to find and reduce tax burdens and review post-financial crisis reforms that banks and insurance companies have said hinder their ability to do business. A White House official said on Thursday that Trump will issue an executive order directing the Treasury on the tax issues. He will also issue two memoranda asking for reviews of two parts of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law - the Orderly Liquidation Authority that sets out how big banks can wind down during a crisis and the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), which...

The United States on Friday sanctioned 13 individuals and 12 entities under U.S. Iran sanctions authority, days after the White House had put Iran "on notice" over a ballistic missile test and other activities.