Free Republic

The giant investment company's global influence on politics and economics is enormous. BlackRock is one of the most powerful organizations in the world, and its nefarious role in global economics and politics is becoming more apparent. The investment giant is pushing woke politics in the form of corporate social credit scores (ESG), which includes the dangerous “net zero” and LGBT agenda. BlackRock is also responsible for rigging the financial systems and has control over a significant portion of the world’s wealth. In order to fight back, we need to know what we are dealing with. In this article, we take...

Founding myths tend to be mired in obscurity, and like many other investment trends, the roots of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) philosophies are unclear. The founding of the World Economic Forum is one origin. Stakeholder theory is another of ESG’s clear antecedents, especially as formalized in R. Edward Freeman’s 1984 book Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach. In 2004, the World Bank report “Who Cares Wins: Connecting Financial Markets to a Changing World” is another contender, providing as it did guidelines for firms to integrate ESG practices into their daily operations. And the publication of the reporting framework United Nations...

The Fed has not only failed to fix what's broken in the U.S. economy--it has actively mad those problems worse. The Federal Reserve claims its monetary interventions saved America from economic ruin in 2009, and have bolstered growth ever since. Don't hurt yourself patting your own backs, Fed governors past and present: it's bad enough that the Fed can't fix the economy's real problems--its policies actively make them worse. After seven long years of politicos and the financial media glorifying the Federal Reserve's policies as god-like in their power and efficacy, let's take a quick look at the results of...

Capital markets are information engines. When functioning properly, they reflect what investors know – or think they know – about the future. Future expectations are for all to see, discounted in today’s financial prices. Obviously, this doesn’t mean that capital markets are always “right,” for the future comes as it will, caring not a whit whether it was the one we ordered up or not.For the first time in recorded history, financial interest rates have gone negative. To say this makes no sense is almost tautological. Nobody pays to have their Amazon delivery delayed or their Uber pickup deferred. Consumption now is...

On the 7th anniversary of entering ZIRP, and for the first time since June 29th 2006, The Federal Reserve announced today that it will try and raise interest rates: *FED RAISES INTEREST RATES 0.25 POINT IN UNANIMOUS VOTE Of course, the flowery language and dots are as dovish as possible while maintaining some semblance of credibility with regard growth expectations as The Fed unleashes a tightening cycle for the first time in over 11 years.

A few months ago, a hurt Ben Bernanke put on his blogger hat and set out to explain why, in his mind, the unconventional policies undertaken by the Fed in the post-crisis years have not contributed to record income inequality. As we noted at the time, epic hilarity ensued. Bernanke’s explanation went something like this: while QE does indeed inflate asset prices, poor people have been getting poorer for quite some time, so sure, maybe the Fed contributed a little bit, but probably not a whole lot and besides, the more Keynes the better when it comes to smoothing out...

Fed decides to keep near-zero interest rate for 'considerable time' after ending QE 2014/10/30 04:26 WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 (Yonhap) -- The U.S. Federal Reserve announced Wednesday it will keep its near-zero interest rate policy "for a considerable time" even as it puts an end to its bond-purchasing program aimed at stimulating the economy through low rates. The announcement corroborates views that the Fed is unlikely to raise the key rate before the middle of next year. A possible U.S. rate hike after the end of the bond-buying program, known as "quantitative easing," has been feared to lead to a capital...

A friend of mine is trying to sell a 5 acre lot in Las Vegas and has been trying since 2009. But recently, he has received 3 offers at above the asking price; he has turned all offers down. Why? He thinks The Fed will continue rolling the dice on easy money policies. Reuters had an interesting piece on the Las Vegas “rebound” entitled “Special Report: Cheap money bankrolls Wall Street’s bet on housing.” According to the Reuters article, The Vegas market has unsteady legs. Statistics compiled by the University of Nevada at Las Vegas show some 40,000 homes are...

I recently indulged in some wistful, year-end nostalgia, but now that 2013 is underway, let’s turn our attention to a time more crucial to our well-being: the future in which we will live. Forecasts for sluggish economic growth are common. Investment superstars and gurus such as Bill Gross of PIMCO and Jeremy Grantham of GMO, and researchers such as Dr. Robert Gordon of the National Bureau of Economic Research, all have predicted anemic growth for the next several years. With the caveat that when too many “expert” opinions agree, the resulting consensus can be spectacularly wrong, I agree with the...

Following the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve provided more than $4 trillion in near zero-interest loans and other help to banks and businesses whose executives also served as directors for the national bank. At least 18 current and former Fed regional bank directors had a direct stake in the trillion-dollar bailout given to teetering institutions, according to a report produced by the Government Accountability Office, but released by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont). "Snip" To bolster his case, Sanders cited the example of Jamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase. A director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New...

It isn’t easy to earn interest income these days. Interest rates on government T-bills, banks’ savings accounts, and certificates of deposit are microscopic. You can blame our government and central bank. They have “ZIRPed” millions of American savers. Here are the details: According to the U.S. Treasury Department, the average interest rate paid on federal debt, as of July, was just under 2.4 percent, implying an annual interest expense on $14.5 trillion of debt of nearly $350 billion. (Net debt, subtracting intra-governmental debt is lower; actual debt, including off-budget items, is higher.) If the average interest rate rose to 5...

Monetary Policy and Structural Reform of the Japanese Economy --Speech given by Eiko Shinotsuka, Member of the Policy Board of the Bank of Japan, at the Meeting on Economic and Financial Matters in Nagano on February 4, 2000 April 25, 2000 Bank of Japan [Contents] I. Introduction II. The Zero Interest Rate Policy A. What Is a Zero Interest Rate Policy? B. What Does the Phrase "Until Deflationary Concern Has Been Dispelled" Mean? C. Personal View on the Zero Interest Rate Policy III. Structural Reform of the Japanese Economy A. Information Technology Revolution B. Employment Problems I. Introduction1 It is...

"After the collapse of the equity and real estate bubble that has plagued us for the last 10 years, Americans have absorbed a tremendous blow to their wealth. We all know housing is down about 30% from its peak. But I’d like to concentrate on what the equity market has done since December of 1999 in both nominal, dollar and gold terms. In nominal terms the S&P500 is down “just” 28.6% since the decade began. But when you ask questions like what how much of my purchasing power have I lost vs. gold and other currencies, the data become even...

It doesn’t require a PhD in Male Bovine Scatology to detect the foul odor wafting from the following pronouncement by Professor William Ford.“This is really a great communications challenge,” said William Ford, a former Atlanta Fed chief who’s now at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro. “It is going to take some educational effort to elaborate on how these policy options would work” because “people don’t know how to interpret what they are talking about.” When it comes to the policies employed thus far to combat our current economic downturn, people don’t have to interpret very much. The policies have...