Is Bernanke Hiding A Smoking Gun?

A Republican senator said Tuesday that documents showing Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke covered up the fact that his staff recommended he not bailout AIG are being kept from the public. And a House Republican charged that a whistleblower had alerted Congress to specific documents provide “troubling details” of Bernanke’s role in the AIG [...]

Fed Made Taxpayers Junk-Bond Buyers

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and then-New York Fed President Timothy Geithner told senators on April 3, 2008, that the tens of billions of dollars in “assets” the government agreed to purchase in the rescue of Bear Stearns Cos. were “investment-grade.” They didn’t share everything the Fed knew about the money. The so-called assets [...]

Time to Shut Down the Federal Reserve?

Like a mad aunt, the Fed is slowly losing its marbles. Kartik Athreya, senior economist for the Richmond Fed, has written a paper condemning economic bloggers as chronically stupid and a threat to public order. Matters of economic policy should be reserved to a priesthood with the correct post-doctoral credentials, which would of course have [...]

The Fed Bashes Bloggers

Some Fed economist (with a hard-earned Ph.D mind you) named Kartik Athreya (who lasted at Citigroup as an associate Vice President for a whopping 7 months before getting sacked in 1998 only to find solace for his expiring unemployment benefits in the public sector) has written the most idiotic “research” piece to come out of [...]

Fed’s Warsh Wary of Further Asset Purchases

The Federal Reserve should be wary of the short-term allure of further asset purchases, said Fed governor Kevin Warsh on Monday. In a speech in Atlanta, Warsh set a high bar for his support of further asset purchases, saying he would need to be convinced the benefits of the purchases would outweigh the costs of [...]

Bernanke Defends Fed’s Ability to Supervise Banks (New York Times)

The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke , urged senators on Thursday not to strip the central bank of its authority to supervise the country’s largest banks, warning that to do so would pose a “grave risk,” The New York Times’s Sewell Chan reports from Washington. Read more….

Federal Reserve Balance Sheet Update: Week Of February 25 – Just $45 Billion Left In Quantitative Easing

The Federal Reserve’s assets were at $2.27 trillion as of February 25, jumping by $6 billion sequentially.  Securities held outright: $1,975 billion (an increase of $62.6 billion MoM, resulting from $59 billion increase in MBS and $3 billion in Agency Debt), or $8 billion increase sequentially.  The fed has completed $169.1 billion of $175 billion [...]

More Evidence that the Fed Sent Money to Iraq

Yesterday, I quoted an economist with the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee for eleven years who assisted with oversight of the Federal Reserve to show that there might be some basis for Ron Paul’s questions to Ben Bernanke about the Federal Reserve’s alleged shipment of money to Iraq. Here is some more information. [...]

"We Saved the World"

But who will save Benny (and Timmy)? You know I have to chuckle at the chutzpah of this guy. I have to or else I would get really angry knowing how the poor and middle classes were raped and pillaged to “save”…..who? Not the world, but the world’s big money gamblers (bankers, shadow banking system, [...]

Dresdner Drops From Federal Reserve’s Primary Dealer Network

Dresdner Kleinwort Securities LLC dropped from the ranks of securities firms that trade Treasuries with the Federal Reserve, bringing the dealer network back to the smallest in the 49-year history of the system. Dresdner is the second dealer this year to resign from the network of firms which was formalized by the Fed in 1960. [...]

Ron Paul: Storming the Fed

As far as finance and business goes, at least one rule generally holds true… And this rule makes your job as an investor, entrepreneur or analyst ten times easier. The rule? If you can’t explain a particular investment or innovation to an eleven-year-old, then something shady is going on. Credit Default Swaps, Securitization, GSEs, CDOs…all [...]

Bernanke Threatens Economic Collapse If Fed Audited

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke unleashed an alarming veiled threat of financial terrorism when he was questioned by Rep. Duncan on Thursday about his response to the fact that a majority of Congress co-sponsoring Ron Paul’s H.R. 1207 bill to audit the Federal Reserve. Bernanke clearly regarded the bill’s intent as hostile to the institution [...]

Bernanke Prepared Testimony

As Ben is about to be crucified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, below is his full prepared testimony. Also, if readers want to watch the hearing live without CNBC’s commercial interruptions for Sham-Wow or Mark Haines doing long division on air to calculate the difference between Dow futures and fair market [...]

The Fed’s Emails

The following may or may not be all the emails that will be referenced at the hearing tomorrow. Oddly (or not) the $78 billion portfolio of problem positions has been redacted. Going through these now… At first blush, sentences like “Ken Lewis’ claim that they were surprised by the rapid growth of the losses seems [...]

Republicans Say Fed Tried to Control Timing of Merrill Loss

House Republican staffers said the Federal Reserve tried to control the timing of disclosures of rising losses at Merrill Lynch & Co. in the weeks leading up to its takeover by Bank of America Corp., according to a memo obtained by Bloomberg. The memo, prepared by staffers for Republican lawmakers at a House Oversight Committee [...]

Federal Reserve Opts For No Change

The Federal Reserve said on Wednesday that it would leave interest rates unchanged, and that economic activity would remain weak for “some time” before growth resumes. It maintained that it was moving ahead with its $300bn Treasury purchase plan and said that it would “continue to evaluate the timing and overall amounts of its purchases [...]

Fed Statement

For immediate release Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in April suggests that the pace of economic contraction is slowing. Conditions in financial markets have generally improved in recent months. Household spending has shown further signs of stabilizing but remains constrained by ongoing job losses, lower housing wealth, and tight credit. Businesses [...]

Who Owns the FED

So, who owns the Federal Reserve? Well, it certainly is not the US government, as many would suppose. In fact, I have found that quite a few – including myself last year – who are roughly aware of how the FED works but believe that the owners of the FED is a secret. Well, it [...]

Federal Reserve Mulls Changes to Repo System

The Federal Reserve is considering creating a utility to replace the Wall Street banks that handle US repo market transactions, the Financial Times reported yesterday, citing people familiar with the matter. The proposal is partly motivated by concerns that the structure of the US overnight repurchase market may have exacerbated the financial turmoil that followed [...]

Ron Paul Slams Federal Reserve’s New Dictatorial Powers

Responding to the Obama administration’s new regulatory reform plan, which will officially hand the Federal Reserve complete dictatorial control over the U.S. economy, Congressman Ron Paul told MSNBC that the Fed was now more powerful than Congress. Paul emphasized that no amount of regulation could compensate for a financial system created and controlled by the [...]

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