Economist John Williams warns the Federal Reserve has painted itself into a very tight no-win corner.
No matter what the Fed does with rates it’s going to be a disaster. Williams explains, “You had some very heavy selling towards the end of the year and when you saw the big declines in the stock market you also saw that accompanied by a falling dollar and rising gold prices.” Continue reading
Alan Greenspan says the party’s over on Wall Street.
The former Federal Reserve chairman who famously warned more than two decades ago about “irrational exuberance” in the stock market doesn’t see equity prices going any higher than they are now.
“It would be very surprising to see it sort of stabilize here, and then take off,” Greenspan said in an interview with CNN anchor Julia Chatterley. Continue reading
The general belief among average citizens is that the purpose of central banks is to help the economy by fighting inflation and mitigating financial crisis. It’s a fairy tale that politicians like to encourage. If there were any truth to it, however, where was the Federal Reserve during the crisis of 2007? Rather than helping, it was widening the crisis with its easy money policies.
While central banks are not a government entity, their primary purpose is to create money for the benefit of the government. By mindlessly printing fiat currency, central banks create a shaky illusion of financial stability. In reality, each central bank is a monopoly that controls the production of distribution of currency and interest rates. Most importantly, it also controls gold reserves. While paper currency allegedly has the backing of the government, it is the central bank that controls the value of the currency at any specific time. Continue reading
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One of the little-known items on the Fed’s balance sheet is a vital asset it received from the U.S. Treasury a long time ago…
During the Great Depression, in 1933, President Roosevelt issued an executive order requiring anyone with gold to surrender it to a Federal Reserve bank or any member bank of the Federal Reserve system.
The Federal Reserve banks also required the commercial banks to hand over their gold to the Fed. Now, suddenly, the gold went out of the commercial banks into the Federal Reserve Bank. Continue reading
Fed Chair Janet Yellen just announced that the Fed will be kicking the $USD off a cliff.
She didn’t use those words, but the words she did use weren’t all that different.
But first a little context… Continue reading
On June 27, the ATM turns 50. Former US Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker once described it as the “only useful innovation in banking.” But today, the cash that ATMs dispense may be on the endangered list.
Cash is being displaced in so many ways that it’s hard to keep track. There are credit cards and electronic payments; apps such as Venmo, PayPal and Square Cash; mobile payments services; cryptocurrencies that operate outside the purview of central banks; and localized offerings such as Kenya’s mPesa, India’s Paytm and Bangladesh’s bKash. These innovations are encouraging cashlessness across communities worldwide.
It’s reasonable to expect cash to follow the path of other goods that have been replaced by digital alternatives, such as photos, music, and movies. Will cash – and the ATMs that dispense it – experience a “Blockbuster” moment and disappear from our neighborhoods? Continue reading
We have no idea how to even comment on this latest observation by “world-renowned”, if allegedly dead now that oil is again well above $44, commodity expert Dennis Gartman, who in his latest letter writes that World War III “has begun in earnest:”
…Why now? Perhaps the markets are indeed concerned that the Federal Reserve Bank may pass on raising rates at its meetings this week, but will be moved to raise rates at a later time.
DHAKA/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Hours before the Federal Reserve Bank of New York approved four fraudulent requests to send $81 million from a Bangladesh Bank account to cyber thieves, the Fed branch blocked those same requests because they lacked information required to transfer money, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.
On the day of the theft in February, the New York Fed initially rejected 35 requests to transfer funds to various overseas accounts, a New York Fed official and a senior Bangladesh Bank official told Reuters. The Fed’s decision to later fulfill a handful of resubmitted requests raises questions about whether it missed red flags.
The New York arm of the U.S. central bank initially denied the transfer requests because they lacked proper formatting for the SWIFT messaging system, the network banks use for international financial transfers, the two officials said. Continue reading
Since 2012, there’s been an unprecedented call from foreign nations to repatriate their gold from Federal Reserve vaults in the U.S. This is an incredible development given many countries’ 71-year reliance on the Fed as a custodian for their bullion. Over the last few years, countries including, but not limited to, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Austria, Poland, Ecuador, Finland, Switzerland, Venezuela, and Romania have either formally requested repatriation of their gold or are in discussions with the Fed about it. Some of these nations, mind you, have held more than 50% of their entire reserves of bullion in the U.S. since 1944, when the Dollar became the world’s reserve currency.
Something huge must have happened in the last few years to prompt such action. That something may be a break in foreign gold holders’ trust in the Fed as a custodian of their precious metals. Continue reading
(Reuters) – Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on Wednesday said high equity valuations could pose potential dangers but that stability risks across the U.S. financial system remained in check.
“I would highlight that equity market valuations at this point generally are quite high,” Yellen said. “There are potential dangers there.”
Yellen’s view on the run-up in stocks was an answer to questions from International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde, who joined the Fed chief for the opening session of the “Finance and Society” conference here. Continue reading
But Stockman says blame lays not with the tax code (indeed, he pioneered a trickle-down approach to taxes under Reagan) but with the Fed.Obama “is talking about a symptom, but he’s clueless as to the cause. The cause is not capitalism. The cause is not some entrepreneur out there trying to invent something and improve the performance of his business. The problem is in the Eccles building [home to the main office of the Fed] and in the 12 people sitting there and thinking that interest rates are some magic elixir that’ll cause this very troubled and difficult economy to revive,” Stockman said. Continue reading
Both parties together agree with so many issues because they are the same party. As in today’s neo-Soviet Russia, no matter who’s elected, the country goes on the same path because they’re controlled by the same component: The Kremlin. In this case, it’s more difficult to pinpoint who’s really in control of the United States, but it’s surely correct to say Obama isn’t the person who’s really pulling the strings.
On another side note, the number of abortions (50 million) stated in this article is likely highly underestimated. The 50 million total has been a statistic used over the last five to ten years, yet people parrot the same amount every time the topic comes up. As America’s social and moral fabric have eroded beyond the point of no return within the last ten to fifteen years, it would be difficult not to imagine that number is doubled. The movement of ridding the ‘inconvenience’ of having a baby in life gained ground by leaps and bounds during the Clinton administration.
As the article states: The clowns may change, but the circus remains the same.
If you’re still arguing about Democrats vs. Republicans, sorry, but you have been utterly oblivious for the last 15 years.
Maybe you’ll agree with this assessment, maybe you won’t. What you believe is up to you but how many times can you be warned that the sword is coming to disobedient nations such as the United States and the world over — and still not see it? It cannot continue on this path forever. It will fall.
You’re encouraged to dig through the posts on this site and come to your own conclusion.
The more things change, the more things stay the same. As I write this, it looks like the Republicans are going to take control of the U.S. Senate. But will that actually alter the direction of the country? Will that actually change anything? There are many that hope that this could represent a “turning point” for America, but history tells us that almost certainly will not be the case. Over the past 30 years, things have changed very little no matter which party has controlled the White House and no matter which party has controlled Congress. During that time frame, the national debt has continued to explode, our long-term economic problems have continued to get even worse, our liberties and freedoms have continued to erode and our nation has increasingly become a moral cesspool. And the truth is that at this point there is very little real difference between most Democrats and most Republicans. The corruption in Washington D.C. runs extremely deep, and very few politicians are able to enter that environment without being fundamentally affected by it.
In recent times, midterm elections have become primarily about punishing whoever is in the White House. In this case, there is definitely much to be dissatisfied about as far as Barack Obama is concerned. In fact, many consider him to be the worst president in U.S. history, and that is saying a lot.
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But despite the millions upon millions of votes that were cast by concerned Americans on Tuesday, very little is likely to change in the way that this nation is governed. Continue reading
Global Geopolitics 