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Fed chief Bernanke issues debt warningBy North America correspondent Jill Colgan, ABC February 3, 2012, 11:08 am United States Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has warned that the US economy could face the same fate as troubled European countries if it fails to curb its growing debt. Mr Bernanke delivered a sobering assessment of the economy that defies recent attempts by the Obama administration to talk up the economic turnaround. Testifying before a House Budget Committee, he said the pace of recovery had been "frustratingly slow". He urged lawmakers to be more aggressive in reducing the nation's $15 trillion debt...

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is giving a presentation to the House Budget Committee on “The State of The U.S. Economy.” Here is the CSPAN link. In summary, he says the economy is growing, Europe is still a problem (and will continue to be so for a long-time). His Q&A with the committee is very interesting. 1. He will do everything possible to protect the U.S. from Europe (he has already stated that The Fed will likely keep interest rates at near zero through at least late 2014). 2. He talked about the unsustainable fiscal condition in the U.S. (trillion...

U.S. Economy Waist Deep In The Big Muddy Economics / US Economy Jan 28, 2012 - 02:50 AM By: Peter Schiff With its announcement this week that it will keep interest rates near zero until at least late 2014, the Federal Reserve has put another large crack into the foundations underlying the US dollar. In a misguided attempt to provide clarity and transparency, Ben Bernanke has instead laid out a simple road map for economists and investors to follow. The signposts are easily understood: the Fed will stop at nothing in pursuing its goals of creating phantom GDP growth, holding...

Well, we got an inflation target from the Fed. Basically, thinking at the Fed has been eliminated. The process has been automated. Bernanke has convinced the Fed board to adopt Core PCE as a determinate of monetary policy. So long as CPCE stays below 2%, Ben is going to have his foot planted on the monetary metal. It’s “full speed ahead” according to the Chairman. He’s pushed things off until 2014 – a very long time from now. My question: “Why is the Fed using CPCE versus another measure of inflation?” The very good news is that there is answer,...

The Fed Is Worried -- And You Should Be Too Comstock Partners January 26, 2012The Fed is worried, and you should be too. That is the major take-away from yesterday's FOMC statement, combined with its release of updated projections and Bernanke's press conference. Despite the market's cheering of the promise of a near-zero fed funds rate until late 2014 and the prospect of QE3, the Fed is fighting a lonely battle against severe economic headwinds----and they know it. In answering a reporter's question, Bernanke made it crystal-clear that he does not believe that the recently optimistic economic releases are sustainable....

The Federal Reserve has moved closer to embarking on a new round of its controversial money-pumping after the central bank and its chairman Ben Bernanke highlighted a grim outlook for the U.S. economy. Bernanke on Wednesday opened the door a bit wider for the Fed to return to buying securities in the months ahead to buttress a weak recovery and keep inflation from slipping too far below its newly adopted 2-percent target. "It sounds like the finger is on the trigger," said Thomas Simons, a money market economist at Jefferies & Co. The Fed's announcement that it was unlikely to...

So far, during the presidency of Barack Obama, the price of a gallon of gasoline has jumped 83 percent, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (AP Photo) During the same period, the price of ground beef has gone up 24 percent and price of bacon has gone up 22 percent. When Obama entered the White House in January 2009, the city average price for one gallon of regular unleaded gasoline was $1.79, according to the BLS. (The figures are in nominal dollars: not adjusted for inflation.) Five months later in June, unleaded gasoline was $2.26 per gallon,...

Looking at the Federal Reserve's FOMC meeting schedule for the rest of the year one meeting looms politically large, the meeting on October 23-24 (September 12th a close second). This meeting takes place just two weeks before the November 6th Presidential election. A Fed decides to make a dovish move at this meeting, thereby rallying the markets just weeks before the election, there is no question it would have a psychological effect on voters in favor of the Obama administration.

WASHINGTON – The desperation of homebuilders was a running joke among top Federal Reserve officials during the waning phase of the housing bubble in 2006, according to transcripts released Thursday. They laughed about the cars that builders were giving to buyers. They laughed about efforts to make empty homes look occupied. They laughed at a report that one builder said inventory was rising “through the roof.”

The U.S. government-run mortgage finance firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could play a bigger role in turning around the battered U.S. housing market, the Federal Reserve told Congress, a call that looks set to run into stiff political opposition. The Fed, in a paper sent to lawmakers on Wednesday, outlined an array of steps that could be taken to help the housing sector, including allowing Fannie and Freddie to provide cheaper mortgages to a broader pool of homeowners. The two companies, the biggest sources of U.S. mortgage funding, were seized by the government in 2008 when they were on...

First it was Zero Hedge. Then Ron Paul joined in. Now it is the turn of a former Dallas Fed Vice President, Gerald ODriscoll, to outright accuse the Fed of bailing out Europe courtesy of "incomprehensible" currency swaps, and implicitly accusing Bernanke of lying that he would not bail out Europe even as he has done precisely that. And not only that: by cutting the USD swap spread from OIS+100 to OIS+50, the Fed has made sure it gets paid less than ever for extended Europe the courtesy of bailing it out all over again. Incidentally, O'Driscoll says, "America's central...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Tuesday pushed back against reports that the Fed had lent banks $7.77 trillion or more during the financial crisis, saying they contained "egregious errors and mistakes." Bloomberg Markets Magazine last month published an article called "Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion Undisclosed to Congress." The article was widely referenced by other news organizations, including the New York Times. The Bloomberg article said the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion as of March 2009 to rescuing the financial system when all guarantees and lending limits were added up. While Bernanke did not...

Major television broadcast and cable TV networks have refused to air ads of animated Obama and Bernanke characters, on grounds that they were “too political.” Google TV has broken this censorship of the ads by the old establishment media, making it possible for DISH and DirecTV to begin airing the ads. The two provocative commercials were developed by Swiss America Trading Corp., a national investment firm that was clever enough to do an ‘end run’ around the networks by going through Google whose contract with DISH and DirecTV satellite networks resulted in the scheduled airing of the ads on Monday,...

Leaping Toward The Keynesian Dream By Jeffrey Tucker 11/30/11 The Fed’s latest inflationary scheme sounds like a technocratic innovation. It lowered the costs of currency swaps between central banks of the world with the idea that the Fed would do for the globe what Europe, England, and China are too shy to do, which is run the printing presses 24/7 to bail out failing institutions and economies. In effect, the Fed has promised to be the lender of last resort for the entire global economy. It sounds new, but it is not. Following the Second World War, John Maynard Keynes...

The U.S. Federal Reserve, acting with five other central banks, took steps Wednesday to boost the troubled global financial system by making it cheaper for banks to trade in U.S. dollars. The Fed -- along with central banks of the eurozone, England, Japan, Switzerland and Canada -- announced a coordinated plan to lower prices on dollar liquidity swaps beginning on December 5, and extending these swap arrangements to February 1, 2013.

WASHINGTON -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Thursday tried to reassure U.S. soldiers, a group hit hard by high unemployment, that the Fed is working to strengthen the economy. In a speech at Fort Bliss, Bernanke told the soldiers and their families that the Fed is trying to lower unemployment. He talked about the Fed's policies of keeping short-term rates near zero and buying securities to try and lower longer-term rates, such as mortgages. Many veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are returning home to find few jobs and limited prospects. The unemployment rate for veterans of those...

EL PASO, Texas -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke will be hosting a town hall meeting at Fort Bliss in El Paso with soldiers and their families and greet military personnel returning from combat. Bernanke's trip to Fort Bliss is his first visit to an Army installation. It will also be his first visit to the state after GOP presidential candidate and Texas Gov. Rick Perry said earlier this year Texans would treat him "ugly" if he continued lowering interest rates. Perry and other critics say that policy is akin to recklessly printing money. Another Texan seeking the presidency,...

America's top central banker "sympathizes" with the Occupy Wall Street protesters and thinks many of their frustrations with the sluggish economy are "understandable." But there's one complaint Ben Bernanke does take issue with: the backlash against the Federal Reserve. "I think that the concerns about the Fed are based on misconceptions" The Occupy Wall Street protests, which started in New York in September and have since spread around the world, are known for their ever-evolving and diverse list of grievances. Among them are the common themes of distaste for the banking system and frustration with government. With that in mind,...

As the Federal Reserve downgraded its economic projections, Chairman Ben S. Bernanke admitted that the central bank's board was in the same distressing position as the average American family — frustrated by the slow recovery, limited in its options and largely reduced to hoping for the best. "I certainly understand that many people are dissatisfied with the state of the economy," Bernanke told reporters Wednesday when asked about the Occupy Wall Street protests. "I'm dissatisfied with the state of the economy." The Fed noted in its official statement after its two-day meeting that economic conditions strengthened somewhat from July through...

To know what is wrong with the Federal Reserve, one must first understand the nature of money. Money is like any other good in our economy that emerges from the market to satisfy the needs and wants of consumers. Its particular usefulness is that it helps facilitate indirect exchange, making it easier for us to buy and sell goods because there is a common way of measuring their value. Money is not a government phenomenon, and it need not and should not be managed by government. When central banks like the Fed manage money they are engaging in price fixing,...