Free Republic

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's Finance Ministry said on Saturday a magazine report that the government wants the Bundesbank to sell some of its gold reserves to help ease pressure on the federal budget was untrue. Der Spiegel magazine reported in a preview of its latest edition that Finance Ministry State Secretary Werner Gatzer had proposed selling part of the central bank's gold reserves, currently worth around 65 billion euros ($103 billion). According to the plan, the proceeds could then be either invested to earn interest or debt could be paid off freeing up cash that would have been used to...

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department will propose on Monday that Congress give the Federal Reserve broad new authority to oversee financial market stability, in effect allowing it to send SWAT teams into any corner of the industry or any institution that might pose a risk to the overall system. The proposal is part of a sweeping blueprint to overhaul the nation’s hodgepodge of financial regulatory agencies, which many experts say failed to recognize rampant excesses in mortgage lending until after they set off what is now the worst financial calamity in decades.

Central banks on both sides of the Atlantic are actively engaged in discussions about the feasibility of mass purchases of mortgage-backed securities as a possible solution to the credit crisis. Such a move would involve the use of public funds to shore up the market in a key financial instrument and restore confidence by ending the current vicious circle of forced sales, falling prices and weakening balance sheets. The conversations, part of a broader exchange as to possible future steps in battling financial turmoil, are at an early stage. However, the fact that such a move is being discussed at...

Central banks on both sides of the Atlantic are actively engaged in discussions about the feasibility of mass purchases of mortgage-backed securities as a possible solution to the credit crisis. Such a move would involve the use of public funds to shore up the market in a key financial instrument and restore confidence by ending the current vicious circle of forced sales, falling prices and weakening balance sheets. -snip-

Central banks on both sides of the Atlantic are actively engaged in discussions about the feasibility of mass purchases of mortgage-backed securities as a possible solution to the credit crisis. Such a move would involve the use of public funds to shore up the market in a key financial instrument and restore confidence by ending the current vicious circle of forced sales, falling prices and weakening balance sheets.

The Gulf states' dollar pegs restrict their ability to draw out monetary policy suiting domestic economic condition, independent of the US policy stance, the former FOMC Chairman Alan Greenspan said Monday in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Most gulf states are experiencing record high of inflation, with Qatar reporting a 14% surge last year, followed by the UAE, Kuwait and other countries. Saudi Arabia's inflation hit a twenty seven year high of 7% in January, while UAE's inflation topped 9.3% in nineteen years during the month. The regional inflation average hit 6.3% in 2007, compared to 0.3% in 2001, according to Merrill...

US considers sanctions against Iran central bank - report WASHINGTON Thomson Financial - The US Treasury Department is considering sanctions against Iran's central bank, which it suspects of helping other Iranian institutions evade earlier US economic sanctions, The Wall Street Journal reported. Citing unnamed financial and intelligence officials from three countries, the newspaper said the impact of such a measure would depend in large measure on the extent to which US allies backed the effort. The nature of the sanctions under consideration has not been described. But The Journal pointed out that sanctions, particularly if supported by US allies in...

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's central bank on Sunday poured cold water on the idea that the country's economy can decouple from the United States. China's exports will be badly hit if U.S. consumption weakens, Zhang Tao, deputy head of the international department of the People's Bank of China, told a financial forum. Figures due this week are expected to show that China's gross domestic product grew more than 11 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007 from a year earlier, despite a deepening U.S. credit crunch. But Zhang said he saw mounting risks to U.S. consumer demand. He noted that...

The Federal Reserve, working to combat the effects of a severe credit crunch, announced Friday it had auctioned another $20 billion in funds to commercial banks at an interest rate of 4.67 percent. Fed officials pledged to continue with the auctions "for as long as necessary." The central bank said it had received bids for $57.7 billion worth of loans, nearly three times the amount being offered, indicating continued strong interest in the Fed's new approach to providing money to cash-strapped banks. It was the second of four scheduled auctions. The first auction, on Monday, of $20 billion resulted in...

Panama Has No Central Bank By David Saied Posted on 4/26/2007 In this modern, post-–Bretton Woods world of "monetary order" and coordinated central-bank inflation, many who are otherwise sympathetic to the arguments against central banks believe that the elimination of central banking is an unattainable, utopian dream. For a real-world example of how a system of market-chosen monetary policy would work in the absence of a central bank, one need not look to the past; the example exists in present-day Central America, in the Republic of Panama, a country that has lived without a central bank since its independence, with...

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican central bank governor Guillermo Ortiz on Wednesday urged the government and food companies to renew price caps for tortillas that have acted as a buffer against inflation. Tortillas, thin corn patties, are a staple of the Mexican diet. After a price rise began fueling inflation toward the end of 2006, the government pressured food producers and retailers to limit prices for corn flour and tortillas. "For consumers, the price containment so far has been a success, and from my point of view it is important that this containment continues," Ortiz told reporters, according to a...

Gold holdings by central banks and other government organizations declined for the eighth straight year in 2006, to the lowest in almost 60 years, figures from the International Monetary Fund show. Bullion holdings were 867.6 million ounces last year, down 1.2% from 2005, the Washington-based International Monetary Fund said on its Web site. That's the lowest since 1948, according to the World Gold Council. Gold climbed 23% last year as investors took up some of the supply through exchange-traded funds, or ETFs. „There is a lot of speculation some major central banks out of Asia or emerging countries will be...

MOSCOW. Sept 14 (Interfax) - Deputy Chairman of the Russian Central Bank Andrei Kozlov died in hospital at 5.30 a.m. Moscow time (0130 hours GMT), following the attempted attack on Wednesday night, a medical source told Interfax. "Kozlov died without coming to," the source said. A medical source told Interfax earlier that Kozlov had heavily been wounded in the head, and had sustained less sever wounds in the chest and the stomach. The banker was operated on, with the operation completed at about 5 a.m. Moscow time (0100 hours GMT). The source also noted that Kozlov had been taken...

There is something about Bolivian President Evo Morales that doesn't inspire confidence in a prosperous, democratic future for his country. And it's not only the fashion statement he makes with the striped sweater he wears like a uniform. For a good many Bolivians it's the erosion of civil liberties under his leadership. Just ask Marcela Nogales, a 47-year-old mother of two pre-teens who holds a master's degree in auditing and financial control from Bolivian Catholic University in a joint program with Harvard University. Mrs. Nogales, who was the general manager of the Central Bank of Bolivia for five years until...

FREE TO CHOOSE: Anatomy of Crisis Friedman Delancy Street in New York's lower east side, hardly one of the city's best known sites, yet what happened in this street nearly 50 years ago continues to effect all of us today. Wall Street. Most of us know what happened here 50 years ago. Inside the Stock Exchange on October 29, 1929, the market collapsed. It came to be known as Black Thursday. The Wall Street crash was followed by the worst depression in American history. That depression has been blamed on the failure of capitalism. It was no such thing but...

Iraqi Dinar equality to dollar, Zubaidi suggests 27/06/2006 Source: Al-Sabah Finance ministry & Iraqi Central Bank study a suggestion about lifting off the worth of Iraqi dinar and returning back as the past. And the suggestion supported by the World Bank. Finance minister Bayan Jabr Zubaidi declared that he suggested on bank governor lifting off three zeros so dinar would be equal to dollar. on the other hand, he declared his support for national peace initiative.

[According to the former official, the Venezuelan Central Bank (BCV) shows feeble balance of assets. Should the government continue asking money from the bank, the international reserves will deplete gradually and monetary steadiness will be undermined. The only alternative is to reform again the BCV Law] The Venezuelan Central Bank (BCV) will go into technical bankruptcy in the event of continuing delivering assets to the Government with no valuable consideration, BCV Economic Research ex manager José Guerra cautioned. "Delivery of USD 6 billion in reserves last year, along with large indebtedness eroded the bank assets, and weakened its capital and...

The Bank for International Settlements has called on major economies in America, Asia and Europe to cooperate on financial policy in order to stabilise imbalances threatening the world economy. In its annual report, the BIS - known as the central bank of central bankers - praised global economic performance in the year to March 2005 but warned that there were hints of inflationary pressures building up similar to those in the late 1960s and 1970s. While it stopped short of recommending binding financial rules at international level - including the possibility of a single international currency or a return to...

A data base has appeared for sale in Moscow: bank transactions for the 4th quarter of 2004. Salesmen of this illegal data base last week sent emails offering the goods for sale. Within the data can be found even the biggest transaction of past year - the auction sale of 'Yuganskneftegaza', according to the newspaper 'Vedomosti'. Recall that in February of this year one could buy the central bank's data for the last year and a half, from April, 2003 to September, 2004. After this was made public, parliamentary deputies directed a demand to the Attorney General's office, that they...

The Bank of England (BoE) will likely keep interest rates steady at 4.75 percent for a sixth successive month at its latest meeting amid concerns over the strength of the British economy, analysts said. All 31 forecasters polled by AFP's financial news wire, AFX News, said they expected the BoE's nine-member Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) to refrain from cutting the cost of borrowing. "There is considerable uncertainty about the state of the economy," Global Insight economist Howard Archer said, adding that "interest rates won't go anywhere this week". The exact state of Britain's faltering housing market and of consumer spending...

China's central bank may consider establishing a "super branch" in Shanghai to bring it closer to the marketplace. The move, reported in yesterday's edition of the Beijing Times newspaper, got its first confirmation on January 20 from People's Bank of China Shanghai Branch head Hu Pingxi. Hu was quoted as saying that the central bank aimed to "consolidate its resources and improve its operational efficiency" by setting up such a body in Shanghai. The Shanghai "super branch" will assist the central bank's decision-making processes by being in a position to obtain more relevant market information. But the Beijing headquarters of...

Top economist says slashed public spending and house price slump mean recession - unless Bank acts This will be 'the year the luck runs out' for homeowners, consumers and the Chancellor, leading economist Roger Bootle warns today, predicting that the Bank of England will have to slash interest rates to stave off a recession. In his quarterly economic health-check for accountant Deloitte and Touche, Bootle warns that as the housing market downturn accelerates, economic growth will slow to 2 per cent this year, from well over 3 per cent in 2004. 'There are two big stimuli that are going to...

When Hugo Chavez was running for President, he emphasized that he did not believe in representative democracy, but in participatory democracy. So much so, that Chavez refused to sign the declaration after the Quebec Summit, because it used representative rather than participatory. I had to wonder what happened to that when the Venezuelan National assembly named this week a committee to choose a replacement for Central Bank Director Manuel Lago. Despite the fact that the National assembly is split almost 50/50 between pro-Chavez and anti-Chavez Deputies (there is a difference of only three Deputies out of 160), there is not...

The U.S. current-account deficit reached 5.7 percent of GDP in the second quarter of 2004. Yet the dollar remains at a relatively high value: less than 20 percent below its early 2001 highs and more than 10 percent higher in real terms than in the early to mid-1990`s. As the current-account deficit rose over the past half-decade, international economists have lined up to predict doom: returns on assets invested in the United States are relatively low, so at some point - probably all at once - holders of dollar-denominated securities will realize that the risk of suffering a major crash...

China ‘at the Edge’ of Financial Crisis: Central Bank Governor Radio Free Asia Aug 17, 2004 A pedestrian walks past the Bank of China tower in Hong Kong, 03 August 2004. China’s central bank governor has warned that the country is “at the edge” of a financial crisis as bad debt levels continue to rise. (SAMANTHA SIN/AFP/Getty Images) HONG KONG -- China’s central bank governor has warned that the country is “at the edge” of a financial crisis as bad debt levels continue to rise. Speaking at a financial conference last month in Shanghai, People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou...

Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, on Tuesday indicated that interest rates might have to rise faster than expected to keep inflationary pressures under control. Speaking from Washington via satellite link to a conference in London, Mr Greenspan said he remained confident that the Fed could afford to remove monetary stimulus from the US economy gradually but that he was ready to take stronger action if necessary. Although the reaction in financial markets was muted, economists said the comments marked a significant shift in Fed rhetoric, with inflation starting to take center stage. "The [Fed's] committee is of...

"The Nation-State Is Finished" by William F. Jasper Robert Bartley, a closet one-worlder at the WSJ, used his newspaper’s "conservative" clout to seduce American business leaders into sacrificing U.S. sovereignty for trade. ‘‘What in blazes can President Bush be thinking?" That has been the general response — on talk radio and in media surveys, Internet postings and letters-to-the-editor — of many current and former Bush supporters angered and confused by the president’s immigration proposals. These folks would not have been surprised by the president’s outrageous announcement on January 7 or his remarks the following week at the Summit of the...

Who are the G7 finance ministers? Posted: February 10, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern By Joan Veon© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com BOCA RATON, Fla. – To most people the G7 finance ministers are just a bunch of guys who get together throughout the year and talk over the economy, but it is not just the U.S. economy – it is the global economy. In order to understand their position of power, we must go back to August 1971 when President Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. The Group of Seven first met in 1973, two years after Nixon severed the last attachment the dollar...

Chavez threatens Venezuela central bank takeoverBy Pascal Fletcher CARACAS, Venezuela, Jan 7 (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatened on Wednesday to take over the country's autonomous central bank if it did not agree to his demand to hand over $1 billion in reserves to finance farming projects. The left-wing populist president has waged a noisy two-month public campaign to pressure the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) to free the funds for his government, which has clashed with the bank in the past over economic policies. Central bank directors have so far resisted the president's repeated public threats, arguing that...

By TINI TRAN, Associated Press Writer BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq (news - web sites)'s Central Bank introduced the country's new currency on Saturday, eliminating Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) from yet another aspect of life. AP Photo Months after his fall, Saddam is still a pervasive presence in Iraq, if only because his picture is on every banknote. Not so with the new Iraqi dinars, which will go into circulation Oct. 15. The new notes will be converted at a rate of one to one and Iraqis will have three months to unload their old cash. The bills are...

<p>European Central Bank Raises Its Inflation Forecasts, Person Familiar Says Sept. 8 (Bloomberg) -- The European Central Bank has raised its inflation forecasts for this year and next, said a person familiar with the matter, limiting the bank's scope for interest rate reductions after three cuts in nine months.</p>

Brown's sale of the century cost Britain $1bn in lost reserves GETHIN CHAMBERLAIN GORDON Brown’s decision to sell off more than half of Britain’s gold reserves in the midst of one of the worst slumps in gold prices in living memory has cost the country more than $1 billion in lost revenues. The loss - equivalent to £739.9 million at yesterday’s prices and exchange rate - came after gold prices soared by more than 15 percent in the past 60 days. The £739.9 million lost by the Chancellor in a series of transactions between 1999 and 2001 could have paid...

By monopolizing this commodity the moneyed classes have got Nature by the throat and the community under their heels... Compared with this process, usury is mere child's play. -Alexander Del Mar in The Science of Money. Advocacy of gold or gold "backed" money rests on dubious foundations. The discussion that follows will reveal some of the semantic deception, half-truths, doublespeak, self-interest pleading, and historical errors employed in gold advocacy polemics. The Pope admitted in 1992 that Galileo had been right. This has nothing to do with gold money, but it is offered to show that neither antiquity nor authority makes...