Free Republic

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...