Free Republic

As President Trump is in deep contemplation on the North Korean dilemma, he understands that the military might of the United States is now also its currency. Nations around the world are being led by China and Russia to remove the US dollar as the primary world reserve currency. This is a gang-up against the United States to destroy its long-held standing as the number one world economic power. But how does this current economic battle to circumvent the US dollar affect President Trump’s decision to show North Korea the military might of the United States? If the United States...

Today Russian President Vladimir Putin declared war against the hegemony of the U.S. Dollar. Of course, he couched the declaration in a statement saying Russia would work to counter the ‘excessive domination’ of certain reserver currencies. The comments were published in an article in the runup to the BRICs summit scheduled to begin Sept 3 in China. “We are ready to work together with our partners to promote international financial regulation reforms and to overcome the excessive domination of the limited number of reserve currencies. We will also work towards a more balanced distribution of quotas and voting shares within...

WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is raising speculation that Harriet Tubman’s future on the $20 bill could be in jeopardy. In a CNBC interview, Mnuchin on Thursday avoided a direct answer when asked whether he supported the decision made by the Obama administration to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with Tubman, the 19th century African-American abolitionist who was a leader in the Underground Railroad. “People have been on the bills for a long period of time,” he said. “This is something we’ll consider. Right now, we have a lot more important issues to focus on.”

WASHINGTON -- Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is raising speculation that Harriet Tubman's future on the $20 bill could be in jeopardy. Mnuchin is avoiding a direct answer when asked whether he supports the decision made by the Obama administration to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with Harriet Tubman, the 19th century African-American abolitionist famous for the Underground Railroad. During last year's campaign, Donald Trump praised Jackson, the nation's seventh president, for his "history of tremendous success" and said the decision to replace him with Tubman was "pure political correctness."

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will check out the nation’s gold stash when he pays a rare official visit to Fort Knox on Monday -- while keeping an open mind for future film projects. “I assume the gold is still there,” the former Hollywood producer joked to an audience in Louisville, Kentucky, 40 miles (64 km) north of the U.S. Bullion Depository. “It would really be quite a movie if we walked in and there was no gold.” Fort Knox has been seared into the public imagination since the 1964 James Bond movie “Goldfinger,” in which the British spy, played...

All the war talk is turning out to be great for bitcoin. It's been on fire since January, 2017 when it for the first time reached $1,000 U.S. Dollars. It's now worth 3 times the price of gold. I bet it will be up to $5,000 in early September and over $7,000 by the end of October. We will see how it plays out.

The Russian government will intensify efforts to cut the country’s dependence on US payment systems and the dollar as a settling currency, said Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov on Monday, as quoted by RIA Novosti. ... US President Donald Trump approved the law imposing new restrictions on the Russian banking and energy sectors.... The new law will punish individuals for investing more than $5 million a year or $1 million at a time in Russian energy export pipeline projects or providing such enterprises with services, technology or information support.

An experimental penny made of glass during World War II is about to be auctioned. Owner Roger Burdette says the coin is the only known unbroken glass penny in existence. During the war, copper was needed for ammunition. The U.S. Mint authorized tests that included making uncirculated pennies from other metals, plastic and rubber. The Blue Ridge Glass Co. in Tennessee made experimental pennies using tempered glass. Burdette says the impressions on the coins weren't precise, the weight and size weren't uniform and the coins developed sharp edges that cut fingers. He says they were likely destroyed. He says only...

Some people don’t know that two dollar bills are real, so when Mike Bolesta used over 50 of them to make a purchase at a Best Buy store, an encounter with the police and Secret Service ensued. VIDEO

French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has sought to soften her position on euro exit saying that she felt European but understands French concerns about their savings. Many French people were thinking that their savings could lose value once the country returned to the franc. During her interview on France's most watched television station TFI, Le Pen refused to say her stance on leaving euro. Her platform was to pull out the euros but some of her interviews contradicted it as she softened her views. On her campaign on Tuesday night, she avoided some of the incendiary attacks she made...

The Trump administration is hitting Canada with stiff tariffs of up to 24% on lumber shipped into the United States. These are the first tariffs imposed by President Trump, who during his election campaign threatened to use them on imports from both China and Mexico. The decision on Monday is bound to lead to a standoff and could stoke fears of a trade war between the US and Canada, two of the world's largest trade powers. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the tariffs, or taxes, announced Monday evening were being imposed after trade talks on dairy products fell through. Trump's...

Are we sure that Trump’s going to end up having to fire Steve Bannon? Between this and the Syria bombing, the nationalists in the White House may just up and quit.If you think these broken promises are big news, wait until Trump comes out in favor of TPP. Mr. Trump said the reason he has changed his mind on one of his signature campaign promises is that China hasn’t been manipulating its currency for months and because taking the step now could jeopardize his talks with Beijing on confronting the threat of North Korea.“They’re not currency manipulators,” Mr. Trump said…Mr....

Confirming a reversal on tough China talk, President Donald Trump told The Wall Street Journal Wednesday that he will not label the Asian country a currency manipulator in a report due this week. "They're not currency manipulators," Trump said in the interview.

The odds of President Trump fulfilling his campaign promise to label China a currency manipulator within his first 100 days are quickly diminishing. One of Trump's top economic advisers, Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of the Blackstone Group, waived off the possibility that China would meet the necessary criteria to be designated a currency cheater. The Trump administration's first currency report is set to be released in mid-April and will outline whether major U.S. trading partners are gaming their currencies.

Link only

Advocates of abolishing the $1 Federal Reserve note are at it again, this time hoping that President Donald Trump and conservative Republicans will finally side with their three-pronged approach to revamping the nation’s currency system. Under S. 759, introduced March 29 by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., the government would end production of the $1 Federal Reserve note, revise the composition of the 5-cent coin, and suspend production of 1-cent coins. While the draft legislation calls for an end to paper dollar notes and the cent, it is silent on dollar coin production. Backers of the legislation...

Just under $2 billion has been wiped off the value of bitcoin in under three days as a fight over the future of the technology underpinning the cryptocurrency wages on. Bitcoin was trading at around $1,142.60 at time of publication, giving it a market cap of $18.53 billion, according to CoinDesk data. This is down from highs of $1,255.32 on Tuesday, which valued the total bitcoin pile at $20.36 billion. Meanwhile, rival cryptocurrency ether is up over 84 percent from highs of $29.87 on Tuesday to trading at all-time highs of around $55 on Friday, according to Coinmarketcap.com. The market...

Exclusive: Trump calls Chinese 'grand champions' of currency manipulation By Steve Holland and David Lawder | WASHINGTON President Donald Trump declared China the "grand champions" of currency manipulation on Thursday, just hours after his new Treasury secretary pledged a more methodical approach to analyzing Beijing's foreign exchange practices. In an exclusive interview with Reuters, Trump said he has not "held back" in his assessment that China manipulates its yuan currency, despite not acting on a campaign promise to declare it a currency manipulator on his first day in office.

Folks, we have a consensus here. Formidable thinkers such as Paul Krugman, Larry Summers, and David Stockman, some 370 economists including 19 Nobel Laureates, and editors at the Economist, Fortune, and Barron’s all believe that Donald Trump as president is a menace to world trade and prosperity.President Trump has talked about 35 percent tariffs on foreign goods and an array of “border taxes,” such as the tariff with Mexico he proposed last week. He intends to name China a so-called “currency manipulator” on the basis of a mere bilateral trade gap. He’s denounced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)...

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — After being robbed a handful of times in the past few months, one Baltimore coffee shop is no longer accepting cash to stop the robberies and keep their staff safe. Nowadays, many people don’t carry cash in their wallets day-to-day, and at Park Cafe in Bolton Hill, cash payments are no longer on the menu. “We’re not going to accept cash anymore,” said Park Cafe & Coffee owner David Hart. “I’m going to take that out of the equation.” Park Cafe was robbed five times from October to January. While the armed suspect is now behind bars,...