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Paulson Says Worst Of Credit Crisis May Be OverCBS News Interactive: Eye On The Economy WASHINGTON (AP) - The worst of the nation's credit crisis may have passed, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Wednesday, though he acknowledged rising gas prices will blunt the effect of 130 million economic stimulus checks. He ruled out a second stimulus package for now. In an interview with The Associated Press, Paulson said the turmoil that has gripped Wall Street and that took a turn for the worse again in March has eased somewhat. "There's progress," he said. "I think we're closer to the end...

Is Treasury Chief Hank Paulson the financial equivalent of Civil War General George B. McClellan? The "Young Napoleon" brilliantly organized and trained Union armies in the first year and a half of the Civil War. His problem: He couldn't bring himself to actually engage the enemy, always proffering excuses as to why he couldn't take decisive action. An exasperated Abraham Lincoln finally fired him. Mr. Paulson repeatedly says he wants a strong U.S. dollar. Last month he told Reuters: "I've been as consistent as anyone that you've ever heard in saying that the strong dollar [is] in our nation's interest."...

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's blundering is becoming more breathtaking with each passing week. At the end of March he rolled out a grand plan to crown the Federal Reserve as the nation's new financial stabilizer. The Fed a stabilizer? That's who created the financial mess we're in. If this wasn't bad enough, Secretary Paulson then donned his cheerleader's uniform and encouraged Beijing to let the Chinese yuan appreciate against the greenback. All the while favoring in this fashion a debasement of the U.S. currency, Paulson proclaimed that we should remain calm and confident because the economic fundamentals are sound....

Banks, hedge funds and other financial institutions could find their investment strategies curtailed by the Federal Reserve to reduce the risk to the economy from asset bubbles, the US Treasury said on Tuesday. David Nason, the assistant secretary for financial institutions, said the US central bank should use its proposed new powers as a stability regulator to “lean against the wind” by forcing institutions to change their investment strategy if it judged they threatened the wider economy.

There is some Interesting circumstantial evidence circulating on the web suggesting the Bear Stearns liquidation and takeover was actually to disguise the federal bailout of JP Morgan. Posing this hypothesis is John Olagues, owner of Truth In Options and a recognized authority on listed and employee stock options. He argues that there are far too many coincidences and oddities with this deal that don't add up, although odd coincidences are certainly not uncommon occurrences in the halls of high finance. Why would the Federal Reserve Bank, the S.E.C, the Treasury Department, and Congress participate much less cooperate in such a...

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s plan for curing ailing financial markets received poor grades privately from House Republican leaders, though they mostly refrained from public criticism that would give Democrats ammunition in an election year. The senior Republican congressmen grumbled that the former Wall Street titan had made the same mistake as Sen. Hillary Clinton in crafting a major financial bailout. That makes it harder for markets to find their bottom, the critics say. What particularly irked the GOP lawmakers were Paulson’s comments to the press that his plan could not be enacted completely in just one year. Whatever the outcome...

The securities backing a $29 billion Fed loan to Bear Stearns Cos. consist primarily of “mortgage backed securities and related hedge investments,” the Treasury Department says. ..snip... Treasury also supplied a letter from Secretary Henry Paulson to Federal Reserve Bank of New York President Timothy Geithner, dated March 17, saying, “On behalf of the Department of Treasury, I support this action as appropriate and in the government’s interest, and acknowledge that if any loss arises out of the special facility extended by the FRBNY to JPMCB [J.P. Morgan Chase Bank], the loss will be treated by the FRBNY as an...

The Fed on SteroidsGeoff Metcalf "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." ~ P.J. O’Rourke So the Treasury Department wants Congress to gift the Federal Reserve with broad new authority and power to ride rough shod over financial market stability (or lack thereof). The New York Times described it as “allowing it to send SWAT teams into any corner of the industry or any institution that might pose a risk to the overall system.” Giving the Fed more power is like giving crack cocaine to Jihadists…it’s NOT a good idea. This latest bureaucratic brain...

Bank Reform: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has proposed sweeping new financial reforms that would in many ways be an improvement over the dysfunctional system we now have. But we do have some concerns.Surveying the wreckage of America's financial industry, Paulson wants to reshape the entire regulatory system and give sweeping new powers to the Federal Reserve. We're not against new thinking when it comes to financial regulation. Quite frankly, since 1960 there has been at least one major financial crisis each decade that has exposed glaring weaknesses in our postwar financial regulations. Still, the idea that the government can simply...

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's proposed sweep of financial regulation would emphasize more control at the federal level, at the expense of state oversight, and consolidate an alphabet soup of existing agencies. It is an idea that has been kicking around for a while, and one that is bound to provoke heated debate on Capitol Hill and among the various banking and market oversight agencies, which are already tripping over each others' turf. It is also bound to please some circles of Wall Street because the plan, while strengthening the Federal Reserve's role over certain aspects of the markets, like risk...

The Bush administration is finalizing details of a plan to rescue thousands of homeowners at risk of foreclosure, by helping them refinance into more affordable mortgages backed by public funds, government officials said. The proposal is aimed at assisting borrowers who owe their banks more than their homes are worth due to plummeting prices, an issue at the heart of the nation's housing crisis. Under the plan, the Federal Housing Administration would encourage lenders to forgive a portion of those loans and issue new, smaller mortgages in exchange for the financial backing of the federal government.

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.

Treasury Warns Of Deception By Iran Treasury Warns Banks That Iran Is Engaging In Deceptive Practices To Skirt Sanctions WASHINGTON, Mar. 27, 2008 (AP) The Bush administration issued a fresh warning Thursday to U.S. banks that Iran is using "an array of deceptive practices" to hide its alleged involvement in nuclear proliferation and terrorist activities. The Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network alleged that Iran is resorting to such alleged practices to evade detection and skirt financial sanctions. "The government of Iran disguises its involvement in proliferation and terrorism activities through an array of deceptive practices specifically designed to evade...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, saying that Social Security is "financially unsustainable," called Tuesday for quick action to keep the system strong and released a report detailing the program's funding shortfalls. The federal government will have to start paying back what it owes the Social Security trust fund in 2017 so the program can continue paying 100% of benefits. By 2041, if the system is left unchanged, Social Security will only be able to pay out 78% of benefits promised to future retirees. Those are two key estimates in the Social Security and Medicare trustees' 2008 annual...

The U.S. Treasury is struggling with how to handle any political or Islamic ramifications as Persian Gulf sovereign wealth funds look to make substantial investments in capital-poor American banks and securities firms. The crisis in mortgage-backed securities has created a need for new capital to enter financial markets after major financial institutions such as Bear Stearns and Carlyle Capital Corp. failed over the weekend. The crisis is an opportunity for sovereign wealth funds that have prospered as the price of oil has soared over $110 a barrel. WND previously reported sovereign wealth funds in six Persian Gulf countries, including Kuwait,...

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson did the rounds of America's Sunday morning TV shows to talk up the U.S. economy, promote confidence that financial markets would get through their present troubles and reassure a skeptical American public that the Bush administration was on top of the situation. Speaking on ABC's "This Week," "Fox News Sunday" and "Late Edition" on CNN, Paulson defended the Federal Reserve's decision Friday to come to the rescue of Bear Stearns (nyse: BSC - news - people ), the Wall Street investment bank most hurt by losses on trading in mortgage-related securities (See " Bear On...

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration will "do what its takes" to stabilize chaotic markets and minimize the economic damage, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Sunday after a tumultuous week capped by the government rescue of a teetering investment bank. All eyes now are on Wall Street as leading financial advisers prepared for a Monday meeting with President Bush and the Federal Reserve weighs another deep interest rate cut Tuesday to stem even more deterioration. Paulson, in a series of news show appearances, defended the Federal Reserve's extraordinary step Friday to provide emergency financing to one of Wall Street's most venerable...

Steve Marshall is an English travel agent. He lives in Spain, and he sells trips to Europeans who want to go to sunny places, including Cuba. In October, about 80 of his Web sites stopped working, thanks to the United States government. ... It turned out, though, that Mr. Marshall’s Web sites had been put on a Treasury Department blacklist and, as a consequence, his American domain name registrar, eNom Inc., had disabled them. Mr. Marshall said eNom told him it did so after a call from the Treasury Department; the company, based in Bellevue, Wash., says it learned that...

When the U.S. government's official 2007 financial report was released last December, the response could hardly have been worse. Not only were its ratios worrisome enough to make corporate shareholders blanche, but its results were so full of "serious material weaknesses" that the Government Accountability Office could not even audit it. In the absence of an audit, the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget heeded the GAO's advice and released a more informal report titled "The Federal Government's Financial Health: A Citizens Guide to the 2007 Financial Report of the United States Government." Some of the language...

Treasury secretary wants to dump pennies By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer 4 minutes ago A penny for your thoughts? Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson thinks the answer to that question should be not much. In fact, if he had his way, he would like to get rid of the penny. Asked Friday whether he thought the penny should be eliminated, Paulson agreed that it would make sense, saying, "The penny is worth less than any other currency." However, he quickly added that he didn't think it was "politically doable" to eliminate the one-cent coin and it wasn't something he planned...

WASHINGTON — Conspiracy theorists take note: The myths surrounding one of America's oldest and most enduring national symbols are about to be debunked ... if you believe the government, that is. The keepers of the Great Seal of the United States, the emblem on the back of the US$1 bill, want you to know what it is not. It is not a sign that Freemasons run the country, it has nothing to do with the occult, and it does not contain clues to a fabulous hidden treasure. It is rather the nation's stamp of authority, sovereignty and power, gracing cash...

Under pressure from employers, the Treasury issued a ruling that allows companies to freeze the pensions of older workers in certain cases without running afoul of laws meant to protect employees' nest eggs. In addition to validating some pension rollbacks that could save companies billions of dollars, the Treasury's action also could tip the outcome of long-running lawsuits alleging age discrimination by pension plans at AT&T Inc., Cigna Corp., Dun & Bradstreet Corp., El Paso Corp., and other major companies. The stakes are huge: In just the AT&T case, nearly 24,000 current and former workers had opted into a class...

US Treasury cautions China over sovereign wealth fund by P. Parameswaran Thu Feb 7, 5:31 PM ET The US Treasury cautioned China Thursday against using profits derived from its cash-flush sovereign investment fund to delay currency reform, as the fund's maneuvers came under Congressional scrutiny. The China Investment Corporation Ltd. (CIC), launched in September with 200 billion dollars capital, wants to boost investment returns on China's massive foreign reserves and manage reform of domestic financial institutions. "China should not use the earnings of its sovereign wealth fund to delay the continued increase in the flexibility of China's currency," US Treasury's...

A Bid for Payments to Become Cheaper and More Secure The Treasury Department plans to introduce a prepaid debit card for Social Security recipients in an effort to provide safer and cheaper benefits payments. The Direct Express debit card, set to be announced today, will be introduced in a handful of states this spring and rolled out nationwide by the end of the summer. Dallas-based Comerica Inc.'s Comerica Bank has been selected as the card issuer for the program, which is targeted at Social Security and Supplemental Security Income recipients who don't have a bank account. The card could mean...

Since it began to give credit ratings to nations in 1917, Moody's has rated the United States triple-A. U.S. Treasury bonds have been seen as the most secure investment on earth. When crises erupt, nervous money seeks out the world's great safe harbor, the United States. That reputation is now in peril.

Taxes: For a supposed lame duck, President Bush has managed to shield the country from the Democratic Congress' price of new taxes to stop the alternative minimum tax. Standing for principle works wonders.High-ranking Democrats in Congress seem to have come to the conclusion that, as Elvis might have put it, you can knock middle-class taxpayers down, step in their face, slander their names all over the place. Just don't step on their blue suede tax-refund checks. The Treasury Department has warned that the longer Congress delays fixing the AMT, the later some $75 billion in refunds, averaging thousands of dollars...

Bush Mortgage Plan Will Freeze Certain Subprime Interest Rates for 5 Years WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congressional aides say the Bush administration has hammered out an agreement with industry to freeze interest rates for certain subprime mortgages for five years in an effort to combat a soaring tide of foreclosures. These aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the details have not yet been released, said the five-year moratorium represented a compromise between desires by banking regulators for a longer time frame of as much as seven years and industry arguments that the freeze should only last one to two...

WASHINGTON — Revealing more details about a national mortgage-rescue plan that's still in the works, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson proposed Monday to help state and local governments issue tax-exempt bonds to pay for mortgage refinancing and confirmed that he seeks to temporarily freeze the rates of tens of thousands of home loans that are about to adjust to higher rates. Paulson told a national housing forum that Congress should authorize state and local governments to broaden their tax-exempt bond programs temporarily. Currently, states have authorization to issue tax-exempt bonds only to aid first-time homebuyers in designated distress zones. Paulson proposed...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Monday he is confident there will soon be an agreement to help thousands of homeowners avoid mortgage defaults by temporarily freezing their interest rates. Paulson told a national housing conference that this effort involved a "pragmatic response" to current realities as the economy goes through the worst housing slump in more than two decades. The number of homeowners struggling to meet higher payments because their initial introductory rates are resetting is currently soaring.

FOR decades now, as a writer, economist and scold, I have been receiving letters from thoughtful readers. Many of them have warned me about the dangers of a secret government running the world, organized by the Trilateral Commission, or the Ford Foundation, or the Big Oil companies or, of course, world Jewry. I always scoff at these letters. The world is far too complex a place to be run by any one group. But the closest I have recently seen to such a world-running body would have to be a certain large investment bank, whose alums are routinely Treasury secretaries,...

After a year and a half of stalling, the US Treasury finally complied with The Post's requests for information about The President's Working Group on Financial Markets - by delivering 177 pages of crap. In essence, the Treasury's Freedom of Information officials said that the Working Group - affectionately nicknamed the Plunge Protection Team - doesn't keep records of its meetings. How interesting and convenient! Included in the 177 pages that the Treasury said responded to our request on the actions of The President's Working Group were 53 pages on which something was redacted - blacked out so that the...

A U.S. Treasury report on ways to cut corporate taxes will include discussion of a national sales tax, a senior Treasury official told CNBC. The U.S. currently has no national sales tax, also known as a value added tax, or VAT, though many states do. The tax would be one option to help offset revenue lost from lowering corporate taxes. The report is due in the coming weeks. The top corporate tax rate is now 35 percent, and the official said that if exemptions are eliminated, a 27 percent rate would be revenue-neutral. Besides a national sales tax, the Treasury...

A draft presidential order on foreign investment in U.S. companies would limit government security reviews and give more power to such pro-business agencies as the Treasury Department, The Washington Times has learned. The draft order is opposed by the Defense, Justice and Homeland Security departments as contrary to the intent of a law created in response to the uproar that killed a bid by a United Arab Emirates company to operate several U.S. ports. A memorandum submitted to Treasury by the opposing departments stated that the new legislation is "security focused" but that the draft executive order for the restructuring...

Hank Paulson, the US Treasury secretary, has been “handcuffed” by George W. Bush in his handling of the subprime mortgage ­crisis, according to a powerful Democratic senator. Charles Schumer, chairman of the congressional joint economic committee, said the president was preventing Mr Paulson from taking stronger action to stem the crisis because of his ideological commitment to free markets and small government. “Paulson is in ideological handcuffs,” said Mr Schumer in an interview with the Financial Times. “Everybody who studies this knows the government should be involved.” Mr Schumer’s committee published a report on Thursday predicting that 2m homes would...

Foreign investors slashed their holdings of US securities by a record amount as the credit squeeze intensified, according to the latest Treasury figures. The Treasury International Capital report – known as the Tic – for August will be closely watched because it appears amid growing concerns about the weakness of the US dollar, which hit a record low recently against a basket of major currencies. “The bad news is that [the data] plainly show how vulnerable the dollar is to a continuation of the credit crunch-risk averse environment,” said Alan Ruskin, chief international strategist at RBS Greenwich Capital. “There is...

Citigroup (NYSE:C), Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) and JPMorgan are on Monday expected to announce plans for a fund to buy mortgage-linked securities in an attempt to allay fears of a downward price-spiral that would hit the balance sheets of big banks. A person familiar with the discussions said that US banks collectively were expected to put up credit guarantees worth about $75bn for the fund, named the Single-Master Liquidity Enhancement Conduit. But bankers said the scheme would evolve with the market and may only be as large as demand requires. The SMLEC would be temporary and capped in value, and...

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: Because of recent inquiries to GATA about the possibility of an attempt by the U.S. Government to confiscate privately held gold and silver bullion and coins and shares in companies mining the precious metals, we're republishing here the correspondence between GATA and the U.S. Treasury Department on the subject in 2005. The Treasury Department was surprisingly candid in that correspondence, asserting the U.S. Government's authority, in declared emergencies, to confiscate precious metals and to restrict ownership of mining shares -- and to confiscate and restrict every other financial asset as well. So perhaps precious...

...When it comes to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the presumed government backing is called an “implicit guarantee.” On Wall Street, it has many names — ex-post insurance, a Greenspan put, or now, a Bernanke put. Whatever you call it, its existence demands that markets be subject to adequate rules and oversight. That’s clearly not the case at present. Hedge funds and private equity firms, which are allowed to operate largely in secret, need to be subject to more official scrutiny so that the Federal Reserve and the Treasury have a grasp of their activities before big problems occur and...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The House Financial Services Committee asked the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury Department to testify at a hearing Sept. 5 that will examine the current crises in the credit and mortgage market, Chairman Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, said Monday. The hearing will also examine the implications for the U.S. consumer and the economy, Frank said in a statement. Video More video Just how rational are the people behind the stock markets? Manus Cranny from Cantor Index answers the question. Play video The committee will hear from witnesses from the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal...

U.S.’s dilemma: It costs 1.7 cents to make a penny Maker of zinc blanks fear end of the coin By Dibya Sarkar - ASSOCIATED PRESS Updated: 08/19/07 7:18 AM WASHINGTON — The U.S. penny is not what it appears to be, and some in Congress would like to see it change further, if not disappear entirely. Because of a surge in the price of copper, the U.S. Mint decided 25 years ago to manufacture the coins almost entirely with zinc, save for the coating on which Abraham Lincoln’s profile is engraved. Now, the fate of the penny is up in...

Ashland, Ore. - It's hard – often impossible – to prove that secret government wiretapping in the name of national security is violating one's privacy rights. The evidence itself usually is top secret. But one rather obscure case could pull back the veil on a surveillance program that's at the heart of the US fight against terror. In the federal appeals court in San Francisco Wednesday, lawyers for a Saudi charity accused of helping Al Qaeda will argue that their clients, including two American attorneys, were illegally spied on without the required court warrant. How do they know? Treasury Department...

WASHINGTON - Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Monday said the United States may be unable to pay its bills this fall unless Congress raises the government’s borrowing authority, now capped at $8.965 trillion. Paulson, in a letter to lawmakers, estimated the government is likely to bump into the statutory debt limit in early October. "Accordingly, I am writing to request that Congress raise the statutory debt limit as soon as possible," Paulson wrote. He did not say how much more borrowing authority the Bush administration needs. Congress has already boosted the statutory debt limit several times during President Bush’s tenure....

BEIJING (AP) -- For months, U.S. lawmakers have warned Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson that patience was wearing thin as his economic dialogue with China failed to produce breakthroughs on currency and other disputes. Now, as he meets this week with Chinese leaders, Paulson faces new pressure in Congress, where legislators have proposed measures that would punish Beijing for manipulating its currency. "The problem is, there is very little they can do in the immediate future that will make Congress happy," said Andy Rothman, a China strategist for investment bank CLSA.

(IsraelNN.com) Legal action is being taken against two Muslim charities in the United States due to their support of the Hamas and Hizbullah terrorist groups. On Tuesday, the US Treasury began legal action against the Iran-based Martyrs Foundation and what it says is a front-group for it – the Goodwill Charitable Organization (GCO), which has a US branch in Dearborn, Michigan. The organization is accused of providing funding to Hizbullah. Action was also initiated against al-Qard al-Hassan, a Lebanese firm believed to have been used by Hizbullah as a front for managing its finances. The administrative order also includes a...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said on Monday the U.S. housing market correction was "at or near the bottom" although it could be some time before an upturn. "In terms of looking at housing, most of us believe that it's at or near the bottom," he told Reuters in an interview. "It's had a significant impact on the economy. No one is forecasting when, with any degree of clarity, that the upturn is going to come other than it's at or near the bottom." Paulson added that global economic growth remained solid, and a resilient U.S. consumer...

Michael Moore's attorney said Monday that the filmmaker's criticism of the Bush administration may have prompted a federal investigation into his trip to Cuba for the upcoming health-care documentary, "Sicko." In a letter to the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, attorney David Boies noted that Moore has been a critic of President Bush in his books and films, which include 2004's "Fahrenheit 9/11," a harsh indictment of White House actions regarding the Sept. 11 attacks. "For this reason, I am concerned that Mr. Moore has been selected for discriminatory treatment by your office,"

Treasury, Citing Progress Against Budget Deficit, Says It Is Dropping the 3-Year Note WASHINGTON (AP) -- With budget deficits improving, the government said Wednesday it is discontinuing sales of three-year Treasury notes. The Treasury Department said the last auction of three-year notes will occur next week as part of the regular series of quarterly debt auctions used to help finance the $8.8 trillion federal government debt. The government's borrowing needs peaked in the 2004 budget year, when the federal deficit hit an all-time high in dollar terms of $413 billion. Since that time, the deficit has declined for three straight...

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is John B. Taylor, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor of economics at Stanford............... ...................... ........He is the author of the new book Global Financial Warriors: The Untold Story of International Finance in the Post 9/11 World. FP: John B. Taylor, welcome to Frontpage Interview. Taylor: I really appreciate the invitation. Thank you. .......... FP: Tell us a bit about the success on the financial front in the war on terror. How come we don’t hear about it?

US Dispatches Treasury Official To Unfreeze N. Korea Funds (RTTNews) - The Bush administration in a desperate move to resuscitate the six-nation talks on dismantling N Korea's nuclear program, has said that it was dispatching a Treasury Department official to Beijing to help authorities accelerate the release of $25 million in frozen North Korea funds. Daniel Glaser, deputy assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes, will head a delegation to China on Saturday to coordinate with authorities in Macau and China dealing with the frozen money held at Banco Delta Asia, a bank in the Chinese territory of Macau.

I like going through the U.S. Treasury's "Monthly Treasury Statements" to look at the receipts, outlays, deficit, and/or surplus. This time I looked at the yearly revenue going back to 1997 and especially the increase in revenue from the 2003 Tax Cuts. REVENUE: 2003 - $1,782,108,000,000 2006 - $2,406,681,000,000 That's approximately a 35% increase in federal revenue from the year 2003 to the year 2006. That's very impressive. The subsequent years showed very slow growth and virtually none during the Clinton years from 1997 onward. 1997 - $1,578,955,000,000 1998 - $1,721,421,000,000 1999 - $1,827,302,000,000 2000 - $2,025,038,000,000 2001 - $1,991,044,000,000...