Free Republic

It should be clear that among the causes of the recent financial crisis was an unjustified faith in rational expectations, market efficiencies, and the techniques of modern finance. That faith was stoked in part by the huge financial rewards that enabled the extremes of borrowing, the economic imbalances, and the pretenses and assurances of the credit-rating agencies to persist so long. A relaxed approach by regulators and legislators reflected the new financial zeitgeist. All the seeming mathematical precision that was brought to investment, all the complicated new products, including the explosion of derivatives, that were intended to diffuse and minimize...

That’s why a recent speech by Paul A. Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve and a voice of reason on matters financial, is so timely and important. Presented last month to the Group of 30, an organization devoted to international economic issues, the speech outlined crucial work that still must be done to safeguard our financial future. “Three Years Later: Unfinished Business in Financial Reform” was the title. “By now it is pretty clear that it was faith in the techniques of modern finance, stoked in part by the apparent huge financial rewards, that enabled the extremes of...

[...] Regardless of when he officially announces his candidacy – the “libertarian in disguise” was thrown a curve ball last week when Republican congressman and former presidential candidate Ron Paul announced he was considering a 2012 bid. Johnson, who would be a natural to tap into Paul’s base, shrugged off any concerns over sharing the limelight with Paul, saying the congressman “still has his heyday today.” “First of all, having a couple people talk about the same thing, I think, is really powerful. I mean, that’s a good thing!” he told TheDC. When asked if he is in regular communication...

Newsweek and Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson is the best economics writer in the mainstream media today. He nearly always gets things right, and has the numbers to back it up. His column this week on Reagan and inflation is right to draw our attention to an aspect of the Reagan story that has tended to be overlooked during Reaganpalooza, namely that Reagan's steadfast backing of Paul Volcker's campaign to wring inflation out of our economy as a crucial accomplishment, and one that few if any other presidents would have had the stomach to see through: No other possible president...

The last remaining Obama advisor who's not a banker -or totally in the banker's pockets- is now bailing... President Barack Obama announced Thursday that former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker was stepping down from his role as head of an outside panel advising the White House on economic policy. ... The White House order creating the panel expires on February 6 and sources said Obama plans to reconfigure it to focus more on business outreach. General Electric Co. chief executive Jeffrey Immelt is seen as top candidate to head the new board. Jeffrey Immelt!  Isn't that special...  CEO of the...

Volcker: Fed Plan an Illusion, Won't Boost Economy Friday, November 5, 2010 10:37 AM Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker says the U.S. central bank's plan to buy hundreds of billions of dollars in government bonds probably won't do much to boost the economic recovery. The Fed announced Wednesday that it would purchase $600 billion in Treasurys, aiming to lower long-term interest rates in an effort to spur spending and ultimately lower the U.S. unemployment rate, currently at 9.6 percent. The move comes on the heels of previous purchases of $1.7 trillion in mortgage and Treasury bonds. Volcker told a...

Bank of Japan Deputy Governor Kiyohiko Nishimura discusses "informational advantage" this week at the Lujiazui Forum on economics and finance in Shanghai: "In my understanding, the Volcker Rule [proposed legislation restricting banks from making certain speculative investments] is designed to deter banks from taking excessive risk in capital markets, where volatility is inherently high and in which bankers do not necessarily have informational advantage in predicting market developments. Rather, the Volcker Rule urges banks to return to their traditional stronghold of commercial banking business, in which they can utilize their informational advantage based on long-term relationships with their customers." Informational...

SPIN FREE OVERSEAS: Volcker Explains Obama has Raised Spending to 25% of GDP And There Must Be A Massive New Tax to Cover It http://www.breitbart.tv/volcker-revelation-stiff-new-tax-needed-to-cover-obama-spending-at-25-of-gdp/ Naked Emperor News

I've been a customer of USAA services my entire adult life. It has been one company that has always kept faith, gave excellent service. Now it's threatened by the Volcker rule.

VAT chance! Republicans yesterday accused President Obama of plotting to slap a hefty new European-style "value added tax" on Americans after one of his top advisers raised the idea. "To make up for the largest levels of spending and deficits in modern history, the administration is laying the foundation for a large, misguided new tax, a first-time American VAT," fumed Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), the top GOPer on the Senate Finance Committee. "If the president wants to add completely new layers of taxation, then he should take this issue before the American people when he runs for re-election." Paul Volcker,...

One of President Obama's top economic advisers, former Fed chief Paul Volcker, sug gested this week that it's time for America to adopt a VAT, or value-added tax. The White House yesterday downplayed the idea -- but it's sure to resurface: It's an inevitable consequence of a government that's too big now and likely to grow even bigger thanks to Washington's reckless spending spree. Don't get me wrong: The VAT -- on top of all the other taxes Washington imposes -- is a terrible idea. Imposing it would pretty well finish the transformation of our country into a European-style slow-growth...

Acknowledging it would be a highly unpopular move, White House economic adviser Paul Volcker said yesterday the United States should consider imposing a "value added tax" similar to those charged in Europe to help get the deficit under control. A VAT is a national sales tax that, like state and city sales taxes, would be collected by retailers. Volcker, at the New-York Historical Society, told a panel on the global financial crisis that Congress might also have to consider new taxes on carbon and energy.

Volcker: Taxes likely to rise eventually to tame deficit NEW YORK (Reuters) - The United States should consider raising taxes to help bring deficits under control and may need to consider a European-style value-added tax, White House adviser Paul Volcker said on Tuesday.

Some locker room banter was recently overheard, to the effect that “nothing is made worth a [@#*%&] anymore.” The subject was boxing gloves, which bore an American sounding brand name but which were manufactured in – imagine this – China. We could not find much ground from which to disagree with that assertion. But the next comment got us thinking: “…they own us, anyway!” No, they don’t. They own our debt, and that’s not exactly the same thing has having title. We asserted, “lots of things could happen to that debt. We could stop paying on it. Or, we could...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - If President Barack Obama's plan to ban proprietary trading at some banks was applied in the European Union, it could be problematic for the bloc's universal banks, an EU document obtained by Reuters said. EU finance ministers, following a call from the Netherlands which backs the proposal, will discuss its possible impact on Europe at a meeting on Tuesday but no consensus is expected. The plan, dubbed the "Volcker rule," was drafted by White House adviser and former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, stunned global markets last month and is already facing resistance in Congress. EU countries...

Today the market just barely avoided closing under 10,000 - tonight EC will shed some light on WHY the market's crashing - and the reason why this might get out of control and that could cost many people their entire net worth. We'll also talk about the rise of antisemitism in France, and the headlines of the day.

PRESIDENT OBAMA 10 days ago set out one important element in the needed structural reform of the financial system. No one can reasonably contest the need for such reform, in the United States and in other countries as well. We have after all a system that broke down in the most serious crisis in 75 years. The cost has been enormous in terms of unemployment and lost production. The repercussions have been international. Aggressive action by governments and central banks — really unprecedented in both magnitude and scope — has been necessary to revive and maintain market functions. Some of...

Little Timmy Bonaparte testified today before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and it looked as if he was going to explode on national television. I must say I am surprised that he decided to come out so aggressively. I was waiting for someone on the panel to ask him if he “ordered the code red”? (If you don’t know what I mean, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hopNAI8Pefg I must admit I was amused. Bonaparte scored one on the congressional panelist who told him to speak into the microphone (a standard intimidation tactic) to which he caustically replied “I’m almost eating it”....

Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker wrote the House Financial Services Committee earliy this month that they opposed a provision, backed by Rep. Ron Paul (R., Texas) that would expand the congressional Government Accountability Office’s audits of the Fed. The committee, ignoring the pleas from the two, endorsed the provision Thursday. Greenspan and Volcker, in a letter sent to the committee’s chairman and ranking Republicans, warned that the provision threatened the ability of the Fed to foster price stability independent of political interference.

Many who backed Obama at the time of the financial crisis last Fall, are now, in private, expressing grave misgivings. (snip) I'm told that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and chief economic adviser Lawrence Summers have both complained to senior Wall Street execs that they have almost no say in major policy decisions. Obama economic counselor Paul Volcker, the former Fed chairman, is barely consulted at all on just about anything -- not even issues involving the banking system, of which he is among the world's leading authorities.(snip)(obama)is acting as if he has a blank check to do what he wants,...

A handful of high-ranking Obama administration officials this month delivered private briefings at the annual invitation-only conference held by an elite international organization known as the Bilderberg group. The closed meeting of some of the most powerful business , media and political leaders in North America and Western Europe heard from top Obama diplomats James Steinberg and Richard Holbrooke, who detailed the administration’s foreign policy, while economic adviser Paul Volcker, chairman of President Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, also gave a presentation at the heavily guarded seaside resort in Greece that hosted the event. The Bilderberg group, which takes its...

On Tax Day, Apr. 15, President Obama declared his belief in simplifying the tax code. His Economic Recovery Advisory Board, chaired by Paul Volcker, has been tasked with presenting recommendations by Dec. 4. Is the flat tax coming? No. Simpler code? Yes. Lower tax rates (plural)? Yes. The catch: The improved income tax code will come with a European-style value-added tax. Choke! Politicians love the VAT. First, because the levy applies to every transaction phase and includes services as well as products, it is difficult to avoid. It's no surprise, therefore, that the VAT was invented by the French. Second,...

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The White House Wednesday announced a new task force headed by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker to reform the Byzantine US tax code in the hope of recouping billions in lost revenue. White House budget chief Peter Orszag said Volcker and four other top economists will report their recommendations back to President Barack Obama by December 4, and their review will cover three main areas. "One is tax simplification, the second is closing tax loopholes and reducing tax evasion, and the third is reducing corporate welfare," the director of the Office of Management and Budget told...

A top economic adviser to US President Barack Obama, along with nine former senior officials, is calling on the American leader to launch a dialogue with Hamas, the The Boston Globe reported Saturday. SLIDESHOW: Israel & Region | World According to the report, Paul A. Volcker and other members of the bipartisan group - including former national security advisers Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski - have sent a letter to Obama urging him to engage Hamas in order to coax the terrorist organization to disarm and join a peaceful Palestinian unity government.

As President Obama rolls out one of the most ambitious agendas in US history, federal agencies are struggling to administer hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of new projects and to enact sweeping policy changes with a mere handful of senior staff members in place... Only about 70 people have been formally nominated to fill the roughly 500 senior posts in the Defense, State, Treasury, and Education departments and dozens of other government agencies, according to White House records. Dozens of nominations are still pending as FBI and White House officials scrub potential nominees' tax returns, financial ties, and former...

This prescience article has never been more relevant than today. I urge to read it all. TIME TO BRING PAUL VOLCKER OUT OF RETIREMENT John Crudele May 4, 2008 SAVE the dollar! Fire Ber nanke! There have been a lot of folks attacking Ben Bernanke lately. Most are steamed that the chairman of the Federal Reserve isn't cutting interest rates fast enough to help the economy, even though he's been slashing borrowing costs since last summer. Oh, those misguided souls! Bernanke's problem is just the opposite - he's proving to be so easily manipulated by Wall Street and anxious politicians...

NEW YORK – "Even the experts don't quite know what's going on." Speaking to a number of those experts Friday, Paul Volcker, a top economic adviser to President Barack Obama, cited not only the lack of understanding of the global financial meltdown but the "shocking" speed with which it had spread across the world. "One year ago, we would have said things were tough in the United States, but the rest of the world was holding up," Volcker told a conference featuring Nobel laureates, economists and investors at Columbia University in New York. "The rest of the world has not...

Paul Volcker, the former US Federal Reserve Board chairman who is now a member of President Barack Obama's advisory team on the economy, spoke in Toronto recently as part of the Grano Speakers series.His topic, of course, was the extent of the crisis facing the US, and particularly what brought it about. (Solving it is another issue). He is the latest to suggest Canada is in far better shape, and has been far better served by the structure of its banking system, than the US, Europe and other regions."It’s interesting that what I’m arguing for looks more like the Canadian...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog_post/beyond_the_echo_chamber/ Friday, February 6th, 2009 at 12:55 pm Advice from "beyond the echo chamber" We just learned the economy lost another 600,000 jobs last month. It's a staggering number, and it underscores just how deep this crisis is – and, as the President pointed out this morning, it’s accelerating. That's why he created the Economic Recovery Advisory Board -- to solicit ideas from "beyond the echo chamber of Washington, DC." "I’m not interested in groupthink, which is why the Board reflects a broad cross-section of experience, expertise, and ideology," he said. "We’ve recruited...

NEW YORK -- A top economic adviser to the incoming Obama administration unveiled a plan today to radically rethink the global financial system, including a host of measures that would dramatically expand government control over banking and investment in the United States. The plan -- which recommends limiting the size of banks, setting guidelines for executive pay and regulating hedge funds -- offers the first hint of the kind of changes to the financial system President-elect Barack Obama might push for in the coming weeks and months. Obama has pledged to present a comprehensive series of changes to prevent a...

A presidentially appointed "car czar" to oversee the restructuring of struggling U.S. automakers could be named as soon as this week if Congress approves an industry bailout, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in an interview aired on Tuesday. Pelosi told NBC's "Today Show" that she favored former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, recently appointed by President-elect Barack Obama as his top adviser on steering the economy out of recession, to oversee restructuring of the industry. Democrats and the White House are negotiating a bailout package of up to $15 billion in loans to rescue the Detroit Three companies....

<p>Fox news ran stories last night based on some of the things we were tracking right here in this post. Here is their on line story.</p> <p>As unfinished as my research is, I feel compelled to release what I've found so far as the story cannot wait any longer.  I am not looking for a scoop on anyone or anything, but at the same time I don't want anyone thinking I made this stuff up after the fact either.</p>

x-Fed Chief to Lead New Economic Panel of Outside Experts Who Will Brief Obama President-elect Barack Obama appointed former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker on Wednesday to be the chairman of a new White House advisory board tasked with helping to lift the nation from recession and stabilize financial markets. University of Chicago economist Austan Goolsbee, one of Mr. Obama's longest-serving policy advisers, will serve as the board's staff director, along with his duties as a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Members of the panel will be drawn from a cross-section of citizens outside the government,...

The G-20’s Secret Debt Solution by Larry Edelson 11-13-08 If you think this weekend’s G-20 meetings in Washington are only about designing short-term fixes to the financial system and regulatory reforms for banks, hedge funds, brokers, mortgage companies and investment banks … think again. Behind the scenes, a far more fundamental fix is being discussed — the possible revaluation of gold and the birth of an entirely new monetary system. I’ve been studying this issue in great depth, all my life. And given the speed at which the financial crisis is unfolding, I would be very surprised if what I’m...

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker is on the shortlist for the US secretary of the treasury position in the Obama administration, Ynet has learned. Should Volcker, 82, be passed for the position, he is likely to be named head of the US Financial Council. Volcker, who chaired the Federal Reserve for eight years, was appointed head of the committee which probed the liability of Swiss banks to holocaust victims, in 1995. The committee's effort yielded $1.5 billion in restitutions to Holocaust survivors. While spearheaded by Volcker, the committee met once a moth, usually in Zurich. The committee was made...

President-elect Obama is weighing an array of Washington insiders and outsiders, including some Republicans, for top administration posts, according to Democratic officials. Obama has signaled that he will make no Cabinet-level appointments immediately, and his deliberations are tightly held by his closest aides. But that hasn't stopped Democrats and interest groups from circulating lists and offering recommendations to the Obama transition team. Some are surprising, such as former Bush Secretary of State Colin Powell as possible education secretary. Others are high profile governors or members of Congress. Yet many are also little known to the general public - and may...

Barack Obama called a summit of his senior economic advisers to help craft his response to the Wall Street financial crisis on Friday, as sparring intensified over which presidential candidate was best qualified to handle the turmoil. Mr Obama has assembled a stellar team of economists and financial leaders to advise him on the crisis, including Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor, Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, and a trio of former Treasury secretaries. Several of them met Mr Obama for talks in Florida on Friday, with others joining by telephone as the Illinois senator sought to convince...

With not an insignificant amount of fanfare last week, former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker endorsed Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy. His endorsement drew more attention than it normally might have in that while Volcker is a lifelong Democrat, his legend is inextricably linked to Ronald Reagan’s, and the ‘80s economic revolution that reversed the U.S.’s flagging economic fortunes. Given Volcker’s historical ties to Reagan, some Republicans logically took offense to his seeming apostasy. Their dismay is misplaced. Volcker was never on board with the Reagan economic plan in the way that modern history suggests, and rather than an essential driver of...

How did the U.S. financial crisis happen? A review of the road to ruin reveals a course littered with more villains than heroes. No, it’s not the Great Depression, but the United States is facing a nasty economy-wide retrenchment following the excesses of the 2000s, with no easy way to dance through it. Think 1979 to 1982, when then U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker exorcised consumer price inflation from the economy. The difference today is that the inflationary explosion has been absorbed by prices of assets—houses, stocks and bonds, office buildings—rather than by the prices of things you buy...

When Paul Volcker declared several weeks ago that the world was in a "dollar crisis," his successors at the Federal Reserve made their private disapproval very clear. This week current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke waved the white flag over Mr. Volcker's point by declaring his own public concern "that the dollar remains a strong and stable currency." Apologies accepted, provisionally. The tragedy is that this is big news. The Fed has monopoly power over dollar creation, and concern for its value ought to go without saying. Yet so great has been the Fed's dollar abdication in recent years, and especially...

...For those of you who are unfamiliar with Volcker, he served as Fed Chairman from 1979 to 1987. Volcker came in when the US was experiencing the worst inflation since the Civil war and left when the Fed experienced the worst protests and political backlash since the Great Depression. Simply put, Volcker kicked off a serious recession in order to slay inflation. From an objective standpoint, his decision made economic sense, but it was a political death knell. Volcker’s clearly aware of the fact, joking that the “greatest strategic error” in his life was not the recession, but taking his...

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, the latest big name to endorse Sen. Barack Obama, could give the Illinois Democrat a boost by lending his gravitas in the financial world to a presidential candidate whose biggest hurdle is to convince voters he is experienced enough. “After 30 years in government, serving under five Presidents of both parties and chairing two non-partisan commissions on the Public Service, I have been reluctant to engage in political campaigns. The time has come to overcome that reluctance,” Volcker, a Democrat, said in a statement today. “However, it is not the current turmoil in markets...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker thinks the U.S. central bank is to blame for allowing bubbles to inflate asset markets, and says that current Fed chief Ben Bernanke is in a tough spot. "I think Bernanke is in a very difficult situation," Volcker told the New York Times Magazine for a story it will run on Sunday. The Times made the text available to the media in advance of publication. "Too many bubbles have been going on for too long ... The Fed is not really in control of the situation," the Times quoted Volcker as...

UNITED NATIONS — The General Assembly is preparing to put an early end to an in-house panel that has exposed more than $600 million in tainted United Nations contracts and is currently investigating an additional $1 billion in suspect agreements. A budget committee of the General Assembly is scheduled to vote as early as Friday on a resolution that would force the panel to close down its operations in six months. The effort to scuttle the panel is not a budget matter so much as a political one, and it represents the continuing suspicion developing countries have about international intervention...

The United Nations' Cash for Kim Jong Il scandal is now six months old, so it's a good time to assess progress, if that's the right word. The evidence of misdeeds at the U.N. Development Program in North Korea continues to mount, but there's still no "urgent" and "external" inquiry, as ordered by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in January. Now the U.S. has uncovered evidence that in addition to transferring millions of dollars in cash that may have gone to help prop up Kim's grotesque regime, the UNDP also transferred dual-use technology. It did so without bothering to secure a U.S....

Can the Second Coming of Paul Volcker Save the Dollar? Thoughts on the eve of high level talks in Beijing by Antal E. Fekete, Professor, Intermountain Institute for Science and Applied Mathematics "Dismal Monetary Science" December 14, 2006 History replaying One of the most frequently asked questions from my readers is the title above. Conventional gold-bug wisdom holds that in 1979 the new Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker, raised interest rates drastically, thereby putting an end to the galloping inflation then raging, and aborting the bull market in gold. Volcker’s high-interest policies are credited with the feat of...

The West’s need for Russia’s energy and cooperation regarding Iran, Iraq, China, and the “War on Terrorism” will likely lower the standard demanded for a full membership in the G8 group, to allow Moscow’s ascendance to the rich nations’ club, at the St. Petersburg meeting in July. “In the six years since he pledged to uphold democracy as a 'dictatorship of law,' President Vladimir Putin has increased the role of the police and security services in governing Russia and wielded the power of the courts for political ends,” says the Director of the London based Foreign Policy Centre, Stephen Twig....

UNITED NATIONS - Secretary-General Kofi Annan lashed out at the media after a year of unrelenting attacks on the United Nations and criticism of his management of the $64 billion oil-for-food program in Iraq, calling one critic "an overgrown schoolboy." He criticized reporters Wednesday for what he said was unfair coverage of his role in the oil-for-food program and insisted reporters missed the big story. That, he said, was the more than 2,200 companies and invididuals from some 40 countries that paid kickbacks or illegal surcharges to Saddam Hussein's government to get contracts. An 18-month investigation led by former U.S....

PARIS - An anti-bribery panel urged governments Friday to do more to investigate evidence of kickbacks and corruption in the U.N.-commissioned report on Iraq's oil-for-food program. Only 11 of some 40 countries whose citizens or companies were implicated by the inquiry have requested the evidence unearthed with a view to possible prosecutions, said Mark Pieth, panel chairman at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. "The working group encourages its members to follow up by obtaining this information," said Pieth, who also was a member of the independent inquiry headed by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. The United...

NIGERGATE: Connections between members of the UN Inquiry Committee into the Oil-for-food program, the Rockefeller Group and the French. As promised some elements that the “radar missed”. Once again the Italian newspaper Il Giornale offers some fascinating insight into the less discussed aspects of the Nigergate affair. In addition I’ve posted a HIGHLY SIMPLIFIED chart mapping A PART of the links between members of the UN Oil-for-food Inquiry, the Rockefeller Group AND THE FRENCH. Is it perhaps because of these ties that France despite having been in possession of the false documents since the fall of 2000, despite only having...