Free Republic

President Barack Obama’s Treasury Department regularly surveilled retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn’s financial records and transactions beginning in December 2015 and well into 2017, before, during and after when he served at the White House as President Donald Trump’s National Security Director, a former senior Treasury Department official, and veteran of the intelligence community, told the Star Newspapers. “I started seeing things that were not correct, so I did my own little investigation, because I wanted to make sure what I was seeing was correct” she said. “You never want to draw attention to something if there is...

President Donald Trump tweeted Monday that he will not nominate businessman and failed 2012 GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain to the Federal Reserve Board. "My friend Herman Cain, a truly wonderful man, has asked me not to nominate him for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board," Trump wrote. "I will respect his wishes. Herman is a great American who truly loves our Country!"

FOR the last three years we have been told repeatedly by government officials that funneling hundreds of billions of dollars to large and teetering banks during the credit crisis was necessary to save the financial system, and beneficial to Main Street... --snip-- Bloomberg reported that the Fed had provided a stunning $1.2 trillion to large global financial institutions at the peak of its crisis lending in December 2008. --snip-- In 2008, the Royal Bank of Scotland received $84.5 billion, and Dexia, a Belgian lender, borrowed $58.5 billion from the Fed at... --snip-- Mr. Todd also questioned the Fed’s decision to...

Rep. Ron Paul, the Texas Republican who has passionately called for dismantling the Federal Reserve, will be running the panel that oversees the central bank when Republicans take the House majority next year. Mr. Paul has introduced legislation to abolish the Fed, wrote the book, “End the Fed,” and rallied support for eliminating it. Rep. Spencer Bachus (R., Ala.), who will take over the House Financial Services Committee from Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass.), announced today that Mr. Paul, a libertarian who won a fervent following when he ran for president in 2008, will head the Domestic Monetary Policy Subcommittee....

In "Uncle Shariah" in the Washington Times, December 16, Frank Gaffney details why AIG's nationalization is so worrisome: The insurance giant AIG has lately become the poster child for corporate risk-taking, mismanagement and greed. Its unimaginably large losses, rooted in insurance it extended to financial companies engaged in subprime mortgage-backed transactions, have destroyed both AIG's corporate reputation and balance sheet. Indeed, but for the fact that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson - who during his days running Goldman Sachs had extensive ties to AIG - deemed the insurance firm "too large to fail," the company would surely have gone under by...

The White House on Friday nominated Randall S. Kroszner, a conservative economics professor from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, to fill one of two vacancies on the seven-member Federal Reserve Board of Governors. --snip-- "We're on different sides of the aisle, but he's extremely intelligent," said Goolsbee. "He's one of the two or three people in the world you'd turn to on banking regulation. I think any economist who knows Randy would say `Wow, what a good choice.'" --snip-- Kashyap said Kroszner has a libertarian bent when it comes to issues like taxation and entitlement programs. He...

RUSH: I've been thinking about this Harriet Miers problem, folks. I got a solution. Everybody's got their ideas. One of the ideas is that Harriet Miers resign, withdraw, and that Bush nominate her to the appellate court - and let her get some seasoning and go through some hearings there and get out of it that way. I have a different idea but -- oh, before I give you my idea -- I saw a news story yesterday. Let me tell you what I think of it. Sam Brownback and the vice president, Lindsey Graham, both-- (interruption) No, wait. They...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal Reserve Governor Ben Bernanke has the edge in the latest betting over who will succeed Alan Greenspan as Federal Reserve chief, but sources close to the Bush administration say it is still early in the decision process. President Bush's decision earlier this month to nominate Bernanke to head the White House Council of Economic Advisers prompted speculation that the top White House economics job may be an audition for Greenspan's post. "Bernanke is a strong Washington player with good insights," said William Beach, a scholar at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington. "He's...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan paid tribute on Sunday to the father of modern economics, saying that 18th-century philosopher Adam Smith was "a towering contributor to the development of the modern world." Greenspan, who this month began his final year as Fed chairman, delivered the Adam Smith Memorial Lecture at Fife College in Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland, where the early proponent of free-market capitalism was born in 1723. "In his 'Wealth of Nations,' Smith reached far beyond the insights of his predecessors to frame a global view of how market economies, just then emerging, worked," Greenspan said in...