First let me apologize to all the supporters of Ron Paul who believe that the Federal Reserve and Ben Bernanke didn’t save the world in 2008 but rather just delayed the inevitable day of reckoning when our walls will be papered with worthless greenbacks and we’ll retreat to our bunkers to fight it out frontier-style. (I’ve never …
Now that President Barack Obama has embraced his inner populist, he’s finding all kinds of weapons lying around to beat Republicans with. The payroll tax cut is getting a lot of attention. If his success with conservative appellate court judges is any indication, the constitutionality of ObamaCare will be another. The latest weapon …
Last week I noted the spike in ECB drafts on the Fed’s swap lines, which were reopened in May 2010 to help keep dollar liquidity flowing as Europe entered its sovereign debt crisis. This morning the major central banks, including the Fed, ECB, and the Banks of Japan, England, Switzerland and Canada, announced that as of Dec. 5, 2011 …
Bloomberg has a well-researched story out today based on a massive Freedom of Information Act inspection of the Fed’s lending during the financial crisis from August 2007 through April 2010. The headline-making numbers: In sum, the Fed gave the banks more than $7.7 trillion in loans, and banks may have made $13 billion in part thanks …
The U.S. Federal Reserve has been pumping billions of dollars into the European banking system in recent weeks in an attempt to help stabilize the continent’s financial crisis. And while the effort remains small, it is likely …
The serial self-immolation of Rick Perry and Herman Cain has produced a growing desperation on the right as Republicans face the prospect of the base-smothering candidacy of centrist Mitt Romney. The latest example of the panic is the devotion of the entire five columns above the fold of today’s Wall Street Journal opinion page to an …
The White House is threatening to veto a long-awaited defense funding bill over a perennial policy dispute: whether the President can prosecute terrorists in civilian courts, or must transfer them to military custody. The battle has raged since the very first day of Barack Obama’s presidency, but this time Obama’s opponent is not the …
Last week the Supreme Court heard arguments over whether police violated the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure by tracking suspected drug dealer Antoine Jones 24 hours a day for four weeks in 2004, collecting data even after their search warrant expired. Jones’ lawyer argued the government should have …
The U.S. Supreme Court granted cert (PDF) this morning in three cases challenging several key elements of President Barack Obama’s health-care reform law: whether Congress can force Americans to purchase health care; whether all or part of the rest of the law is constitutional if that one provision is not; whether the penalty for not …
A few quick observations on Dennis Ross’ departure from the White House as Obama’s top Middle East advisor:
First, if there are any on the left who are taking this as a sign that Obama is finally going to get tough with Netanyahu, they shouldn’t hold their breath. Obama tried that early in the administration, when Ross was at State, …
President Barack Obama told an Omaha news program on Tuesday that he will make the final decision whether to permit construction of the proposed $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline, and whether to require that it be routed away from the Ogallala aquifer, which supplies 2 million people in the plains states with drinking water.
Former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine’s beleaguered trading shop, MFGlobal, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Monday, six days after it reported a third quarter loss of $191.6 million, sending its stock into a 67% tail-spin.
The cause of the collapse? A $6.3 billion bet on European sovereign debt by Corzine, which amounted …
