The Independent

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 02:49 PM PST From Eric Dash at the NY Times: U.S. Said to Reconsider Quick Sale of Citigroup Stake Two days after Citigroup moved to untangle itself from Washington, the Treasury reversed course Wednesday and backed away from plans to immediately sell a portion of its stake in the banking giant ... The decision came after Citigroup badly misread the financial markets on Wednesday and struggled to sell new shares to pay back its bailout funds. Oops.

“Has there been one financial leader to say this is really excessive? Wake up, gentlemen. Your response, I can only say, has been inadequate.” Paul Volcker, former Fed Chairman, Dec 8, 2009From The Times: ‘Wake up, gentlemen’, world’s top bankers warned by former Fed chairman Volcker “I wish someone would give me one shred of neutral evidence that financial innovation has led to economic growth — one shred of evidence,” said Mr Volcker ... He said that financial services in the United States had increased its share of value added from 2 per cent to 6.5 per cent, but he asked: “Is that a reflection of your financial innovation, or just a reflection of what you’re paid?” And from the Telegraph: Ex-Fed chief Paul Volcker's 'telling' words on derivatives industry    "You can innovate as much as you like, but do it within a structure that doesn't put the whole economy at risk." ... Mr Volcker argued that banks did have a vital role to play as holders of ...

On October 22nd 2009, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee , says that the U.S. economy faces a future as a “banana republic” if current federal fiscal policies continue. " Congress works for the next election, not for the next generation." In April 2009, Missouri Republican US Senator Kit Bond likened Barack Obama 's administration to a banana republic if they proceed to hold public trials on the issue of torture, giving the term banana republic a bimodal definition in the context of the ongoing US torture investigations. [23] In May 2009, Paul Krugman, columnist for the New York Times , referred to the state government of California as a banana republic. He was commenting on the state's tax system, in which taxes cannot be raised even in an emergency without a two-thirds majority. The state constitution requires that the budget be balanced, denying it the ability to borrow, while gerrymandering has turned many dist...

UPDATE: US House Panel Approves Broader Auditing Of Fed (Updates with vote count, details on the amendment, comments by Rep. Frank) By Fawn Johnson and Sarah N. Lynch Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- A key House panel on Thursday attached to a broad financial overhaul bill language that would give federal watchdogs massive new authority to audit the Federal Reserve. The House Financial Services Committee's 43-26 vote on the Fed auditing amendment, introduced by Rep. Ron Paul (R, Texas), concluded weeks of debate on a bill to create a new council of regulators to wind down large institutions that pose a risk to the economy. The committee has postponed a final vote on the bill until after the Thanksgiving holiday. For more than 20 years, Paul has championed significantly neutering the Fed. His amendment removes restrictions on the Government Accountability Office's auditing authority, giving it access to every item on the Fed's balance sheet. Paul...

Nov. 16 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve Bank of New York “severely limited” its ability to save taxpayer money on American International Group Inc.’s rescue by refusing to compel banks to take concessions, said a Treasury Department watchdog. The Fed didn’t use its “considerable leverage” as regulator of several of AIG’s counterparties to force them to accept so-called haircuts on credit-default swaps, Neil Barofsky, special inspector for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, said today in a report. The regulator gave up efforts to negotiate discounts from the banks after two days and opted to pay them in full for $62.1 billion in swaps, Barofsky said. “These policy decisions came with a cost -- they led directly to a negotiating strategy with the counterparties that even then-New York Fed President Geithner acknowledged had little likelihood of success,” Barofsky said. Timothy Geithner, now Treasury secretary, was among officials who took over negotiations with the banks from AIG in N...

by CalculatedRisk on 11/15/2009 09:20:00 AM From Bloomberg: China’s Liu Says U.S. Rates Cause Dollar Speculation “The continuous depreciation in the dollar, and the U.S. government’s indication, that in order to resume growth and maintain public confidence, it basically won’t raise interest rates for the coming 12 to 18 months, has led to massive dollar arbitrage speculation,” [Liu Mingkang, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission said] ... Liu said this has “seriously affected global asset prices, fuelled speculation in stock and property markets, and created new, real and insurmountable risks to the recovery of the global economy, especially emerging-market economies.” President Obama will be in China today, and there will probably be some dicussion of China's exchange rate policy.

by Charles Maley Although Gold might be a bit stretched in the short term, it is not hard to see where it could go a lot higher in the long run. I found some interesting charts on Agora Financial website that fall into the “a picture is worth a thousand words” category. First, let’s look at the expansion in the monetary base. The monetary base is not only in a vertical ascent, but also without precedence. We have never seen anything like this. The monetary base is essentially the Federal Reserve Bank’s currency and reserves. Now, with an expansion like this you would think inflation would be rearing its ugly head, but as hedge fund manager John Paulson points out “that’s because this base money has not yet been lent out and multiplied throughout the economy. Yet the monetary base and money supply are highly correlated, almost 1-to-1 between the two.” So what does this mean? I think it means that soon or a later the money supply will follow, and if money supply grows faster th...

"Now the Fed wants to be the systemic risk regulator. But the Fed is the systemic risk. Giving the Fed more power is like giving the neighborhood kid who broke your window playing baseball in the street a bigger bat and thinking that will fix the problem. I am not going to go along with that and will use all my powers as a Senator to stop any new powers going to the Fed. Instead, we should give them less to do so they can do it right, either by taking away their monetary policy responsibility or by requiring them to focus only on inflation." —Senator Jim Bunning questioning Ben Bernanke