The Federal Reserve (the Fed) is the central bank of the United States. It sets monetary policy, including control of the benchmark short-term interest rate known as the Federal Funds rate, or in Wall Street jargon, the “Fed Funds” rate. This is a key rate because it signals the rate at which overnight loans are made between financial institutions and the direction of interest rates in general…
Small Business Rescue Earned Banks $10 Billion in Fees…
Banks handling the government’s $349 billion loan program for small businesses made more than $10 billion in fees — even as tens of thousands of small businesses were shut out of the program, according to an analysis of financial records by NPR. The banks took in the fees while processing loans that required less vetting […]
Americans Are Paying a Tragic Price for Allowing Five Banks to Control the U.S. Economy…
According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, as of yesterday there were 5,117 federally-insured banks and savings associations in the United States. But in terms of risk to the U.S. economy and financial system, according to the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Financial Research, only five of those banks matter. And as you can see from […]
The Fed’s Repo Bailout and JPMorgan’s 38 Trading Floors…
Since September 17 of this year, the central bank of the United States, the Federal Reserve, has been pumping hundreds of billions of dollars each week to unnamed trading firms on Wall Street. We know the loans are going to trading firms because the loans are being made to the 24 primary dealers (see list […]
The Fed’s Wall Street Bailout May Go into Overdrive in December…
The Fed is in deep fear, while also in deep denial, about what happened last December. Its fear is that it could happen again this December. Its denial is that its lax supervision of the Wall Street mega banks is largely responsible for the mess. The stock market news on December 24 of last year […]
The Market Just Held a Stress Test: Morgan Stanley, Met Life and Citigroup Flunk…
Last Friday’s market action, following the Brexit vote in the U.K., […] proved just how feeble the Fed is when it comes to assessing systemic risk and capital vaporization…