This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, April 30, 2018:
When the Bank of America (BofA) and Citigroup announced changes in their policies earlier this month restricting loans to companies that sell or manufacture firearms, Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, sent a letter to the CEO of each bank:
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, April 30, 2018:
This writer remembers a time in this country when a customer could purchase a firearm over the counter at Sears. “Did you want some ammunition with your purchase, sir?” and out the door. No showing of a driver’s license. No Form 4473 to complete. No phone calls to the NICS to see if you had a criminal record.
Then came the Gun Control Act of 1968, and the war against the private ownership of firearms began in earnest. Most Americans weren’t aware that war had been declared until 1994, with the Clinton gun law banning semi-automatic rifles.
Since then, the NRA and its variants have awakened from their slumber, and, with the help of the internet, the war has been joined.
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, April 17, 2018:
When Venezuela’s legitimate but outlawed National Assembly reported on the country’s runaway inflation numbers last week, the statistics were so astronomical that few could relate to them. Prices increased by 67 percent in March, 453 percent in the first quarter, and 8,878 percent over the last year.
Marxist Nicolás Maduro’s socialist government stopped reporting on those price increases two years ago, and he has sharply criticized any efforts by the National Assembly or websites such as Dolartoday.com since then to tell the truth. A spokesman for the National Assembly, Congressman Rafael Guzman, told a press conference that the runaway prices are beyond the control of the government:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, February 7, 2018:
With Wall Street regaining its footing following the decline that started last Thursday, commentators in the mainstream media are still searching for the decline’s cause. Initially they claimed that it was an unexpected surge in inflation evidenced by the rise in the yield of 10-year U.S. Treasury notes approaching three percent (in early September it was closer to two percent). This was followed by the jobs report that announced that wages increased 2.9 percent year-over-year, up from just over two percent previously.
Writers at the Wall Street Journal dug deeper: The selloff was caused by — ready? — “volatility sellers, risk-party funds and algorithmic trading.” They then went into mind-numbing detail about how these strategies work and how the crash cost people using in them in excess of $200 billion.
Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, told TheStreet.com that maybe it was the Federal Reserve’s unhappiness with The Donald:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, February 5, 2018:
When an obscure advisory committee announced last Wednesday that the U.S. Treasury would have to borrow billions to fund Trump’s tax reform program, the stock market pitched headlong into a selloff, dropping Thursday, Friday, and early into Monday. Before the selloff, the Dow was approaching 26,300, but by the close on Friday it had lost 760 points. The rout continued into Monday, with the Dow down more than 1,200 points from Wednesday’s high. [Note the rout continued into Tuesday but found some footing by the end of the day.]
Much handwringing by commentators blamed the selloff on various technical factors:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, November 3, 2017:
Nothing will change with Trump’s nomination of Powell to head the Fed. He has a strong establishment background and opposed former Congressman Ron Paul’s effort to “Audit the Fed.”
In announcing his pick to replace Federal Reserve Board chair Janet Yellen, President Trump was generous in his praise for Jerome Powell, a present Fed board member:
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, November 1, 2017:
What a perfect definition of the American economy! Papier-mâché is defined as a “composite material consisting of paper pieces of pulp, sometimes reinforced with textiles, bound with an adhesive such as glue, starch, or wallpaper paste.” Add in a dose of political promises that everyone knows cannot be kept – not even close – and we have the American economy.
From a distance it looks pretty good. More than pretty good: to the untrained eye the American economy is setting world records, to wit:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, August 15, 2017:
Five Republican Congressmen fired off a letter last week to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Fed Chair Janet Yellen, and Acting U.S. Comptroller Keith Noreika, demanding that they repudiate the Obama administration’s successful and continuing efforts to strangle financially gun shops and other supposedly “high-risk” and “disreputable” businesses. Called Operation Choke Point, the program continues despite declamations from the Justice Department to the contrary.
Said the letter:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, December 1, 2016:
The Colonial Revival headquarters of Fannie Mae
In an interview on FOX Business Network’s Mornings With Maria on Wednesday, Donald Trump’s nominee for treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, said one of Trump’s “top 10” priorities was to sell government-sponsored mortgage giants Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA) and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC). Referred to colloquially as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac respectively, Mnuchin told Maria:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, November 28, 2016:
Nicolas Maduro
Bloomberg reported last Thursday that Venezuela’s currency — the bolívar fuerte or “strong bolivar” — has lost 45 percent of its purchasing power so far this month, with six days to go. The underlying cause was put simply by Professor Milton Friedman, a member of the “Chicago School” of economic free market thinking and winner in 1976 of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences: “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon … and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.”
On the other hand, Venezuela’s president, Nicolas Maduro,
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, May 6, 2016:
Description: Newspaper clipping USA, Woodrow Wilson signs creation of the Federal Reserve. Source: Date: 24 December 1913 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A modest bill, getting little press and clothed in innocuous terms, could spell the end of the Federal Reserve’s monopoly on its “federal reserve note” currency. When Texas Governor Greg Abbot signed it into law almost a year ago, he said:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, May 5, 2016:
The Texas Comptroller’s Office has begun to receive bids from private contractors interested in building the country’s first state gold storage facility, the Texas Bullion Depository (TBD). When Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law the bill providing for it last July, he said it was all about saving fees being paid to store the state’s gold in New York banks:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, April 1, 2016:
Anonymous sources told the Wall Street Journal on Friday that the U.S. Treasury Department is developing plans to allow Iran a “workaround” on sanctions imposed because of Iran’s support of terrorist groups.
These are separate from the sanctions lifted following the seven-nation agreement signed last July in which Iran agreed to scale back its nuclear development program. U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew (pictured) made clear the difference then:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, September 9, 2015:
With financial talking heads now convinced that the Federal Reserve will finally increase interest rates as a result of the record-setting job openings report, few are asking about the “ripple effect” those increases might mean for individuals, for the auto and the housing industry, for companies and corporations, and, most importantly, for the debt-laden federal government.
If and when the fed announces upcoming interest-rate increases, in the short run, individuals might be tempted to accelerate their buying decision on cars and houses to take advantage of low rates before increases start flowing through to lenders in those sectors. In the longer run,
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, July 6, 2015:
Greek citizens shouted “No!” to further austerity measures for the hapless country in exchange for more of what got it into trouble in the first place: other people’s money. The lopsided 60-40 vote astonished telephone pollsters, who predicted a much narrower victory for Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras of the far-left Syriza party. Although the issues were far more complicated than the referendum made it appear, the 68-word ballot question made it easy: do you want more increases in taxes, more cuts in pension benefits, another increase in the VAT … or not? Translated into English, the ballot read:
This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, May 7, 2015:
Two weeks ago the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index (SCFI), which tracks shipping rates from Shanghai to the world, fell off a cliff: down a breath-taking 67 percent from a year ago. Wolf Richter thought it was a statistical fluke.
It was no fluke. In the next two weeks the SCFI for Northern Europe fell another 14 percent, an all-time low. Wrote Richter: “Something big is going on in the China-Europe trade.”
The collapse is being echoed by other indexes reflecting the breathtaking decline in China’s exports. For example
This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, March 26, 2015:
Seal of the Export-Import Bank of the United States
On January 21, NewSat, a private satellite communications company headquartered in Australia, defaulted on a $21 million payment to its primary satellite provider, Lockheed Martin. That default is triggering an avalanche of defaults that could sink not only NewSat but also very likely the bank that guaranteed the loans financing the deal, the Export-Import Bank, whose charter is up for renewal on June 30.
The Ex-Im Bank has touted its ability and willingness to provide financing for American companies seeking to do business abroad but which couldn’t arrange financing the regular way: through private banking channels. According to the bank’s charter,
This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, March 17, 2015:
Friday’s news that French state financial prosecutors were joining with the Swiss government in pursuing charges that HSBC’s Swiss banking division was engaging in illegal tax dodges for their wealthy clients may have spelled the end of the nomination of Loretta Lynch (shown) to replace Eric Holder as U.S. Attorney General.
Three years ago, Lynch caved in and let HSBC off the hook with a modest fine and a slap on the wrist following its investigation into the bank’s money-laundering activities that helped fund Middle East terrorists and Mexican drug cartels. Lynch’s agreement insulated guilty parties from criminal prosecution while allowing the bank’s money laundering activities to continue despite its agreeing to a “cease and desist” order.
The current head count in the Senate gives
This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, February 16, 2015:
A report released on Monday from Kaspersky Lab to be presented at a cyber-security conference in Cancun, Mexico, revealed a highly sophisticated, well-funded, and immensely patient plan to steal at least $300 million from banks around the world, with estimates that the real losses could exceed $1 billion.
Kaspersky Lab, the fourth largest international provider of sophisticated software to fend off malware attacks, has been tracking the band of hackers known as Anunak or Carbanak for years. The first public exposure of the plot to steal millions at first appeared in late 2013 to be a simple mistake:
This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, January 13, 2015:
After oil forecaster Jeremy Warner got lucky last year when he accurately called the top in oil prices, with a fall to at least $80 a barrel, he doubled down by predicting “that the oil price will remain low for a long time, sinking to perhaps as little as $20 a barrel over the coming year before recovering a little.”
Warner got lucky once again when Goldman Sachs confirmed his prognosis, setting off an eye-popping five percent decline in oil to $45 a barrel which continued into Tuesday. Tuesday’s low was $44.20. As Goldman Sachs noted,
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