By Foster Kamer 8/08/11 2:32pm

THREE'S A TREND!

"L8R."

Bernanke Abandoned! Three’s a Trend After International Economic Adviser Sheets Ends 18-Year Run With Fed

Three hours before President Obama’s “eff an S & P” presser, a tidbit of news broke about a staffing change at the Federal Reserve: Nathan Sheets, the Fed’s chief international economic adviser—or: the director of the Division of International Finance—is getting out of dodge. Mr. Sheets, who started with the Federal Reserve Board in 1993 as an economist, had been there for 18 years. More importantly, he’s the third in a trend of (take a guess)… Read More

By Foster Kamer 4/27/11 8:00pm

FREE BIRD!

Live with Ben Bernanke! A Peanut Gallery’s Review of Fed Chair’s First Presser

Mark it: an important moment in American history today, not even counting the time a reality television star’s consistant trolling forced the American President to present evidence of his citizenship. Rather, today was the very first U.S. Federal Reserve press conference, featuring big-money-cheap-date Ben Bernanke! What great revelations did we learn? What spiked-bat questions will Read More

By Mike Taylor 12/17/10 2:41pm

Wall Street

Morning Roundup: No Luck for Ireland

  • Moody’s downgraded Ireland’s credit rating five notches and said more downgrades could come if the country didn’t figure out how to deal with all its debt. [WSJ]
  • If Ron Paul proceeds to hector the pants off Ben Bernanke in his new role as congressional Federal Reserve overseer, he’ll be following a long-established Read More

By Mike Taylor 12/14/10 7:37pm

Quantitative Easing

Fed’s Money Printing to Continue

The Federal Reserve continues to view the economic recovery as too slow for comfort, and is therefore proceeding with its controversial plan to print $600 billion and buy long-dated Treasury securities with the newly created funds, the central bank announced today. It cited several factors in this decision that are probably well known to Read More

By Mike Taylor 12/10/10 1:00pm

Wall Street

Morning Roundup: Soak the Rich!

  • The government bailout of financial institutions is wildly unpopular and perceived to be highly wasteful. Which is funny, the Treasury Department reckons, because so far it has yielded a profit of $35 billion. [AP]
  • Americans want drastic action taken against the deficit; they just don’t want to pay more taxes or reduce Read More

By Mike Taylor 12/06/10 12:54pm

Wall Street

Morning Roundup: Bernanke Hits Prime Time

  • The finance minister of Belgium is saying that maybe it’d be a good idea to expand the European Union’s $1 trillion bailout fund as concerns about the Great Debt Contagion continues to menace Spain and Portugal. [NYT]
  • “Who will audit the auditors?” is a question the Securities and Exchange Commission has been Read More

By Mike Taylor 12/03/10 4:47pm

Salaries

Ben Bernanke Works for Peanuts

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s many critics should take comfort in the fact that he’s one of the least expensive central bankers on the planet. For all his controversial extraordinary monetary maneuverings, Bernanke makes a mere $196,700 a year, according to Bloomberg.

In contrast, Britain’s Mervyn King takes home nearly half a million in Read More

By Mike Taylor 12/01/10 7:51pm

Bailouts

Here Are A Few Winners of the Fed Bailout Sweepstakes

The Federal Reserve’s $3.3 trillion in bailout maneuvering during the past three years of financial apocalypse has been complicated, and so it’s difficult to isolate one particular “winner” from the many, many institutions who benefited from the central bank’s largesse. But let’s give it a shot anyway.

According to Bloomberg, “Bank of America Corp. Read More