The Fed and its supporters in Congress vehemently fought even this small bit of transparency and without this one-time provision in the financial reform act forcing disclosure, we would still not have this information. Indeed, we are in the dark on so much of what the Fed has done. This is extremely dangerous for our country, yet this power and secrecy is defended as some kind of public good, which is patently ridiculous.
And so it begins. Not with a bang but a brrrrrr. On January 5th, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo laid down his first State of the State address in a freezing cold auditorium at the Empire State Plaza Convention Center in Albany. The space wasn't frigid by accident. The "meat locker"* temp at the Center drove some older legislators to wrap themselves in blankets.
The year 2011 brings in a host of opportunities and challenges to America. Will we accelerate toward economic insolvency by continuing the policies that have created this crisis, or will a new Congress elected on the energy of the Tea Party movement find the courage to change course?
Perhaps the biggest media story of 2010 was the influence of Tea Party voters on the congressional landscape. The new congress comes to Capitol Hill with a mandate to end profligate spending and restore fiscal sanity, we are told. But when the House and Senate convene in January, the newly elected members will face tremendous [...]
Ho humdrum. It's back to political bidness in the Empire State. The gubernatorial race ended just as predicted. Andrew Cuomo finally got elected to something. (Becoming attorney general on Eliot Spitzer's coat tails doesn't count.) Not that beating Carl Paladino is proof of public appeal.
Last week's midterm elections have been characterized as a victory for grassroots Americans who are fed up with Washington and the political status quo. If the new Congress hopes to live up to the expectations of Tea Party voters, however, it faces some daunting choices.
On October 22, fire broke out in an enormous (11 stories, 500,000 square feet) abandoned warehouse on the Albany waterfront. Smoke blanketed a large section of downtown, an adjacent highway, and a railroad bridge that carries Amtrak over the Hudson River to points west.
As the current economic downturn shows no signs of lifting, we hear quite a lot of rhetoric from current and potential office-holders about what government can and will do to create more jobs. This is especially disconcerting to those who understand that the best thing government can do for job creation is to simply get out of the way.
Inflation fears are heating up this week as Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke gave a speech in Boston on Friday, causing further frantic flight into gold by those fearful of the coming "quantitative easing" the Fed is set to deliver in November. Others who view gold as a short term investment engaged in immediate profit-taking after Bernanke's speech.
The government finds ways to spend money even faster than the Fed can create it, bringing our national debt well past the point of the taxpayers ever being able to pay it off. Other nations who, in the past, have eagerly bought up any amount of debt we produced are now starting to resist. We are reaching a crucial point at which the dollar will no longer function, and in the absence of a functioning dollar, restoring sound money will be the only alternative.
Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license.
Video published by this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Sampling+ license.
Bad Behavior has blocked 4513 access attempts in the last 7 days.
