Foreclosure Nation

WASHINGTON - The U.S. economic recovery still needs help from the Federal Reserve despite signs of improvement, Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Thursday. The Fed chairman provided a modestly more rosy outlook for the world's largest economy than he has done in previous speeches, citing gains in house...

• Read More
• Comments

The Federal Reserve board held its first meeting of 2011 this week. It may be a new year with new faces around the Fed’s boardroom table, but there’s nothing new in the central bank’s policy direction or its guarded assessment of the nation’s economic recovery. Board members voted to keep the Fed’...

• Read More
• Comments

FEDERAL RESERVE - For years, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) has been on a crusade to reduce the influence of the Federal Reserve. Indeed, he even wrote a book called "End the Fed," which suggests that the U.S. would be better off without a central bank. While it might have been easy for Congress to dismiss su...

• Read More
• Comments

For years, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) has been on a crusade to reduce the influence of the Federal Reserve. Indeed, he even wrote a book called "End the Fed," which suggests that the U.S. would be better off without a central bank. While it might have been easy for Congress to dismiss such calls to abolis...

• Read More
• Comments

WASHINGTON -- Following a public outcry from consumer advocates, the Federal Reserve is quietly backing down from a plan to gut the most significant federal remedy for predatory lending. The central bank has informed several consumer agencies that it will table its proposal to eliminate "rescission...

• Read More
• Comments

Consumer advocacy groups have been joined by federal lawmakers in their campaign against a mortgage lending rule change proposed by the Federal Reserve. The Fed has recommended revising a stipulation that allows homeowners to stop a foreclosure on the grounds that the lender violated the disclosur...

• Read More
• Comments

WASHINGTON — A member of the Federal Reserve's policymaking committee suggested Tuesday that the Fed may need to scale back its $600 billion Treasury bond-buying program if the economy grows more quickly than expected. But Charles Plosser, who becomes a voting member this year, is unlikely to sway ...

• Read More
• Comments

Income and expense data released by the Federal Reserve this week shows the central bank is earning a pretty penny from its investments in mortgage securities. The Fed began buying mortgage bonds from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae in November of 2008 to help prop up the nation’s deterior...

• Read More
• Comments

WASHINGTON/CHICAGO - The U.S. Federal Reserve's journey to the outer limits of monetary policy is raising concerns about how hard it will be to withdraw trillions of dollars in stimulus from the banking system when the time is right. While that day seems distant now, some economists and market anal...

• Read More
• Comments

If Ben Bernanke were an investor, he’d be disappointed . The first chunk of the Federal Reserve’s $600 billion Treasury bond purchase program is in the red, thanks to rising yields. The central bank’s cheap financing makes outright losses unlikely, but Mr. Bernanke, the Fed chairman, could still fac...

• Read More
• Comments

WASHINGTON: The Federal Reserve on Tuesday offered only a cautious nod to the economy's improving prospects as it put a spotlight on lofty unemployment and reaffirmed its commitment to buy $600 billion in bonds. In a statement that emphasized job market weakness and low inflation, the Fed cha...

• Read More
• Comments

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — All year, Thomas M. Hoenig has been saying no. As the lone dissenter on the Federal Reserve committee that sets interest rates, Mr. Hoenig, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, has been a persistent skeptic of just about everything the Fed’s chairman, Ben...

• Read More
• Comments

When the severe financial panic struck the United States in 2008, it was absolutely essential that the nation's central bank, the Federal Reserve, preserve the nation's payment system. The payment system includes bank accounts, especially those guaranteed by the government such as commercial bank ac...

• Read More
• Comments

WASHINGTON — One investor, Kenneth H. Dahlberg, is a World War II flying ace who, as a volunteer in President Richard M. Nixon’s re-election campaign, was a minor figure in the Watergate scandal. Another investor, Magalen O. Bryant, runs a horse farm in Virginia and is active in steeplechase racin...

• Read More
• Comments

Despite escalating outrage over rampant foreclosure fraud, the Federal Reserve now appears ready to eviscerate a key mortgage regulation in an effort to spare banks the losses from their own wrongdoing. Even as bank executives preposterously claim to have wronged nobody in the foreclosure process, t...

• Read More
• Comments

This lame-duck Congress - its mandate exhausted, many of its members repudiated - should merely fund the government for a few months at current spending levels with a "continuing resolution," then apologize for almost everything else it has done and depart. If, however, the 111th Congress wants to m...

• Read More
• Comments

Two years have passed since the worst financial crisis since the 1930s dealt a body blow to the world economy. Working with policymakers at home and abroad, the Federal Reserve responded with strong and creative measures to help stabilize the financial system and the economy. Among the Fed's respo...

• Read More
• Comments