federal reserve

Attempting to fix a problem that his panel helped create, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) will introduce legislation today to prevent credit card companies from hiking rates on existing balances. Although Congress passed sweeping credit card reforms earlier in the year — including a ban on retroactive rate hikes — the banking lobby [...]

The Federal Reserve on Thursday proposed a new program of monitoring executive compensation at the nation’s largest financial institutions, a move designed to prevent banks from using pay incentives that encourage risky transactions like those that recently toppled the global economy.

This Friday, at 9:30 a.m., the House Financial Services Committee is going to hold a hearing on HR 1207, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act introduced this year by Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas).
The Fed-centric congressman — he’s currently selling a new book on the subject, “End the Fed” – has collected 291 co-sponsors, including every single [...]

Jason Pye reports that Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) will schedule an October committee vote on HR 1207, the “audit the Federal Reserve” bill introduced by Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas).
We will subject them to a complete audit. I’ve been working with Ron Paul, who’s the main sponsor of that bill. He agrees we don’t want to [...]

As expected, President Obama reappointed Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to another term today today, noting in remarks delivered in Martha’s Vineyard that Bernanke led the nation, and the world, through one of the worst fiscal crises it has ever faced, Bloomberg reports.
“As an expert on the causes of the Great Depression, I’m sure Ben [...]

Smart Politics crunches the numbers and finds that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), newly minted as the Democrats’ “enemy No. 1″ makes a cable news appearance every 9.1 days. The chart is revealing:

Less than two weeks after Goldman Sachs posted record quarterly profits, some congressional lawmakers are wondering if the Wall Street giant isn’t taking dangerous risks in its investment strategy — risks similar to those that led to the recent financial collapse.
In a letter today to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, 10 House lawmakers are asking [...]

Since the Wall Street bailout was signed into law last October, critics of the strategy have often been met with a central reassurance from leaders of the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve: The taxpayer-funded rescue, these officials have said, is not a bailout at all, but an investment that could very well return the [...]

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is testifying this morning before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about his role in catalyzing Bank of America’s controversial December buyout of Merrill Lynch.
The saga made headlines this spring when former BoA CEO Ken Lewis told New York’s attorney general that he was reluctant to go through with [...]

It’s not that difficult to understand why everyone would be ready to sound the alarm on inflation. The government has been borrowing heavily and the Federal Reserve has been massively expanding its balance sheet and holding its interest rate target at very near zero. In ordinary times, this combination would send prices soaring. And while [...]