Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke displayed all his power in the weeks since May 22, when he testified before Congress and suggested quantitative easing could be tapered back over the next few meetings.  Or maybe not.  Back then, the Chairman made it clear economic conditions weren?t ripe for tapering.  Since then, GDP has been revised down, inflation has barely managed ...

The whole world has been anxiously waiting for this moment. The Federal Reserve will wrap up its 2-day Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting on Wednesday. At 2:00 PM ET, it will publish its FOMC statement as well as an update to its economic forecasts. Then at 2:30 PM ET, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke will hold a press conference, which ...

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Bank stocks rose on Tuesday as the Federal Reserve met to discuss whether the economy had sufficiently improved to justify a gradual tapering of the central bank's massive monetary stimulus program. The Federal Reserve will conclude its two-day meeting on Wednesday and Chairman Ben Bernanke will hold his quarterly press conference. The central bank is expected ...

Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog, Eventually the money runs out.  Much of America was shocked when the city of Detroit defaulted on a $39.7 million debt payment and announced that it was suspending payments on $2.5 billion of unsecured debt, but those who visit my site on a regular basis were probably not too surprised.  Anyone ...

China's shadow banking system is out of control and under mounting stress as borrowers struggle to roll over short-term debts, Fitch Ratings has warned. The agency said the scale of credit was so extreme that the country would find it very hard to grow its way out of the excesses as in past episodes, implying tougher times ahead. "The credit-driven ...

After exposing the faux prosperity of the immediate post-2009 "wholly unnatural" recovery and explaining the precarious foundation of the Bernanke Bubble, David Stockman's new book 'The Great Deformation' delves deeper (in Part 2 of this 4-part series) into the dismal internals of the jobs numbers and only the utterly politicized calculation of the “unemployment rate” that disguises the jobless nature ...

Kyle Bass covers three critical topics in this excellent in-depth interview before turning to a very wide-ranging and interesting Q&A session. The topics he focuses on are Central bank expansion (with a mind-numbing array of awe-full numbers to explain just where the $10 trillion of freshly created money has gone), Japan's near-term outlook ("the next 18 months in Japan will ...

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Bank stocks rose on Tuesday as the Federal Reserve met to discuss whether the economy had sufficiently improved to justify a gradual tapering of the central bank's massive monetary stimulus program. The Federal Reserve will conclude its two-day meeting on Wednesday and Chairman Ben Bernanke will hold his quarterly press conference. The central bank is expected ...

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Google Inc asked the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to allow it to publish aggregate numbers of national security requests it receives separately from criminal requests, on First Amendment grounds. In its filing, Google requested the court to allow it to publish the aggregate number of national security requests it receives, including disclosures under the ...

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Google Inc said on Tuesday it has asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to allow the Internet company to publish aggregate numbers of national security requests, including disclosures under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), separately from criminal requests. Google's move comes after other tech companies, including Microsoft Corp, Facebook Inc and Apple Inc released limited information ...

By Eileen O'Grady and Anna Driver (Reuters) - Duke Energy Corp has turned to an insider, Chief Financial Officer Lynn Good, to take over as chief executive when Jim Rogers steps down as part of a regulatory settlement linked to its $18 billion takeover of Progress Energy. Good, 54, a veteran of the U.S. utility industry who is well known ...

(Reuters) - Duke Energy Corp , the largest power provider in the United States, said Chief Financial Officer Lynn Good will take over from Chief Executive Jim Rogers on July 1.