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Yesterday, when the Treasury released its TIC data early by mistake, the update that China's holdings rose to a record $1.317 trillion caused a stir. This was confusing, since while China, which as we reported yesterday, now has a record $3.8

Think you can guess the winners of all 67 games in this spring's NCAA men's basketball championship tournament? Warren Buffett is betting a fortune that you can't. The Omaha investing guru is insuring a Quicken Loans promotion that will award $1

Earlier this week we reported that at JPMorgan, the many will pay for the crimes of the few, after the bank revealed that compensation for most workers would be flat with 2012, and no raises were planned for the bank's employees as a result of the

Some HSBC customers have been prevented from withdrawing large amounts of cash because they could not provide evidence of why they wanted it, the BBC has learnt. Listeners have told Radio 4's Money Box they were stopped from withdrawing amounts

The theme of this year's Davos meeting where the world's wealthiest and most powerful people meet to enjoy each other's company, a fawning media, and of course the best food and entertainment that money can buy, is social stability, class hatred, and

Remember when banks were exposed manipulating virtually everything except precious metals, because obviously nobody ever manipulates the price of gold and silver? After all, the biggest "conspiracy theory" of all is that crazy gold bugs blame every

With Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras settling into his role as EU President, UKIP's Nigel Farage stunned the "Goldman Sachs puppet" with a 150-second tirade of truthiness he has likely never experienced. Farage sacrastically remarks how Greeks

World economic freedom averaged a record 60.3 out of 100 in 2014, with the U.S. dropping to 12th position, the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom shows. As Bloomberg's Niraj Shah points out, Ireland is the most economically liberal

It has been commonplace to speak of central bank independence—as if it were both a reality and a necessity. Discussions of the Fed invariably refer to legislated independence and often to the famous 1951 Accord that apparently settled the matter. [1]

They’re certainly redistributing a lot of the wealth of the 1% I have alarming news. America’s wealthy, the so-called 1%, continue to underestimate the full scale of the communist conspiracy attacking our country. While the 1% are distracted by panic

Daily spot foreign exchange trading volumes on Thomson Reuters dealing platforms fell 11.5 percent in December to the lowest level since the company started tracking the data four years ago, figures showed on Wednesday. Average daily spot volumes

Curious why despite the huge miss in payrolls the unemployment rate tumbled from 7.0% to 6.7%? The reason is because in December the civilian labor force did what it usually does in the New Normal: it dropped from 155.3 million to 154.9 million

While the growth of inequality in America has been heavily discussed here, it was Stan Druckenmiller's outbursts (and warnings that "from beginning to end - once markets adjust from these subsidized prices - that the wealth effect of QE will have

It's the day after Christmas, and many markets around the globe (especially in Europe and parts of Asia) are closed. While North American markets are open for trading, volume is light, as many market participants are on vacation. Naturally, things

That yet another major retailer was hacked, as happened last week when Target announced that as many as 40 million credit and debit cards used from November 27 until December 15 at its stores (one wonders why it took the retailer three weeks to

And so in his valedictory, Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke pulls one last dead rabbit out of his hat — it suffocated while the head-fake taper percolated in Ben’s brain lo these many months of jive talkin’. As the year turns, the central bank will

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that the final pieces were in place for the 2015 launch of an economic union with Belarus and Kazakhstan that Moscow hopes can also be joined by Ukraine. Putin said following talks with Kazakh

As we have pounded the table for the past 2 years, the one most fundamental component of a self-sustaining, "escape velocity" US recovery has been the persistent absence of corporate spending and capital expenditures, as a result of a corporate

The UK will be in a position to overtake Germany as Europe's largest economy, according to the think tank the Centre for Economic and Business Research (CEBR). The CEBR predicts that Germany will lose its current top spot in Europe by 2030. It cites

Almost a year ago, the French constitutional court ruled against Francois Hollande's triumphal blast into socialist wealth redistribution, with his proposed 75% tax rate on high earners, and so indefinitely delayed the exodus of the bulk of French