The Federal Reserve

On Thursday, the International Energy Agency announced that it would release 60 million barrels of oil into the market. Oil futures spiked lower following the news. WTI Crude fell nearly 5% to approach $90 per barrel. While the release may have caught traders off guard, the U.S. consumes roughly...

Following Wednesday's Federal Open Market Committee meeting, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke held a press conference. During the press conference, Bernanke reiterated the FOMC's view that economic growth was slower than anticipated. When asked why, Bernanke stated that the FOMC had “no...

On Wednesday, the Bank of England's minutes showed that policy makers were considering additional bond purchases as the British economy continues to struggle. The Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee voted 8-1 to maintain the bond-purchase program at 200 billion pounds, Bloomberg reported...

On Tuesday and Wednesday the Federal Open Market Committee will meet to discuss future monetary policy. The decision the FOMC reaches may dictate the flow of the U.S. economy for the remainder of the year. According to The Wall Street Journal, the general consensus from economic commentators is...

On Friday, The University of Michigan's report on consumer confidence was released. According to the report, inflation expectations rose to 3.0% from 2.9%, the second highest figure in 2011. Silver jumped nearly $0.30 in seconds to approach $36, while gold rose roughly $10. Historically,...

On Friday, the EUR/USD pair rallied as comments from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy indicated that a new bailout package for Greece worth nearly 150 billion euros would come sometime in July, Reuters reported. The markets moved higher on the news. In the U.S...

Despite poor economic numbers, the Dow Jones, the NASDAQ, and the S&P 500 all rallied on Thursday morning. Is this a sign of increasing inflation expectations among investors? On Thursday, the Labor Department reported jobless claims of 414,000. The number represents a drop of 16,000, but any...

There are different measures of inflation. There is the headline measure of inflation and core inflation. Headline inflation takes the price of food and energy into account, while core inflation does not. Headline inflation is a measure of what economic agents feel in the economy on a day-to-day...

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke may be engaged in a subtle act of economic warfare. It appears as though he is exploiting a fault in Chinese economic policy for the benefit of the United States. A Korean economist named Ha-Joon Chang wrote a book ten years ago titled "Kicking Away the Ladder...

The Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, gave a speech on Tuesday, in which he urged congressional leaders to tackle the long-term fiscal imbalances of the United States without failing to raise the debt ceiling. Bernanke argued that the deficit should decrease naturally as the economy...

The general consensus among foreign-exchange professionals is that there will be no third round of quantitative easing. Bloomberg surveyed the professionals that attended its FX Summit in London last week and found that 65% believed that there would be no QE3. The Federal Reserve is set to...

French President Nicolas Sarkozy spoke on Tuesday at the European Union's headquarters in Brussels. In his speech, he called for tighter controls on derivatives trading in commodity markets. Sarkozy remarked that the world had worked hard to restore economic growth after the global financial...

On Monday, Obama appeared at a factory in North Carolina and gave a speech in which he argued that the government could boost employment in the U.S. by creating programs to train engineers and other skilled laborers, ease restrictions on tourism, and cut red tape on construction projects, Reuters...

Standard and Poor's downgraded Greece once again on Monday, from a rating of B to CCC, CNNMoney reported. Greece now sits two ratings above "default." Last week, fellow ratings agency Moody's also downgraded the country, putting its chances of default at 50-50. The credit default swap (CDO)...

In China, for the month of May, money growth reached a 30-month low. Loan creation slowed, and the M2 money supply expanded at its slowest rate, according to Reuters. The People's Bank of China has been actively working to slow the expansion in the money supply. Quantifying the total amount of "...