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A bill unanimously recommended for passage by the Wisconsin Assembly Committee and now being considered by the Wisconsin Assembly  bans payment in cash for all treatments at “pain clinics.”    Bill 366 is ostensibly aimed at so-called “pill mills,” which dispense prescription painkillers for recreational use.  However, the bill broadly defines

100 percent-reserve banking is being introduced through the  bac kdoor  by U.S. regulators who remain   queasy  about  banks runs in a future crisis.  Under  rules instituted in September 2014 by the Fed and other financial regulators, banks are mandated to hold only high-grade liquid assets against risky large demand deposits in order to cover

The Swedish government abetted by its fractional-reserve banking system is  moving relentlessly toward a completely cashless economy .  Swedish banks have begun removing ATMs even in remote rural areas, and according to Credit Suisse the rule of thumb in Scandinavia is  “ If you have to pay in cash, something is wrong .”   Since 2009 the average

about a Swedish guy who went into a bank to open a simple savings account and had his business refused?  Well here it is. 

Ben Bernanke is officially a celebrity.  The New York Post’s venerable celebrity gossip section  Page Six carried news of former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s fete for Ben in honor of the publication of his memoir Courage to Act.   In attendance were many of Ben’s best--or at least most grateful--friends from Wall Street.  These included: NY Fed

Well at least one of the candidates vying for the Republican or Democratic presidential nomination appears to have a reasonable grasp of current  economic reality and the complicity of the  Federal Reserve in exacerbating an impending financial disaster.  In an interview with The Hill , Donald Trump blasted  the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform

A spectacular funeral was held in Rome for alleged crime boss Vittorio Casamonica.  The funeral cortege included “a gilded and elaborate black and gold carriage pulled by six black horses wearing plumes, a low-flying helicopter dropping rose petals from the sky and a large crowd of tearful mourners.  There was even a brass band playing the theme

Damian McBride is the former head of communications at the British treasury and former special adviser to Gordon Brown, erstwhile Prime Minister of the U.K. Yesterday he tweeted some surprising advice in response to the plunge in global equities markets.; Advice on the looming crash, No. 1: get hard cash in a safe place now; don’t assume banks &

Wall Street analysts and financial pundits are struggling with a “conundrum,” declared the talking head on MSNBC this morning. Retail sales in stores open at least a year (”same-store sales”) posted an unexpected increase of 3.3 percent in January compared to a year earlier. Furthermore, labor productivity rose a seasonally adjusted 6.2 percent in

The announcement that the FOMC decided to maintain the Fed Funds rate unchanged yesterday elicited a collective yawn from the media and markets as this was long a foregone conclusion among Fed watchers. What did raise some eyebrows was the so-called “dot plot,” a chart that is released along with the monetary policy announcement.  The