Analysis: Washington budget battle may delay Fed taper until 2014 … The Federal Reserve may have to wait until early next year before it sees sufficient strength in the U.S. economy to begin scaling back its bond-buying stimulus, after a destructive Washington budget battle that may take a bite out of growth. Complicating the Fed's task, a 16-day government shutdown choked off the flow o...Read More

Congress announces deal to end government shutdown, avoid US default … The deal would extend US borrowing authority until February 7; US Treasury would have ability to extend borrowing capacity … The US Congress settled on a deal to reopen the federal government and avoid default on America's debt just hours before the Treasury Department would have lost its authority to borrow mon...Read More

Why Pierre Omidyar decided to join forces with Glenn Greenwald for a new venture in news … Yesterday word leaked out that Glenn Greenwald would be leaving the Guardian to help create some new thing backed by Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay. I just got off the phone with Omidyar. So I can report more details about what the new thing is and how it came to be. Here's the story he told m...Read More

U.S. scholars Eugene F. Fama, Lars Peter Hansen and Robert J. Shiller on Monday won the Nobel Prize in Economics, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced. The three experts were honored "for their empirical analysis of asset prices." – GlobalPostDominant Social Theme: Economics is a hard science and don't you forget it.Free-Market Analysis: The Nobel Prize was NOT award...Read More

Time to take bets on Frexit and the French franc? … We have a minor earthquake in France. A party committed to withdrawal from the euro, the restoration of French franc, and the complete destruction of monetary union has just defeated the establishment in the Brignoles run-off election. It is threatening Frexit as well, which rather alters the political chemistry of Britain's EU referend...Read More

The new head of the Federal Reserve: Dove ascendant … Janet Yellen will stick to her predecessor's expansionary policies … an uphill slog awaits. For most of the past few years, monetary policy has urged the economy on while dysfunctional fiscal policy has held it back. Barack Obama's decision to nominate Janet Yellen to succeed Ben Bernanke as the Fed's chairman in Februar...Read More

Breaking BRIC piggy banks … Since 2009 the word "austerity" has not been too far away from the lips of finance ministers across the globe. Deficits and debt-to-GDP ratios around the world surged due to the financial crisis, and it was felt that they were fast becoming unsustainable. Once the immediate danger of the global recession passed politicians across the globe rushed to redu...Read More

Debt Ceiling: China Calls for World to Be 'De-Americanised.' Chinese government mouthpiece says 'Pax Americana' has failed on all fronts … Xinhua calls for de-Americanised world. China's official news agency has called for the creation of a "de-Americanised world", saying the destinies of people should not be left in the hands of a hypocritical nation with a dys...Read More

World top bankers warn of dire consequences if U.S. defaults … Three of the world's most powerful bankers warned of terrible consequences if the United States defaults on its debt, with Deutsche Bank chief executive Anshu Jain claiming default would be "utterly catastrophic" … "This would be a very rapidly spreading, fatal disease," Jain said on Saturday at a co...Read More

Obama's national debt rate on track to double … President Obama likes to say that raising the nation's borrowing limit "won't add a dime" to the federal debt, but he neglects to mention that the government already has borrowed the equivalent of more than 60 trillion dimes since he took office. When Mr. Obama became president in January 2009, the total federal debt stood...Read More

UK fracking ambitions threatened by EU warning over methane emissions. The EU authorities have opened a new front in efforts to clamp down on shale gas, warning that the carbon footprint from methane emissions may be high enough to call into question the whole future of fracking in Europe. – UK TelegraphDominant Social Theme: Without Brussels, would the world burn up?Free-Market Analysis: Th...Read More

Factional conflicts have the power to destroy empires – and republics … Bitter fights in Washington are making the US economy look much worse than it is. The US Founding Fathers abhorred factions. The 10th Federalist Paper by James Madison in 1787 is a study of how to defend the fledgling republic against the dangers of organised zealotry, the curse that blighted earlier republics in w...Read More

Why I'm Very Happy About Janet Yellen … President Barack Obama plans to nominate Janet Yellen as the next chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. In doing so, he will promote the pre-eminent policy economist of her generation to the role of the most powerful central banker in the world. Yellen is quite simply more qualified for the job than any of her predecessors … Tonight, I feel...Read More

Carter: Middle class today resembles past's poor…Former President Jimmy Carter said Monday that the income gap in the United States has increased to the point where members of the middle class resemble the Americans who lived in poverty when he occupied the White House.Carter offered his assessment of the nation's economic challenges Monday at a Habitat for Humanity construction sit...Read More

Britain must stay in the EU, says Nissan boss … Carmaker says threat of European Union import tariffs could be an "obstacle" for Nissan if Britain exits the single market. Nissan employs 6,400 people at the Sunderland car plant … One of the UK's most important foreign investors, the Japanese car-giant, Nissan, has said that Britain's membership of the European Union...Read More

Ben S. Bernanke, the world’s most-powerful central banker, says he doesn’t understand gold prices. If his peers had paid attention, they might have stopped expanding reserves that lost $545 billion in value since bullion peaked in 2011.Bernanke, who holds economics degrees from Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and led the Federal Reserve through the biggest...Read More

Sir Bob Geldof: 'All humans will die before 2030'… Bob Geldof based his miserable prediction on the effects of climate changeThe musician-turned-activist reckons the world will end in 2030 – leading to the extinction of humankind.Sir Bob, 61, based his miserable prediction on the effects of climate change.“The world can decide in a fit of madness to kill itself," he...Read More

Shutdown: A fight with no room for compromise … To end the government shutdown, all Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) needs to do is let the House of Representatives vote on a budget. It would pass within 30 minutes. Virtually all 200 House Democrats would vote to keep the government open, as would as many as 50 Republicans. An easy majority. But no. Boehner and other Republican leaders refuse t...Read More

IRS at 100: How income taxation built the middle class … Exactly a century ago, on October 3, 1913, President Woodrow Wilson signed the first modern federal income tax into law. The sky did not fall.That may have surprised the eminences of the American plutocracy. For years they had predicted the most dire of consequences should the federal government begin taxing the incomes of America&rsq...Read More

Economic focus should shift from the BRICs to Africa's emerging markets … Just as the green shoots of recovery are appearing in the UK, and positively sprouting upwards in the US, so it seems that the so-called BRIC economies – Brazil, Russia, India and China – are slowing. 'The BRICs really matter. They now account for one quarter of global GDP and, since 2005, they have...Read More