In an effort to spice up its image, the Republican Party has relaunched GOP.com.

One month after getting a contract extention, Jeff Peek is stepping down at the end of CIT (CIT).

Good news! You don’t have to worry about the Chinese monopoly on rare-earth metals — metals which are used in the green cars and advanced weapons systems of the future.

We were wondering what it would take to make the American mockery machinery turn on Barack Obama. And now we know: a random awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize.

The world is now engaged in universal mockery of the Nobel Prize committee’s decision to award the Peace Prize to President Barack Obama. Even his supporters can’t fathom what he did to deserve it, and many are suggesting that he turn the prize down and say “Thanks, but no thanks… […]

A  stunning pick from the Nobel commitee…

Tariffs on Chinese tires isn’t a subject that’s just limited to discussions in The Economist and on the opinion page of the Wall Street Journal.

Congressmen Alan Grayson and Ron Paul have written a letter to Chris Dodd demanding the postponement of Ben Bernanke’s reappointment.

We hear a lot of generalized complaints that Wall Street or the banks have captured the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve. These have a ring of truth to them in the way that all heavily regulated businesses tend to control the arms of the government that officially oversee them.

At least that’s the interpretation by the NYT of this commercial, which shows a rather rotund-looking Chris Christie getting out of an SUV, and which uses the term “threw his weight around” to describe how he avoided points on his driving record.

We’ll admit that analysing and decoding Congressional Budget Office reports is not our forté — that’s for the DC wonks.

We don’t quite understand how this works, but apparently the economic situation in Japan has gotten so bad, that Yakuza, its Mafia, is making its recruits in engage in rigorous tests to ensure that they’re up to snuff, and able to compete in the modern economy. It’s their equivalent of […]

Update: The White House is said to be elated at this news.

WIth all the company’s riches, why is a Goldman Sachs (GS) subsidiary getting a $3 million earmark from Washington?

Hedge funds are getting an unlikely source of support from a higher power.

Whenever the climate bill is finally debated in the Senate, it will be on the Democrats to own the debate and control the issue. So far, they’ve done terribly. In this clip, Jon Stewart bops the Democrats for not being able to sell the climate bill to the public:

The corrupt world of public pensions claimed another victim today.

For some time now, the government owned mortgage finance companies known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been secretly making commitments to purchase loans from Provident Funding Associates that are financed by NattyMac, a Florida mortgage company. Now this complicated structure is set to be expanded  nationwide in a […]

The British newspaper The Independent reported today that Gulf oil producers were negotiating with Russia, China, Japan and France to replace the dollar in pricing oil with a basket of currencies. According to the Wall Street Journal, Arab oil officials have denied the story, but even the possibility of such […]

Earlier we wondered whether the CNBC planned to give equal time to Peter Schiff’s opponents in the Connecticute Senate race. They’re not. But, over on CNBC’s more liberal sister network MSNBC, host Ed Schultz tore into Schiff last night (via CrossingWallStreet), so that pretty much balances things out.

Former banking Regulator William Black goes on the attack against today’s regulators pretty hard in an interview with Newsweek. He calls them all failures, while heaping the hardest scorn on Tim Geithner, who he labels “a disaster.”

The Federal Reserve is now faced with a challenge that is akin to threading a needle by throwing a spool of thread across a football field.

If you watch CNBC, you see Peter Schiff a lot.

behavioural Economics is all the rage these days. But one of its key findings—the discovery of something called the Endowment Effect—is probably a misreading of human behaviour.

It was bad enough that Chicago lost its bid for the 2016 Olympics after Obama himself flew to Denmark for the vote. Getting eliminated in the first round looked really, really bad.

The conservative party of Greece was trounced in tonight’s election. It was a stinging rejection of the centre-right party’s program of fiscal austerity and economic deregulation.The socialists promised stimulus spending to combat Greece’s first recession in 15 years and an unemployment rate that has risen to 9%.

Iran. If you’re like most people, you don’t think much of the country, except on days when the newsmedia is obsessed with the country, and BREAKING NEWS emails hit your inbox about some new (non-)development regarding the country’s nuclear ambitions.

We reached out to several of the banks that didn’t pay TARP in August and this is what they them had to say:

During Barack Obama’s September 9 speech on healthcare, he proclaimed, “But thanks to the bold and decisive action we have taken since January, I can stand here with confidence and say that we have pulled this economy back from the brink.”

For several hours yesterday the federal government was without the authority to spend money. No one seems to have noticed.

It has been a summer of staged outrage–a.k.a., astroturf.

The health care industry has found another way to influence Obamacare: get their lobbyists to donate to the same politicians they do.

Ah, Michelle Bachmann… only you would think ACORN was a useful subject to bring up when Ben Bernanke’s in town, and only you would be creative enough to wonder if the organisation would come under the purview of the consumer financial protection agency.

Sarah Palin’s people are reportedly asking for $100,000 per speech, but the orders don’t seem to be flowing in.

This will surely get those who worry about the decline of civility in Congress excited: Rep. Alan Grayson, who has made quite a name for himself going after the Federal Reserve, apparently lost his cool while discussing healthcare reform.

The Senate Finance committe appears to have just killed the public option, per C-SPAN. It doesn’t sound like it’s 100% dead though. Rockefeller’s amendment failed, but Schumer has one he’s introducing as well. But we don’t see why the vote will be much different.

The Washington Post has gotten its mitts on the Senate version of the climate bill which is still being fine tuned, but is almost done.

If you think Sarah Palin’s bizarre resignation from the Alaska governorship, not to mention the shots she’s taken in the media over her worldliness, has somehow dimmed her popularity among the right, you’re probably an MSNBC-watching coastal elite.

There’s a reason Europe is much greener than America, says Elisabeth Rosenthal at Yale 360. We just love the conveniences we have too much!

With the Copenhagen summit on climate change less than three months away, and governments the world over engaged in intensive discussions and preparations, it feels like we are finally standing at a true crossroads.

For some reason we thought it was old news that NY Sen. Chuck Schumer was one of Wall Street’s favourite Senators — at least as measured by campaign giving.

While US federal debt is growing at record levels, the debt of American households and private businesses is actually falling at almost an equally large rate.

The most powerful testimony at last week’s anti-Fed hearings in Congress came from economic historian Tom Woods. The author of Meltdown, which we excerpted way back in March, explained that most reasons given for keeping the Fed’s books secret are hogwash.

Despite all the huff and puff commentary about the dangers of complex financial innovation, a far more real threat to our economy has proved to come from complex regulations. And the problem of regulatory complexity has only become worse thanks to the plethora of programs produced in an effort to […]

Oh, geez, talk about bad timing.

By now you probably heard that in Germany, the ruling party of Angela Merkel retained its power in this weekend’s election.

Jumping on the political bandwagon, Bank of America (BAC) has cut off ties with ACORN, the disgraced left-wing community organising group.

California Republican Representative Darrell Issa is another public figure hot on Bank of America’s tail.

Clearly, Iran is interested in ratcheting up tension, two days after the G20 powers condemned it for maintaining a secret nuclear site.

U.S. consumers have finally stopped borrowing more money each quarter.  In fact, they’re actually starting to reduce their debts. 

We had Peter Schiff on TechTicker this week.  He’s running for Senate now.  But that hasn’t changed his tune!

Here’s a prediction: Peter Schiff will do extremely well at fundraising in his pursuit of Chris Dodd’s Senate seat, but in the end he’ll fall completely flat.

Are London execs fleeing the city for pay-friendlier pastures? New York take notice.

At least for now, the stock market doesn’t seem to care that RIM (RIMM) blew its earnings, or that Iran might one day possess the ability to make a nuclear bomb and start WWIII.

The tension building between the US, Iran, and its neighbour Israel continues to grow, and every once in a while this story pokes out seemingly catching most people by surprise.

Paul Kirk has been chosen as interim Senator by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, according to Major Garrett of Fox News.

About half of Bernie Madoff’s fraud victims took out more than they originally invested with the disgraced money manager.

Ralph Nader doesn’t want you to call his new book, Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!, a novel.

The G-20 are gathering in Pittsburgh tomorrow to talk financial reform and global warming. Greenpeace is waiting for them, doing it’s usual thing with a big fat banner.

A California utility company, Pacific Gas & Electric, quit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, due to “fundamental differences” on the climate change issue.

Major retail banks see the writing on the wall when it comes to debit card overdraft fees. Even before Chris Dodd introduces his legislation going after them, Bank of America (BAC) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM) are going to change their policies, so consumers in what sounds like a consumer-friendly manner:

Surprise, surprise, unions don’t like Wall Street. But hey, it’s always a fun to fire up the base by taking shots at the Evil Empire.

James O’Keefe, the man who carried out the notorious sting operation against ACORN, has said repeatedly that his work was “absolutely independent”. Not true, reports the Village Voice.

Don’t cry for ACORN, the left-wing group that stands to lose all federal funding after some investigative pranksters busted volunteers for giving tax and housing advice to a “pimp”

As we wrote earlier today, Attorney General Jerry Brown has decided to go after every financial fraud he can.

SEC’s Mary Schapiro testified today before the House Agriculture Committee on ways to regulate over-the-counter derivatives, which present a number of risks, “chief among them is systemic risk.”

From Politico:

Politicians have raced to separate themselves from Hassan Nemazee, the wealthy investor and prominent Democratic fundraiser arrested last month for allegedly trying to defraud Citibank of $74 million by offering fake collateral for a loan.

Jerry Brown, California’s Attorney General, is tying himself to just about every problem stemming from the financial crisis.

Last week the Fed revealed that it would begin to review the structure of compensation at large, important financial institutions to assess whether they were encouraging too much risk taking. This stunning powergrab–no elected official has ever voted to give the Fed this power–is a terrible idea.

Prepared Remarks of Chairman Julius Genachowski

Obama yesterday expressed concern at the sorry state of the news industry and said that he will look at a news paper bailout, because otherwise, blogs will take over the world, and that would be a threat to democracy, The Hill reports.

September could produce the worst auto sales of the year, according to an analysis by Edmunds.com (Via Zero Hedge).

  Senator Chris Dodd, the powerful senior Senate Democrat overseeing legislation to overhaul the nation’s financial system, is planning to propose the merger of four bank agencies into one super-regulator. Most strikingly, Dodd’s legislation would reportedly strip the Federal Reserve of its regulatory powers.

New York Governor David Paterson, who ascended to office when a prostitution scandal forced Eliot Spitzer to resign, is beating back intense pressure from president Barack Obama and other fellow Democrats worried that he won’t be able to defeat a Republican challenger next year.

Earlier we argued that any scheme that forced private individuals to buy health insurance (even it was from a private insurer) constituted a “tax” and that economically it was no different than if the government levied an actual tax and then distributed healthcare directly.

The New York Times is reporting that Barack Obama has asked New York Governor David Paterson to withdraw from the state’s race for governor.

The least credible full-throated denial in recent memory may finally be coming to an end. 

This is probably the perfect election-year law to push. It’s easy to understand (for voters) and attacks something that everyone hates:

As we reported last week, Stanford’s security chief , Tom Raffanello, the former chief of the DEA’s Miami office who led the agency’s cases against Manuel Noriega and Medellin cartel kingpin Fabio Ochoa, has been indicted for ordering the shredding of Stanford’s records and was arraigned today.

California is ready to ban large flat screen televisions that hog energy the LA Times reports.

Hear Ron “End The Fed” Paul chat with Time Magazine’s editors.

Last week Thomas Friedman said China’s authoritarian, top-down government, can be great for getting enviromental goals pushed through.

So it’s official. Peter Schiff is joining the race for Senate. He made the announcement on MSNBC’s Morning Joe this morning, though the news has been expected for a while.

Ezra Klein, the Washington Post blogger and rising policy wonk, made some surprising (but insightful) comments yesterday.

Yesterday we explained the key points in the healthcare reform plan outlined by Senator Max Baucus.

It looks like the Baucus plan is already dead. A few Democrats have already attacked it, and the few Republicans that might have gone for it are out.

Another media outlet too afraid to anger Obama… first it was ABC’s rush to remove those “jackass” tweets, and now Politico has removed the video of Obama calling Kanye a “jackass.”

Former WWE (WWE) CEO Linda McMahon announced today that she had resigned and would challenge Christopher Dodd for his Connecticut Senate Seat. This afternoon she appeared on Fox Biz to explain how she’s going to lay the smackdown on the embattled Senator. She says she’s going to run a special-interest-free […]

Montana Senator Max Baucus has finally revealed his compromise healthcare reform plan, a bill designed to expand coverage in a way that’s just moderate enough to get all Democrats and one maybe one or two Republicans on board.

An adviser for the Chinese government came out today and said the obvious: There’s no way the country will be able to keep its emissions in check, and yes, the temperature will rise above the dreaded 2 degree centigrade marker. Not really a surprise, but it’s not what the world […]

Wow. The Senate race in Connecticut is going to be really fun. The cast of characters now seeking to replace the embattled Chris Dodd now includes Peter Schiff and Linda McMahon (wife of Vince), who just this morning resigned from her role as CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). Establishment […]