If this is your first time visiting Bible Prophecy In The News, I’d like to invite you to subscribe to our RSS feed. Never miss an update.. Thanks for visiting! When the Federal Reserve stepped in to save Bear Stearns, most people had no idea what was at stake, writes Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
We may never know for sure whether the Federal Reserve’s rescue of Bear Stearns averted a seizure of the $516 trillion derivatives system, the ultimate Chernobyl for global finance.
“If the Fed had not stepped in, we would have had …

Antique store owners in lower Manhattan, ticket vendors at India’s Taj Mahal and Brazilian business executives heading to China all have one thing in common these days: They don’t want U.S. dollars.
Hit by a free fall with no end in sight, the once-mighty U.S. dollar is no longer just crashing on currency markets and making life more expensive for American tourists and business people abroad: Its clout is evaporating worldwide as foreign businesses and individuals turn to other currencies.
Experts say the bleak U.S. economic forecast means it will take years …

Ben S. Bernanke’s interest-rate cuts have touched off a vicious circle of doom for the dollar.
The Federal Reserve reduced the rate on direct loans to commercial banks by a quarter-point to 3.25 percent before Asian financial markets opened today. It will likely lower its target rate for overnight loans between banks tomorrow to at least 2.25 percent from 3 percent, according to futures traded on the Chicago Board of Trade. Lower borrowing costs work against the dollar by making fixed-income securities issued by the government less appealing to global investors.
“The …

The scariest thing I’ve read recently is a speech given last week by Tim Geithner, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Mr. Geithner came as close as a Fed official can to saying that we’re in the midst of a financial meltdown.
To understand the gravity of the situation, you have to know what the Fed did last summer, and again last fall.
As late as August the favorite buzzword of financial officials was “contained”: problems in subprime mortgages, we were assured, wouldn’t spread to other financial markets …

The job market’s deterioration comes as oil prices climbed this week to a record $105.47 a barrel. Meanwhile, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported a record number of American homes went into foreclosure the last three months of 2007, and the Federal Reserve said homeowner equity, battered by sliding home prices, fell to the lowest level since World War II. This all means a tighter squeeze on consumers, who are likely to pull back on spending, which drives about 70 percent of the US economy.
Stock prices, too, continued their slide. The …

Despite all the pain the U.S. dollar has endured in recent days, the greenback may still have further to fall before seeing any sort of relief, according to currency experts.
Driving much of the dollar’s decline this week were tepid remarks about the U.S. economy by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who hinted that the central bank would cut interest rates once again at the Fed’s March meeting.
Those comments, combined with a number of troubling signs about the strength of the U.S. economy, helped send the dollar tumbling to multi-year lows …

One of America’s most influential businessmen, legendary oilman T. Boone Pickens, says the nation’s wealth is being plundered by oil exporters and the U.S. faces a potential financial disaster if our energy policy is not reformed.
Pickens, who correctly predicted that oil would top $100 a barrel, also says he expects oil prices to drop sharply in the near term.
Appearing on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Thursday morning, Pickens pointed out that the U.S. is currently sending half a trillion dollars out of the country each year to buy oil, in some cases …

Oil surged nearly 5 percent on Tuesday to hit a record over $100 a barrel on expectations OPEC will not hike output to ease high prices next month despite the economic woes of top consumer the United States.
U.S. crude settled up $4.51 at $100.01 a barrel after hitting $100.10 a barrel, a penny higher than the previous high struck on January 3. London Brent crude settled up $3.65 at $98.56 a barrel.
News Nigerian oil delta rebel leader Henry Okah had died raised worries about supplies from the OPEC country, but …

Credit-card issuers have drawn fire for jacking up interest rates on cardholders who aren’t behind on payments, but whose credit score has fallen for another reason. Now, some consumers complain, Bank of America (BAC) is hiking rates based on no apparent deterioration in their credit scores at all.
The major credit-card lender in mid-January sent letters notifying some responsible cardholders that it would more than double their rates to as high as 28%, without giving an explanation for the increase, according to copies of five letters obtained by BusinessWeek.
Fine print at …

The recession facing the United States is of a scale that dwarfs the dotcom slump.
The slowdown will cause a damaging regulation backlash as governments attempt to compensate for the financial pain facing families. Britain faces a similar plight, though it may avoid as deep a slowdown as the US.
The views of Stephen Roach, one of the world’s leading economists, now heading the Asian wing of Morgan Stanley, would have seemed outrageous at last year’s World Economic Forum.
It is a sign of the times that they are now close to the …