Optics-obsessed Washington’s latest issue is a lack of women in high profile positions in the Obama Administration. The issue for Obama previously was not a lack of women but their treatment in his administration. Regardless, the President has now floated two women for positions within his administration. From Bloomberg: President Barack Obama is considering two [...]

The Treasury has begun its “extraordinary measures”to fend off the reaching of the nation’s debt limit.

Yesterday was “bust British banks for money laundering” day in America, if you didn’t know.

Jenni LeCompte at the Treasury Department fleshes out the permanent debt limit de-fanging proposal that Tim Geithner offered as part of the initial White House term sheet on the fiscal slope. She adds the nice touch of calling it the McConnell proposal, since the Republican Senate leader offered a version of it, which actually went [...]

Adding to the spate of delays on finalizing rules from the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, the final Volcker rule will probably not get finished until 2013. This is at least six months past due, as the original law called for a final Volcker rule in July. Five separate government agencies – the FDIC, the Federal [...]

The Treasury Department once again declined to label China a currency manipulator, despite arguing that the yuan “remains significantly undervalued” and should rise further. They basically patted themselves on the back and tried to show that their policy of engagement with China has worked to this point. China “has substantially reduced the level of official [...]

Erskine Bowles told Maria Bartiromo last night that he would not serve as the nation’s next Treasury Secretary. This apparently happened off-air, but it has been confirmed in local papers in North Carolina, Bowles’ home state: Bowles reportedly confirmed to host Maria Bartiromo off-air that he would not serve as the next Treasury secretary, according [...]

I just want to add on to what Dean Baker says here. It’s not just that the people trying to hype the fiscal cliffas a scary, terrifying prospect shouldn’t be trusted given their track record. It’s that the short-term impact, say one month, of expiring measures really does approach zero. Here’s Dean’s base case as [...]

The Treasury Department estimates that the US will reach its debt ceiling by the end of this year. However, they still have an array of extraordinary measures that gave them about three months of headroom after hitting the limit in 2011. The Treasury said Wednesday it could take “extraordinary measures” to juggle the nation’s finances [...]

I’m glad Jesse Eisinger went back and examined why one of the GSEs failed to offer mass refinancing for years, until the federal government basically insisted. But I think this is a story that attempts to set up a binary ideological dynamic where Occam’s razor suggests a lot of bipartisanship in neglecting homeowners. To start, [...]

The Special Inspector General for TARP, Christy Romero, has recommended that the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department stop using LIBOR, the benchmark interest rate derived in such a slipshod way that it was rigged for years. But the Fed and Treasury aren’t taking Romero up on the request. The Treasury and the Fed should [...]