Treasury Department | featured news

It's official, Beyoncé and Jay-Z's trip to Cuba was legal. Musical power couple Beyoncé and Jay-Z traveled to the Communist island legally on an authorized educational trip, the Treasury Department said Tuesday in a letter obtained by the Miami Herald. The trip was organized by a group called Academic Arrangements Abroad, Reuters reports.

The Treasury Department will not mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin to get around the debt ceiling. If they did, the Federal Reserve would not accept it. That's the bottom line of the statement that Anthony Coley, a spokesman for the Treasury Department, gave me today. "Neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit," he said.

The Treasury Department plans to sell its remaining holdings of common stock in the American International Group, essentially ending taxpayers' four-year ownership of the bailed-out insurer.

After Mary Miller, a senior Treasury Department official, removed her name from consideration, Sallie L. Krawcheck, a long-time Wall Street executive, has emerged as a potential front-runner to head the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Tim Geithner may soon leave the Treasury Department, but he is helping lead the "fiscal cliff" negotiations.

Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, did not violate House ethics rules when she contacted the Treasury Department in 2008 about a bank matter, a special investigator announced on Friday.

The Treasury Department said Tuesday that the national debt has topped $16 trillion, the result of chronic government deficits that have poured more than $50,000 worth of red ink onto federal ledgers for every man, woman and child in the United States....

The U.S. Treasury Department launched its fourth sale of shares in American International Group, with the insurer committing to repurchase two-thirds of the $4.5 billion in shares being offered to the public.

The Energy Department was in such a rush three years ago to issue a loan to solar-panel maker Solyndra LLC that it gave the Treasury Department only a day to review the deal, according to a government report released Wednesday.

The Republican Party has a Web ad spotlighting the fact that the debt has grown more under President Obama in less than one term than it did under President George W. Bush in two terms. Since taking office on Jan. 20, 2009, the debt under Obama has increased by $4.93 trillion, according to Treasury Department figures.