Inquiring minds wonder if this abrupt about-face is actually in direct response to/retaliation for the 9/11 liability legislation. Those who predicted that the legislation might herald the death of the petrodollar certainly have a giant factual point in their favor already, after a mere few hours.

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In fact, in the Dallas market, the ratio of home prices to income actually exceeds the level it was at during the previous housing boom. So, relative to income levels, home prices are becoming EXTREMELY expensive. This means that home prices are passing their all-time highs on both a relative AND absolute basis.

The suspension, in effect immediately, will remain in place for 12 months, State Treasurer John Chiang said Wednesday. "Complete and permanent severance" between his office and the bank will occur if it doesn't change its practices, he said. The treasurer is also suspending his office's investment in Wells Fargo securities.

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"There are still dozens of unanswered questions," Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the banking committee's top Democrat, said in a statement. "We still don't know how many customers were harmed and how long this fraud continued."

The news about executives forgoing pay and the board's review won't affect the House Financial Service Committee's investigation into Wells Fargo, said a spokesman for Chairman Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican.

"I would have to consult my counsel, I'm not aware that that's a conflict," Yellen said in testimony to the House Financial Services Committee in Washington, while rejecting Garrett's suggestion that the U.S. central bank has a political bias.

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The heated exchange came during a week when the Fed has been under fire for its politics: Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump said that the Fed is keeping rates low to make President Barack Obama look good during a widely-viewed televised debate on Monday. Merited or not, the persistent questioning of the Fed's objectivity -- and Yellen's inability to deflect that skepticism -- could become a headache for the officially non-partisan and independent central bank.

The bank's board moved to rescind pay for Mr. Stumpf and former community- banking head Carrie Tolstedt ahead of a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee Thursday. Wells Fargo's board said Ms. Tolstedt, who oversaw retail banking during bad behavior there, will forfeit unvested equity awards valued at $19 million.

The board said she won't exercise "outstanding options" during an investigation into the bank's sales practices. Ms. Tolstedt has also left the bank, earlier than her planned Dec. 31 retirement.

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The bank said that the $41 million is from Mr. Stumpf's unvested equity awards. It also said that he would forgo salary during an independent investigation the board is leading and has recused himself from all matters related to that as well as independent directors' deliberations. Neither he nor Ms. Tolstedt will receive a bonus for 2016.

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The bank's lead independent director, Stephen Sanger, said in the board's statement that further action may be warranted. The board's independent directors "will take such other actions as they collectively deem appropriate, which may include further compensation actions before any additional equity awards vest or bonus decisions are made early next year, clawbacks of compensation already paid out, and other employment-related actions."

The results of that investigation, for instance, will determine what becomes of Ms. Tolstedt's roughly $35 million in unvested options, according to a person familiar with the matter.

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In 2013, Wells Fargo agreed to enhance its clawback policy in exchange for New York City pension funds dropping a related shareholder resolution proposed by the city comptroller's office. New York City pension funds own almost $500 million in Wells Fargo stock.

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But the question is a serious one. The BOJ has just admitted, in effect, that it has a credibility problem, even as it sets about trying to promise that it will deliberately act to damage its credibility. Its admission, couched in layers of economic jargon, underscores the worries at many other central banks that years of low inflation could become self-perpetuating.

... Put simply, long-run inflation expectations depend in large part on where inflation has been, not on the 2% target the BOJ sets for it to be in future.

... "The Bank has attempted to make expectations formation more forward-looking by pursuing QQE [quantitative and qualitative easing] with the aim of anchoring inflation expectations at the price stability target of 2%," the BOJ said last week. "However, in the course of this attempt, the observed inflation rate declined due to a variety of factors such as the substantial fall in crude oil prices, and inflation expectations--reflecting their adaptive manner--followed suit."

Translated from central bank-speak, "it wasn't our fault, but we failed."

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The BOJ has also taken on an idea from Paul Krugman, a past winner of the Nobel memorial prize in economics: It wants to be credibly irresponsible. It promised on Wednesday to keep printing money until it overshoots the inflation target and stays above, in an effort to make people believe it is willing to run a looser policy in the long run than it really should. If they believed that, inflation expectations should rise faster, and inflation follow suit.

The problem is that if the target isn't believed in the first place, who is likely to believe the BOJ will go even further?

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"We need to make sure that this does not translate into misguided policies that could make the situation much worse, not only from the perspective of trade but also for job creation and economic growth and development which are so closely linked to an open trading system," the report quoted him as saying.

The data underlined concerns that, after a long period of growth through globalization and reliance on global trade, governments are increasingly seeking to protect their own industries and promote domestic producers at the expense of foreign competitors.

A group of Democratic senators last week asked the department to investigate whether Wells Fargo tellers, branch managers and customer service reps were harassed and threatened with termination in the aggressive sales push. A complete review of cases and complaints is needed to determine if the second-largest U.S. bank violated the Fair Labor Standards Act, the senators said. About 5,300 employees have been fired since 2011.

Mr. Trump has for most of his campaign used Ford's Mexico investment as a key pillar in his attacks of the North American Free Trade Agreement and as a way to highlight the decline of the U.S. manufacturing base. While Ford has been touting its plan to invest $1.6 billion in new Mexican production capacity, it has only recently taken Mr. Trump on directly. Its recent response included a round of television interviews and other media engagements conducted by Chief Executive Mark Fields.

Employees of the Dearborn, Mich., company, including high-ranking engineers, took to social media platforms--including Facebook and Twitter--with statistics that defend the company's reputation as an American company during and after Monday's presidential debate. A graphic that some employees sent out claims Ford invested $12 billion in U.S. plants and "created nearly" 28,000 jobs in the past five years. Others circulated stories written by Detroit media outlets highlighting Ford's contributions to the U.S. manufacturing sector.

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Ford employees and executives have recently pointed out the company will back-fill small car production in Michigan with higher-profit SUVs and pickup trucks. But the company has been slow to outline specific product plans as it continues to negotiate with union officials, and state and local officials on tax breaks and labor terms.

The company said it is currently hiring 488 professionals.

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[China Construction Bank] London celebrated the significant milestone of clearing 10 trillion yuan ($1.5 trillion) of transactions between June 2014, when it was appointed by PBOC to be London's official renminbi clearing bank, and August 2016.