Free Republic

The ghost of the early 1980s recession is haunting the Federal Reserve. With inflation still near 40-year highs and the U.S. economy slowing, the Fed’s aggressive rate hikes have fueled concerns of a central bank-induced recession akin to the one triggered by former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker during the 1980s. While Volcker’s rate shock ended two decades of rising inflation, it did so at the cost of a severe recession. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has frequently praised Volcker’s refusal to back down and channeled that persistence into his own battle with inflation. But most economists believe Powell can wage a...

Cold hand of KGB haunts oil-rich wasteland By Adrian Blomfield in Nefteyugansk (Filed: 22/06/2006) Even by the desolate standards of Siberia, Nefteyugansk is a forbidding place. Last winter temperatures sank as low as minus 58 Celsius. Summer brings with it a sapping humidity, melting the ice and turning the area into a vast, mosquito-infested swamp. No one in his right mind would want to live in Nefteyugansk. Indeed, until the 1970s, no one apart from the local Khanti people did. Yukos is now owned by Rosneft Yet this stretch of Siberian marsh is now perhaps Russia's most valuable piece of...

SACRAMENTO -- California's state budget has nearly doubled in the last decade, far outstripping the growth of population or the personal income of its citizens, a Californian analysis shows. Skyrocketing spending has also outpaced tax revenues, resulting in massive debt. It is certain to increase even further when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger unveils his budget proposal Monday, despite his efforts to cut expenditures. Driven by automatic spending increases and the failure to save boom-time revenue windfalls for a rainy day, the state's spending has climbed from $55.1 billion in the 1994-95 fiscal year to $105.4 billion this year. That is an...

History haunts the Plain of Jars By Sebastien Berger in Laos (Filed: 09/12/2004) Deep in the mountains of northern Laos is one of the most dangerous archaeological sites ever. The last remnants of an ancient civilisation are next to 30-year-old craters and unexploded US ordnance left by the greatest aerial bombardment of all time. Little is known of the people who carved the huge sandstone containers that give the Plain of Jars its name. The purpose of the artefacts is not known though they are believed to be connected to burial rituals. Archaeologists are mystified by the ancient stoneware containers...

<p>HAD DICK Gephardt been more politically correct last week, he would have rebuked Howard Dean for standing with Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico on proposed Medicare cutbacks in the 1990s or with then-Representative John Kasich of Ohio. To those bosses of the newly Republican budget committee in Congress, he could have added the GOP revolutionaries running the House Ways and Means Committee -- Bill Archer of Texas and Bill Thomas of California.</p>