Free Republic

Less than a week after a fake Chinese news report sent bitcoin and litecoin prices plummeting on some exchanges, another similar rumour hit the Internet today. News that the Chinese government would penalize any bank transacting with bitcoin exchanges after 15th April started to break around mid-morning China time on Thursday 27th March. This time, it was reported as fact by a number of news services. The bitcoin price, already on a downward trend, dropped to a low of $561.61 on CoinDesk’s BPI and below the $550 mark on Chinese exchanges. The latest report gave all the usual reasons a...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D–Nev.) is facing a revolt among Republicans for adding controversial language to an aid package for Ukraine.The Senate is expected to vote on the Ukraine measure next week. The controversial provisions, which have support of the Obama administration and liberals from both parties, would increase U.S. financial support to the International Monetary Fund.A growing number of Republicans warn that attaching the IMF language would reduce U.S. power while expanding Russia’s influence on the global stage in the wake of its annexation of Crimea.>>> Q&A: Why Do Conservatives Oppose the IMF Reform Package?Yesterday, Sen. Ted Cruz...

Mark Carney, the head of the Bank of England, and other officials from the BOE were put through a five hour marathon of questioning yesterday by Parliament’s Treasury Select Committee covering everything from how long the BOE plans to continue Quantitative Easing (QE), to the potential for Scotland to vote for its independence, to what it knew and when it knew it about the rigging of the Foreign Exchange market by colluding global banks. The bombshell of the day, however, did not occur during the session on the Foreign Exchange scandal, which is stacking up to be a more serious...

The probability of two vibrant young men in their 30s who are employed by the same global bank but separated by an ocean dying within six days of each other is remote. And few companies are in as good a position to understand just how remote as is JPMorgan: since 2010, it has received four patents on quantifying longevity risks and structuring wagers via death derivatives. The two deaths at JPMorgan remain unexplained. Gabriel Magee, a 39-year old technology Vice President was found dead on the 9th level rooftop of JPMorgan’s European headquarters at 25 Bank Street in the Canary...

On the evening of Sunday, December 15 of last year, six weeks before the onset of the latest rash of tragic deaths of young men in their 30s employed at JPMorgan, the Pearland, Texas police received a call of a person in distress outside a Walgreens pharmacy at 6122 Broadway in Pearland. The individual in distress was Jason Alan Salais, a 34-year old Information Technology specialist who had worked at JPMorgan Chase since May 2008. A family member confirmed to Wall Street On Parade that Salais died of a heart attack on the same evening the report of distress went...

Consider a country where banking interests balloon debt by lending to people who cannot possibly pay back their loans. These toxic assets then threaten to destroy the national economy. Banking interests plead with the civil government to rescue them for the sake of the economy. The civil government bails them out with taxpayer money. Sound familiar? Well, that’s where the similarities end between the banking crisis in Iceland which began in 2008, and the banking crisis that occurred in the States a year earlier.Taxpayers in Iceland didn’t just sit back and allow the bail out. They thronged the streets banging...

The sharp deterioration of the public finances in many countries has revived interest in a "capital levy" -- a one off tax on private wealth -- as an exceptional measure to restore debt sustainability. The appeal is that such a tax, if it is implemented before avoidance is possible and there is a belief that it will never be repeated, does not distort behavior (and may be seen by some as fair). There have been illustrious supporters, including Pigou, Ricardo, Schumpeter, and, until he changed his mind - Keynes. The conditions for success are strong, but also need to be...

American Consumer Culture = Debt Slavery A lot of concern – well founded, in my opinion, centers around the skyrocketing growth of our national debt. To everyone with a solid grounding in economics and history, this is a dark, ominous cloud hanging over America. I’ve noted that our grandchildren will despise us for bequeathing to them a collective burden of taxation and stifled economic growth that will be theirs from birth. But there’s an equally fearful debt problem that doesn’t attract nearly as much attention, even among conservatives. That’s our consumer spending culture driving the accumulation of personal debt. How...

President Barack Obama is demanding a $1.1 trillion "ransom"--or else he will not allow the debt ceiling to be raised. That's the effective offer on the table from the president and Senate Democrats. They have now refused to pass a "clean" short-term debt ceiling hike unless Republicans agree to reverse the "sequester" spending cuts in the 2011 Budget Control Act that were enacted--at Obama's suggestion--to end the last debt ceiling crisis. The president, who has invited congressional leaders to conduct talks at the White House Monday afternoon, still continues to insist that he "will not pay a ransom for Congress...

The chief of the International Monetary Fund [IMF] says the U.S. government’s stalemate over spending and its debt limit is “very, very concerning” and could roll back economic progress around the world. Christine Lagarde, who took over the financial watchdog-and-rescue organization in 2011, said global finance ministers assembled for meetings in Washington last week feeling like Japan had finally turned the corner and that economies in the U.S. and Europe were on the upswing. “And then they found out that the debt ceiling was the issue,” she said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “They found out that the government...

Legendary investor George Soros called for comprehensive debt relief for Greece. "Everyone knows that it can never pay back its debt." Greece is close to a primary budget surplus after a lot of pain and suffering, says Soros, whose speculation against the pound forced the UK to withdraw from the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992. "If the official sector could forgo repayment as long as Greece meets the conditions imposed by the troika [of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), European Central Bank (ECB) and European Commission]," Soros added, "private capital would return and Greece could rapidly recover. I can testify...

Senator Schumer and many of our Democratic colleagues have been conducting a sustained and direct attack on the millions of people who supported and identified with the Tea Party movement. Make no mistake about it they don’t respect the people in the Tea Party movement they demean them in every way and virtually every day in this body. And everybody that is part of that movement, because they believed in America, they thought this US congress has gone lunatic in spending their country into bankruptcy. And passing Obamacare over the overwhelming objection of the American people and they did it...

(I'm paraphrasing, so I highly recommend listening to the podcast, beginning about half-way through.) In his 10/3/13 broadcast, Mark warns that, based upon Obama's inflammatory rhetoric regarding the debt ceiling, and the supposedly impending "default" on our debt, that Obama plans on acting unilaterally to over-spend the debt limit. Mark correlates a couple of facts. The first is that Obama is harping on "default." Most pundits are reading this as a means of "talking down" the economy, in order to blame the "Republican shutdown" for a weakening economy. But Mark believes that Obama is laying the groundwork for overspending the...

Day 4 of shutdown: Vets are going to need wire cutters to visit WWII memorial.The fences/barricades were not wired shut when I was here on Tuesday.

Lew Op-Ed: U.S. Failure to Pay Bills Hurts Everyone 10/3/2013 WASHINGTON – In an op-ed to be published in the October 4, 2013 edition of USA TODAY, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew discusses the importance of Congress raising the debt limit immediately to avoid self-inflicted wounds that could impede economic growth and create uncertainty for families and businesses. The text of the piece follows: U.S. failure to pay bills hurts everyone If Congress does not raise the debt limit soon, seniors, veterans, kids, among others, are at risk. By Jack Lew It might be hard to believe, but there is...

Wall Street is clear about who’s to blame for the government shutdown and a looming debt default: tea party Republicans. What’s less clear is what Wall Street can do about it. The reality is that deep-pocketed financial services executives and their lobbyists have little leverage against tea party lawmakers who don’t much care for financiers or big banks and don’t rely heavily on the industry for campaign cash. “Those are the ones who are most problematic for Boehner,” one D.C.-based lobbyist who represents financial services clients said of tea party lawmakers. “I don’t think there’s any way for Wall Street...

US lawmakers are calling for a crackdown against leading Russian lenders VTB, Vnesheconombank (VEB) and Gazprombank for allegedly helping Syrian President Bashar Assad circumvent sanctions, accusations the state-owned banks sharply denied Wednesday. “The Syrians could not conduct this war without Russian financing,” US Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, said Tuesday at a policy discussion in Washington, Politico reported. Blumenthal was one of four senators who sent a letter to US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew last week calling for sanctions against the three banks, accusing the lenders of enabling Assad to finance a war against rebel forces. The senators...

First things first, let’s stipulate that if there’s a government shutdown at the end of the month — and I continue to doubt there will be — it will happen because House Speaker John Boehner chooses to precipitate one. He can always partner with Democrats to pass a temporary, uncontroversial government spending bill if he wants to, because almost all Democrats will vote for it, and there are still a few dozen Republicans in the House who are both sane and unintimidated by the threat of a primary challenge from the right. Whatever happens is his decision. The latest doomed-to-fail...

Author Brad Thor warned about the NSA surveillance state in his last book “Black List,” and in a recent interview with TheBlaze’s Jon Seidl, described the subject of his newest book as an organization “more secretive than the NSA, CIA, and some people claim more powerful than the United States government itself.” On Glenn Beck’s radio program Tuesday, coinciding with the book’s release date, Thor revealed the agency behind “Hidden Order”: the Federal Reserve.… When he peels back the layers, Thor said, Harvath discovers that the Fed “is doing things nobody in America could ever imagine could be done…” “And...

Irish officials has promised a state investigation into the 'arrogant' actions of Anglo Irish Bank, in which executives allegedly covered up their losses in order to secure large bail-outs from the government in the 2008-2009 financial crisis. The Irish public must learn the full truth of how Anglo Irish Bank deceived government officials and nearly led Ireland to bankruptcy, Prime Minister Kenny told lawmakers Tuesday. "Believe you me, I understand the rage and the anger of so many people who have been affected by all of this," said Kenny. The Prime Minister’s terse words follow a scandal that broke out...