Free Republic

MUCH of the recent anger over bank bonuses has been focused on Goldman Sachs, which, according to results just published, accumulated a further $5.4 billion for its staff in the most recent quarter. Yet the one thing that can be said about Goldman is that if its employees are making hay partly on the back of an implicit public guarantee, so are shareholders. In the same quarter the bank generated an annualised return on equity of 21%. Not so for some of America’s other banks. There, the owners (and in theory the controllers) of the firms seem to have been...

Democrats Caught Plotting to Worsen California's Budget Crisis You know the Democrats have done something awful when even the leftist Los Angeles Times breaks ranks and exposes them. "In a meeting they thought was private but was actually broadcast around the Capitol on Monday, 11 Assembly Democrats debated prolonging California's budget crisis to further their political goals." Members of Democratic Study Group, which has pushed to confiscate billions more dollars from taxpayers, failed to note that a microphone in a committee room in the state Capitol was on as they schemed about using the Dems' favorite tactic, obstructionism, to pressure...