Free Republic

Today I want to consider the outlook for bitcoin. 2014 was its worst year on record. It fell by 67%, from $800 to $320 a coin. In doing so, it beat the likes of the Russian rouble and the Ukrainian hryvnia, to the dubious honour of being the world’s worst-performing currency. You know what the world’s best-performing currency was by the way? Nope, not the US dollar, but the Somali shilling. Yup. It surprised me too. Anyway, back to bitcoin… The bursting of the bitcoin bubble So far, 2015 has not been any better than 2014 for bitcoin. At one...

Ferguson isn’t simply black versus white. A peculiar Vine floated around social media Monday evening following the grand jury announcement in Ferguson, Mo. The short video shows an Asian-American shopkeeper standing in his looted store, with a hands-in-his-pockets matter-of-factness and a sad slump to his facial expression. “Are you okay, sir?” an off-screen cameraman asks. “Yes,” the storeowner says, dejectedly. The clip is only a few seconds, but it highlights the question of where Asian-Americans stand in the black and white palette often used to paint incidents like Ferguson. In the story of a white cop’s killing of a black...

Like it or not, marijuana use has increased exponentially since President Nixon declared a war no drugs in 1971. Today, marijuana — or weed, pot, cannabis, Mary Jane — is the third most popular recreational drug in the United States, behind only alcohol and tobacco. Upward of 24 million people have used it, based on the latest estimates, with 14 million using it regularly. But despite a growing warmth toward the drug, and two states (Washington and Colorado) legalizing its recreational use, there are still some people on the fence about its safety and usefulness. So, to educate you nonbelievers...

“I think that a new, repugnant form of fascism is emerging with notable strength…The Nazi genocide of Jews outraged all the earth’s peoples. Why does this (Israeli) government believe that the world will be insensitive to the macabre genocide which today is being perpetuated against the Palestinian people?” (Fidel Castro, August, 5, 2014) “Who cares, what that senile ZOMBIE Castro says!” strikes me as a reasonable retort from many readers. “Unfortunately,” I’m forced to answer. “Many otherwise reasonable care very much what Fidel Castro says.” Take Israeli Prime Ministers Benjamin Netanyahu: “The remarks attributed to Castro demonstrate his deep understanding...

America’s first foray into rolling back prohibition 2.0 is barely underway, and already marijuana prices have dropped low enough to convince some cartel farmers in Mexico to abandon the crop. Mere months after two US states legalized marijuana sales, five Nobel Prize-winning economists released a UN report recommending that countries end their war on drugs. It would seem they were onto something. But in order to further decrease drug-trade violence in so-called producer states, the US first needs to legalize marijuana, but then also the US must stop using the UN to pressure producer countries into supply-based drug prohibition. Latin...

Since Colorado voters legalized pot in 2012, prohibition supporters have warned that recreational marijuana will lead to a scourge of “drugged divers” on the state’s roads. They often point out that when the state legalized medical marijuana in 2001, there was a surge in drivers found to have smoked pot. They also point to studies showing that in other states that have legalized pot for medical purposes, we’ve seen an increase in the number of drivers testing positive for the drug who were involved in fatal car accidents. The anti-pot group SAM recently pointed out that even before the first...

President Obama’s instincts about Iraq and Syria have been sound from the beginning: Greater U.S. engagement probably cannot make things better but certainly can make them worse, both for the people of the region and for our national interests. Obama’s only mistake was to buy, for a time, the notion that Bush’s troop surge had miraculously healed ancient divisions and made the dream of a pluralist democracy still possible. There are aspects of Obama’s foreign policy that I question. His heavy reliance on drone strikes may create as many terrorists as it eliminates. He should have realized that the National...

Big Business does some things that are utterly necessary in modern society. They build airplanes and cars. They run airlines, phone companies, credit card companies and banks. But there is not a person among us, including employees of big businesses, that has not withered with frustration from confronting these businesses with a problem and then receiving little or no results. Even though big businesses get the most attention, the vast majority of people in the U.S. work for small businesses. Small businesses by nature are more reactive and responsive to their customers. They are closer to the customer and more...

... What is needed from Washington is not a heroic exertion of American military power but rather a sustained effort to engage with allies, isolate enemies, support free markets and democratic values and push these positive trends forward. The Obama administration is, in fact, deeply internationalist — building on alliances in Europe and Asia, working with institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations, isolating adversaries and strengthening the global order that has proved so beneficial to the United States and the world since 1945. ... A Democratic Advisory Council committee headed by Acheson called Eisenhower’s foreign...

When it comes to Obama-era scandals, the American Right’s predominant emotion is frustration — a frustration that causes hypertension levels usually seen only in Cubs fans and the unfortunates hired to do PR for Lindsay Lohan and Shia LeBoeuf... --snip-- Why is this happening? Ironically, the mainstream media heavyweights may feel liberated from the responsibility of covering Obama administration malfeasances because of the existence of the alternative conservative media that have arisen over the past 20 years — talk radio, Fox News, and multiple websites...

Did you know that financial institutions all over the world are warning that we could see a “mega default” on a very prominent high-yield investment product in China on January 31st? We are being told that this could lead to a cascading collapse of the shadow banking system in China which could potentially result in “sky-high interest rates” and “a precipitous plunge in credit“. In other words, it could be a “Lehman Brothers moment” for Asia. And since the global financial system is more interconnected today than ever before, that would be very bad news for the United States as...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Don't believe the happy talk coming out of the White House, Federal Reserve and Treasury Department when it comes to the real unemployment rate and the true “Misery Index.” Because, according to an influential Wall Street advisor, the figures are a fraud. In a memo to clients provided to Secrets, David John Marotta calculates the actual unemployment rate of those not working at a sky-high 37.2 percent, not the 6.7 percent advertised by the Fed, and the Misery Index at over 14, not the 8 claimed by the government. Marotta, who recently advised those worried about an imploding economy to...

There are many reasons to be excited about bitcoin: it could enable totally new business and technology models; it resembles the Internet in the early ‘90s in the sense that it is a network that no one owns and everyone can contribute to; it could revolutionise legal concepts of ownership; it could disrupt the payments industry; and it could even become a huge tax haven. It could also flop.

One of the most overlooked aspects of the year just ended is the vindication of Chief Justice John Roberts -- a vindication that showed up as the national catastrophe known as ObamaCare got rolling. Roberts may have also doomed Hillary Clinton's chance to live in the White House again. The chief justice, an appointee of President George W. Bush and reputedly a constitutionalist in his jurisprudence, set his diabolical trap (diabolical to Democrats) on June 28, 2012, when he joined with the four liberal justices on the Supreme Court to uphold the constitutionality of ObamaCare. Conservatives and Republicans across the...

Overstock.com – the American internet retailer with over a billion dollars per year in sales – will accept Bitcoin starting in 2014. As Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne told the Financial Times: I think a healthy monetary system at the end of the day isn’t an upside down pyramid based on the whim of a government official, but is based on something that they can’t control. If there’s going to be some part of the population which adopts it… I think that we’ll get that business. And the people who switch to it will respect that we started adopting it. Europe...

Two-thirds of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they want their member of Congress to “keep their promises and stick to principles” as opposed to “compromise in a bipartisan way to get things done.” “From Obamacare on down, sticking to principle is where the Republican base is today,” said David Kirby, vice president of opinion research at FreedomWorks. “It’s an example of how off the Republican establishment is from their base.” Social issues have become less salient to GOP voters: 41 percent said gay marriage is not one of their top 10 issues. Asked about abortion, about one-third said it is...

In his latest book, Collision 2012, Dan Balz, a Washington Post writer, expresses his incredulity over “the inability” of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign to “humanize” its candidate. This is one reason why, in Balz’s estimation, Romney lost the 2012 election to Barack Obama. Yet there are two other reasons that he supplies to account for Romney’s defeat. The one pertains to the “technically superior” character of his rival’s campaign. The other is in regard to Romney’s “ambivalence” concerning his bid for the presidency. The first thing that should be noted is that if Romney’s consultants had difficulty in “humanizing” their...

More people value individual liberty, but we might be losing the moral guardrails. Are Americans becoming more libertarian on cultural issues? I see evidence that they are, in poll findings and election results on three unrelated issues: marijuana legalization, same-sex marriage, and gun rights. Start with pot. Last November voters in the states of Colorado and Washington voted to legalize marijuana, by a margin of 55 to 45 percent in Colorado (more than Barack Obama’s margin in the state) and by 56 to 44 percent in Washington. In contrast, in 2010, California voters rejected legalization 53 to 47 percent. These...

“Obamacare” looks increasingly inevitable, but one lawsuit making its way through the court system could pull the plug on the sweeping federal health care law. A challenge filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation contends that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional because the bill originated in the Senate, not the House. Under the Origination Clause of the Constitution, all bills raising revenue must begin in the House. The Supreme Court upheld most provisions of the act in June, but Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. took pains in the majority opinion to define Obamacare as a federal tax, not a...

In the short time since Pope Francis became leader of the Catholic Church, his every move has been scrutinized for signs of what his plans could be for his rule. And while his focus on austerity and the world’s poor has excited many who thought the Church was too out of touch with reality, traditionalist Catholics have been devastated. Francis’ decision to wash the feet of two girls, including a Muslim, during a traditional Holy Thursday ritual “has become something of the final straw,” writes the Associated Press. For traditionalists, it was a clear sign that Francis has no...