Free Republic

President Obama's new budget, with its trillion dollar deficit and interest payments of $5.6 trillion on the debt over the next decade, is only part of America's unfunded liability. The state and local pension crisis is the subject of a new report by the Republican staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, entitled "State and Local Government Defined Benefit Pension Plans: The Pension Debt Crisis that Threatens America." Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican and ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, said last month, "Today, public pension debt stands at an alarming $4.4 trillion with outstanding state and...

As west sinks, eastern economies soar A few years ago, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to imagine European leaders, begging bowl in hand, turning to China for a financial bail-out. Equally, few would have predicted that Chinese leaders visiting Washington would publicly berate US policymakers about their mismanagement of the worldÂ’s biggest economy. But the world has changed. The implosion in 2008 of the financial system in the US and Europe and last yearÂ’s European sovereign debt crisis have accelerated the shift of economic momentum to Asia. In 2012, the US and Europe are likely to be...

Conservatives in crisisBy Brent Budowsky - 01/11/12 06:45 PM ET As conservatives prepare for an urgent meeting this weekend to discuss their options in the 2012 campaign, they face an epic crisis of identity and electability that creates rising odds for the reelection of President Obama. Throughout the 2012 campaign, there has not been one credible conservative candidate for the presidency. Conservatives now face a choice between a front-runner of no lasting convictions — who has lost campaigns for two out of three major offices he has previously run for and who champions a predatory capitalism that applauds layoffs when...

Markets Of Shame Before The Collapse: Crisis, Crisis, Everywhere Politics / Credit Crisis 2011 Dec 14, 2011 - 03:03 AM By: Danny Schechter Earlier this week, Stephen Colbert announced dramatically that there were important developments underway in Europe that we should know about. True to form, Colbert’s Repor didn’t talk about the big problem. His story, ha ha ha, was about a butter shortage in Norway. Talk about going from the obscure to the ridiculous. We all know that European countries have been wrestling with what to do about saving the Euro. There have been warnings of an economic catastrophe...

Confused why Tim Geithner has seemingly booked a weekly round trip ticket to Brussels to give the Eurocrats their weekly pep talk (much to his endless humiliation as Europe Tells Geithner To Take His Advice And Shove It reminds us)? Art Cashin explains not only this, but why the biggest threat to Obama's reelection chances is not who the GOP candidate is in November, but what happens in the EURUSD as early as today. L astly, by implication, Cashin shoots down any hope that US decoupling from Europe is even remotely possible... something anyone who actually has seen a full...

With the euro zone crisis still dominating headlines, developments in the European Union's eastern neighborhood are perhaps not drawing as much attention as they deserve. Ukraine has had to be content with being part of the EU's European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) and Eastern Partnership and been given a “to-do-list”, which, over time seems to become longer and more difficult. Being situated at the heart of Europe, Ukraine is without doubt a bona fide European state. Kiev has craved closer ties with the EU, but progress has been slow, because the EU has preferred to keep the country at arm's length....

"The Occupy Wall Street protests are moving into the neighborhood. Finding it increasingly difficult to camp in public spaces, Occupy protesters across the country are reclaiming foreclosed homes and boarded-up properties, signaling a tactical shift for the movement against wealth inequality." If the so-called president of the US really wanted to do something productive with the stroke of his Executive Order pin he could mandate that all homes in the US be priced at current market values and set 30 year fixed at 4.50 %. Then start a PRO MANUFACTURING-AMERICAN initiative to build products in America where someone earning $8-9...

Austerity, slowing growth, and the threat of sovereign default pose major risks to companies and countries with significant exposure to Europe. S&P 500 companies derive 14 percent of sales and 18 percent of profits from Europe, according to a report by Bank of America. The staff at Business Insider put together a list of 15 companies with the most sales exposure to Europe. The majority of this exposure is in core Europe, with tech being particularly volatile.

"There is definitely going to be another financial crisis around the corner," says hedge fund legend Mark Mobius, "because we haven't solved any of the things that caused the previous crisis." We're raising our alert status for the next financial crisis. We already raised it last week after spreads on U.S. credit default swaps started blowing out. We raised it again after seeing the remarks of Mr. Mobius...he pointed to derivatives, the financial hairball of futures, options, and swaps in which nearly all the world's major banks are tangled up. Estimates on the amount of derivatives out there worldwide vary....

The man who headed up the US government's investigation into the causes of the 2008 financial crisis says that we haven't learned our lesson and that conditions are ripe for another crisis to hit financial markets. Reuters columnist David Cay Johnston: _________________ The U.S. politician-businessman that Congress put in charge of determining the reasons for the 2008 financial crisis has a sobering message for us: "It's going to happen again." Phil Angelides, the real estate developer and former California state treasurer who chaired the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, said on Friday that "all across the marketplace the warning signs were...

If you have food reserves, I caution you to take stock of your current situation and decide where you should keep your emergency food. Some of the food you purchase needs to be rotated, such as canned goods, dried eggs, powdered milk and perishables like winter squash, potatoes and other vegetables. The food with the shortest shelf life needs to be accessible so it can be rotated and used faster. I suggest you keep long-term food storage in a room that has a lock and key. It might be necessary to lock it with a dead bolt. Hide an extra...

Roubini Nailed The Euro Crisis Six Years Ago, And Was Told To Shut Up By Italy's Finance Minister Gus Lubin Nov. 11, 2011, 11:54 AM ROUBINI: There's Only One Thing That Will Stop The 'Upcoming Disaster' In Europe Excellent pickup from Adam Button at ForexLive... Six years ago Nouriel Roubini was speaking at Davos when he was interrupted by a cry of "Go back to Turkey!" by Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti. Here's what Roubini was saying that pissed off the Italian: My current concerns are that, while EMU has lead to a process of convergence of nominal variables (inflation,...

Obama reads riot act to European leaders in late night phone calls and orders them to take more dramatic action on debt crisisBy Daily Mail Reporter Last updated at 12:55 PM on 11th November 2011 Barack Obama has read the riot act to the leaders of several European countries - saying more dramatic action is needed to avert a eurozone meltdown. The U.S. President made telephone calls to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian President Giorgio Napolitano late last night. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the president had demanded faster action from Europe. It came as...

Greek party leaders have named who will head the country's new coalition government. Barring any last-minute changes, sources said house speaker Filippos Petsalnikos would take over the post of Prime Minister. 'We have agreed on Petsalnikos but things can change between now and when the prime minister sees the president,' a source close to the discussions said.

Greece's Prime Minister has told Sky News the referendum on the the eurozone bailout plan will no longer go ahead - and it was never his intention for it to happen. "The referendum was never an end in itself," George Papandreou told the cabinet according to statements released by his office. "We had a dilemma - either true assent or a referendum. I said yesterday, if the assent were there, we would not need a referendum." Mr Papandreou had been under pressure to stand down, as a split emerged in his government over the plans to hold a public vote...

With an election year coming with all the finger pointing, and lies that will be said, we must keep this going because the public has a very short memory!!! PLEASE SHARE BEFORE IT IS REMOVED... This video clearly shows that George Bush warned Congress way back in 2001, that this economic crisis was coming, if something was not done. But, the Congress refused to Listen, along with the arrogant Congressman, Barney Frank. This video says it all. The liberal media reportedly did not want this video on You Tube; it was taken off. This link is of the same video,...

It is ironic that, as the President predictably endorses the violent, odiferous Occupy Astroturf movement, the demand was emitted for a trillion dollars to be spent repairing the environment. I knew they were disgusting, but in such few numbers their impact can’t be that bad.Some commentators have noted the irony of these dedicated and sincere foot soldiers of the Left decrying Wall Street while lauding Wall Street’s most notorious hired gun (which they, again ironically, share with Big Labor), Barack Hussein Obama.The real irony, of course, is in the pundits’ own failure to recognize the classic third year of a...

When the financial crisis hit three years ago, many gleeful leftists assumed that the long-anticipated failure of the free-market system had finally come and that this crisis would do for capitalism what the fall of the Berlin Wall did for communism. In fact, it is not capitalism that is failing. We are beginning to see this in Europe, where the debt crisis is a crisis of the welfare state. I think we are also about to see it, possibly in a more spectacular way, in another leading example of a capitalism-socialism hybrid: the so-called "state capitalism" of China. As the...

The current reported unemployment rate is over 9%. The number of underemployed workers in the United States is well over 20%. There is no sign of these disheartening numbers going down anytime soon. The economic and fiscal policies of the current administration virtually assure that these numbers will, at best, remain the same and, at worst, skyrocket to levels not seen since the Great Depression.Since government interference and political buffoonery in the free market does nothing but hamper any chance of an economic recovery an alternative solution, possibly considered a drastic solution by some, is obviously necessary.Consider this: In 1950...

US President Obama has given the Europeans a harsh lecture on the dangers of their ongoing debt crisis. Offended by the unsolicited advice, Europeans have suggested the US get its own house in order first. Obama's remarks were "arrogant" and "absurd," German commentators say on Wednesday.

Christine Lagarde has signalled that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) may have to tap its members – including Britain – for billions of pounds of extra funding to stem the European debt crisis. Photo The head of the IMF has warned that its $384bn (£248bn) war chest designed as an emergency bail-out fund is inadequate to deliver the scale of the support required by troubled states. In a document distributed to the IMF steering committee at the weekend, Ms Lagarde said: "The fund's credibility, and hence effectiveness, rests on its perceived capacity to cope with worst-casescenarios. Our lending capacity of...

Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos sought to reassure nervous markets and EU partners on Saturday by pledging his debt-ridden country would do whatever it takes to avoid default and stay in the euro zone. During an IMF meeting in Washington that was dominated by fears that Greek debt woes could trigger a wider European crisis, threatening banks and hurting the world economy, Venizelos dismissed any talk of bankruptcy.

We Are Heroes, Who Need to Create a Crisis: SEIU’s Stephen Lerner at Progressive Summit Tells Unions, Community Organizers and Students They Need to Escalate Protests, Break Laws, Occupy Abandoned Houses and Spread the Crisis All Over U.S.

HERAKLION, Greece—The first time he despaired of his debts, Vaggelis Petrakis drank a poisonous brew of beer and gasoline. A note he left didn't mention the financial woes of his fruit and vegetable business, of which his family was well aware. Instead, he left instructions for his children on how to look after his animals. "Put mother rabbit in a different place from the little rabbits," the note began. Then he had second thoughts and called his son, Stelios, who took him to a hospital. Mr. Petrakis survived that suicide attempt. But Greece's collapsing economy and the ruin of his...

A while ago, Glenn Beck had a guest on his TV show that helped Glenn demonstrate what a U.S. financial collapse would look like. He had it laid out across something like 14, 19, or 21 days, with each day showing the situation getting worse. There were a couple of "weekend spans" in which the guest said, "Nothing really happens these two days because it's the weekend." IIRC, Glenn was working from a large graphic of thin, six foot+ high markers that helped show the progression of days in an arc behind him. I know this isn't a lot to...

When you look at the average price of gold over time, there are several interesting trends that emerge.  Investors buy gold as a hedge against inflation and, over a very long period of time, that holds up.  More often, investors are buying gold as insurance in a crisis; as a safe harbor investment in times of uncertainty.  Let’s start by looking at the average price of gold between 1979 and 1989.  I’m using average prices to even out the parabolic demand periods which can throw off analysis.  The data comes from the World Gold Council. In the late 70s and...

Germany—buoyed by its cadre of family-owned niche companies—appears to be weathering the global slowdown, countering fears that Europe's economic powerhouse faces a sharp downturn that could deepen the region's debt crisis. A pair of bullish reports, on German employment and manufacturing, were reassuring on Wednesday: Unemployment remained at its lowest level in nearly two decades last month, while July machine orders jumped 9% from a year earlier. The latest data suggest that Europe's largest economy, which is expected to grow 3% this year, remains resilient, even as evidence mounts that the U.S. and much of the rest of the world...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama offered moral support Saturday to federal emergency management workers hunkered down for Hurricane Irene's weekend march up the East Coast and 14,000 active-duty and National Guard troops were put on standby for post-storm relief work. "Everybody here, you guys are doing a great job," Obama told dozens of workers on a visit to the Federal Emergency Management Agency's command center. Fully activated and operating around the clock, the center helps coordinate the federal response to natural disasters.

The character of a man is made manifest in times of crisis! Obama's narcissism, selfishness, incompetence, and callousness have reached infamous levels.

The date will be on or about September 30th. The issue will be the need to pass a Continuing Resolution by the House. For more than 850 days the US has gone without a budget. The House passed one not long ago; the Senate tabled it. The Administration has not offered up one either. The absence of an approved budget means that the only way the country can continue to operate is through a series of temporary extensions. The last time we went through a vote on a continuing resolution was just four months ago. That fight went down to...

WASHINGTON - Today, Congressman John Sullivan (R-Tulsa, OK) and two of his colleagues, Reps. Allen West (R-FL) and Bill Shuster (R-PA) sent the following letter to President Obama requesting that he ask for Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s immediate resignation. The text of the Sullivan letter is below: “Dear President Obama: The recent decision by Standard and Poor’s (S&P) to downgrade our nation’s AAA credit rating has left our economy on the brink of disaster and created economic turmoil across the world. The American people have lost confidence in your Administration’s ability to manage our economy and major changes, starting with...

Okay, this video is based on actual conversations with this insane woman named politicalarticles. She has a channel and her own website. She says the debt crisis is a conspiracy by Christian terrorists and not because of over spending on welfare. She also called Alan Keyes an Uncle Tom and says anyone against socialism is a right wing terrorist like Andres Brevik. WARNING! CONTAINS LIBERAL TALKING POINTS! VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED!!!

The U.S. dollar may weaken and Treasury yields rise when Asian markets reopen on Monday, though any selling in response to ratings agency S&P's downgrade of the United States is likely to be tempered by the escalating crisis in the euro zone. The S&P cut in the U.S. long-term credit rating by a notch to AA-plus is an unprecedented blow and results from concerns about the nation's budget deficits and climbing debt burden. It called the outlook "negative," signaling another downgrade is possible in the next 12 to 18 months. "The initial reaction will be a high degree of uncertainty...

The ECB will hold on Sunday afternoon, a crisis meeting. Per Telefonkonerenz mit dabei: alle wichtigen Finanzminister und Vertreter der G7. By using this Telefonkonerenz: all major finance ministers and representatives of the G7. Themen: PIIIGS-Bonds und US-Downgrade. Topics: PIIIGS bonds and U.S. downgrade. Möglicher Finanzcrash am Montag. Update: G20 halten Krisenkonferenz bereits Samstag Abend (US-Ostküstenzeit). Possible financial crash on Monday. Update: G20 already hold emergency meeting Saturday night (Eastern time). - Michael Mross Interview mit Russia Today. - Michael Mross interview with Russia Today.

Rush speaking today on his show: I think that sums up who is taking whom hostage today. We are being held hostage by the Democrat Party. We are being held hostage by the Washington, DC, Ruling Class. And just think, the Senate is voting right now on measures to raise the US debt ceiling. In a few moments, in a very few moments, this crisis will be over and everybody can sigh (sighs) and move on to other things. But how long will it be before we have the next crisis? Whatever happened to the "no drama Obama" we were...

How you view the debt (ceiling) deal depends to a degree on whether you think it was a debt ceiling deal or a debt deal. If you think it was a debt ceiling deal, you tend to believe that the Republicans got the better of the negotiation. If you think it was a debt deal, you tend to think that an opportunity to spare the Republic and its children the wrenching pains of insolvency was fecklessly cast aside. The Democrats tended to portray the "crisis" as a debt ceiling crisis because they, of course, do not wish to acknowledge that...

Debt Crisis: Republicans Scent Victory With 'Sugar-Coated Satan Sandwich' Both sides express unease at the deal,but it is Democrats who have given most ground to raise debt ceiling Ewen MacAskill 1 August 2011. It was easy wandering round the corridors of Congress yesterday to spot who had won the debt standoff. In huddles with party colleagues or heading off to caucus meetings to discuss the details of the deal or standing in front of TV cameras, it was the Republicans who had all the smiles. Democratic members of Congress looked uneasy, at times shifty; and some downright were angry. "If...

President Barack Obama alienated 37,00 twitter followers last night with scores of tweets urging followers to contact their local Congressman over the debt deal. With his approval rating sitting at an all-time low of 40 per cent amidst the debt crisis, tens of thousands of Americans unfollwed the President to avoid the deulge. The president’s staff sent a total of 118 tweets asking his followers to write their Republican lawmakers to demand a compromise on debt legislation. The first tweet read: 'The time for putting party first is over. If you want to see a bipartisan #compromise, let Congress know....

If you think the current debt ceiling circus is bad, just wait for the real debt crisis. Peter Coy at Businessweek writes today that the debate over raising the debt limit ignores just how ailing the nation's fiscal health really is. Here are the highlights from his piece: The national debt is only a small part of U.S. liabilities. Failure to raise the debt ceiling would hurt the global financial system, but the threat is minimal compared to the real danger: Sharply rising healthcare costs combined with the aging baby-boomer generation. The U.S. is in danger of reaching a generational...

In recent weeks, there have been many metaphors and analogies from President Obama in describing the negotiations on the debt and the deficit. He's used terms like "shared sacrifice," "eat our peas," and putting aside "our sacred cows" in the name coming to an agreement. Speaking at the University of Maryland, Mr. Obama said Lincoln had his convictions, but he was constantly making concessions and compromises. "[T]he great emancipator was making a compromise in the Emancipation Proclamation because he thought it was necessary in terms of advancing the goals of preserving the Union and winning the war," Obama said. The...

If someone you knew claimed to have bought a new house for $16, you'd probably expect it to be a rundown hovel. But for Kenneth Robinson, that princely sum could see him as the new owner of a $300,000 home in an well-manicured part of Flower Mound, Texas. On June 17, Mr Robinson took advantage of a little known Texas law to move into the abandoned home. The house had been in foreclosure for more than a year and its owner walked away. Then, the mortgage company went bust. After months of research, Mr Robinson used the obscure law 'adverse...

RUSH: The Republicans remain very nervous, ladies and gentlemen. These idiots at Moody's, or as Stuart Varney says, "Moodis," the rating service clearly joining with the Democrats to put pressure on the House Republicans, the Senate Republicans as well by claiming if we don't raise the debt limit then all is lost, the US reputation gone forever. So the pressure mounts on the Republicans in the House, and so far they're standing firm. I think Obama's cracking, folks, I think he's cracking up. The way I interpret this, this guy's had the road paved for him from the get-go, he's...

At 2 p.m. today, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) is going to make some news. Right Turn has learned from sources familiar with McConnell’s thinking that McConnell is going to suggest an alternative to President Obama’s “grand bargain.” Rather than continue a rotten deal (immediate tax hikes now in exchange for phantom cuts later), he is going to put out a ”debt disapproval plan.” It works like this: The plan “would give the President the ability to request smaller increases in the debt ceiling — coupled with proposed spending cuts of at least $2.5 trillion over the next year....

MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Spain's prime minister has hit out at the European Commission and Germany on Thursday for singling out the country's produce as a possible source of a deadly bacterial outbreak in Europe, and said the government would demand explanations and reparations. Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said the EU commission "was slow because from the moment the minister in Hamburg had ruled it (E. coli outbreak) was not caused by Spanish cucumbers it should have reacted more decisively and faster." The bacteria outbreak has killed 17 people, most in Germany, over the past week. The crisis paralyzed Spanish...

Geithner Says New Financial Crisis Coming Lloyd Grove, The Daily Beast May 19, 2011, 2:12 PM At a New York screening of the new HBO adaptation of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Too Big to Fail, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said that not only is our financial system not too large to go bust—but we’re headed for another crisis. The Wall Street meltdown of late 2008 was, in real life, a harrowing event, triggering a terrible recession from which we’re still recovering. In the HBO movie Too Big to Fail, it’s also a surprisingly gripping melodrama—a clash of greedheads and egomaniacs desperate...

A study by the Detroit Regional Workforce Fund found that 47 percent of adults in the city are ‘functionally illiterate’.‘Functionally illiterate’ means they struggle with day-to-day tasks, like reading job applications, following a bus schedule or understanding product labels. Those deemed illiterate however have been educated. The report indicated that the same group found to be ‘functionally illiterate’ had completed element education, where reading is taught and half of the group had either a high school diploma or a GED. Nearly half of the city’s population lacks the necessary skills to work in even the most entry level and remedial...

If you thought the housing crisis was bad, think again. It’s worse. New data just out from Zillow, the real-estate information company, show house prices are falling at their fastest rate since the Lehman collapse. Average home prices are down 8% from a year ago, 3% over the quarter, and are falling at about 1% every month, according to Zillow. And the percentage of homeowners in negative-equity positions — with a home worth less than its mortgage — has rocketed to 28%, a new crisis high.

As liberals grapple with the reality that the nation's welfare state is financially unsustainable, they've renewed the myth that all would be swell if President Bush hadn't squandered the surpluses that were projected a decade ago. This argument received a boost over the weekend with an article by the Washington Post's Lori Montgomery, who wrote: "The nation's unnerving descent into debt began a decade ago with a choice, not a crisis." The reality is a bit more complicated. To start with, it's important to emphasize that the projected surpluses were just that -- projections. As the Congressional Budget Office cautioned...

Economies across the developed world are facing the threat of an aging population, increasingly reliant on a shrinking working age population, according to data from the OECD. While instances such as Japan are well known, the problem is endemic across Europe, with many countries seeing their dependency ratios, that is the amount of workers per retirees, shrink as we approach 2050. That has the potential to cause serious funding problems for everything from social security, to pensions, to health care across the developed world, and wreak havoc on countries fiscal policies. We've ranked the OECD countries projected to have the...

The Obama administration moved swiftly Monday to downplay ratings agency Standard & Poor's downgrade of its U.S. credit outlook, calling the decision a political judgment that should not be taken too seriously. The timing of S&P's announcement was unwelcome for the White House, coming just as President Obama tried to regain the initiative on the deficit debate in Washington. Last week Obama laid out his plan to reduce the budget deficit by $4 trillion over 12 years, trying to give markets confidence that he was serious about tackling U.S. fiscal woes. House Republican leader Eric Cantor on Monday called the...