Free Republic

Ask any entrepreneur you know and they’ll tell you that raising money is the hardest thing they have ever done. Sure there is a ton of money out in the world. That’s why prices for dot coms went way up. And despite the subsequent bust, it didn’t stop money from moving into real estate. And when real estate busted, it hasn’t stopped money from moving into metals, oil and other commodities with astonishing rapidity. Despite a sluggish economy in the U.S. in the last decade, world GDP had roughly doubled in that time from $32 trillion in 2000 to $63...

Former money manager Ann Barnhardt, who in November of 2011 made the decision to cease operations of her brokerage firm and return funds to her customers citing “systemic” problems within the entire financial industry, has issued a new warning about the stability of US banks and the safety of individual deposit accounts. The warning, stemming from a recent federal appeals court ruling surrounding customer funds lost during the 2007 collapse of Chicago futures broker Sentinel, indicates that individuals who lose deposited funds because a financial institution improperly manages that money, even if those funds are supposed to be “segregated” from...

The United States contributed tens of billions of dollars to International Monetary Fund bailouts in the 1990s, starting with the Mexican peso devaluation of 1994-95. When the Asian financial crisis hit in 1997, the Clinton Administration let Japan take the lead in bailing out Thailand, but joined the IMF interventions in South Korea, Indonesia, Brazil, and Russia. And in 1998, the U.S. agreed to a $17.9 billion increase in its contribution to the IMF. Now it is the United States that is seeing its currency devalue on world markets, dropping 12% against the euro since January. Over the 4th of...

The House of Representatives' decision last week to move the fast track trade bill closer to final passage has moved the nation closer to a major dollar crisis -- and to years of economic stagnation. The dollar has been so strong for so long that many Americans take the advantages for granted. And chronically scarce investment opportunities throughout Europe, Asia, and Latin America have understandably generated confidence that the world's investors are stuck lending to the United States however bad America's national balance sheet (its current account) gets. In fact, leading economic voices across the spectrum, from the National Association...