Free Republic

"We accept euros," say signs in the windows of several Manhattan retailers. The Continental currency is up 14% against the dollar the past 12 months. Measured against a basket of currencies of big economies, the dollar is at a 25-year low. The pendulum may be about to swing the other way, however. Europe's growth rate is expected to sputter to 1.7% this year from 2.6% in 2007. If the European central bank cuts interest rates to kick-start the economy, the dollar will benefit. Foreign direct investment into the U.S. is also increasing the demand for dollars; it rose 62% in...

The euro has suffered its sharpest drop in four years as a blizzard of weak data from Germany, Belgium, France, and Spain spark fears that economic contagion may be spreading from the Anglo-Saxon world to Europe. Spain's business federation warned that Spanish unemployment will rise by 500,000 by the summer unless the government takes "valiant measures" to offset the housing and construction crash. "For every dwelling not built, two workers will lose their jobs," said the group's president, Gerardo Diaz Ferran. The country's credit group ASNEF said the volume of personal loans had dropped 30pc in the first quarter, the...

The fallout in Germany from exposure to America's subprime crisis may be far bigger than previously feared. One major newspaper puts estimated losses at a whopping 70 billion euros, while a prominent politician warns that the US recession has already arrived in Germany. German banking executives fear the current financial crisis is quickly shaping up to be the worst since 1929. Friday, Bild newspaper cited banking insiders who predict that total losses at German banks from the American subprime mortgage loan crisis could hit the €70-billion ($111 billion) mark. The paper reports that Germany's banking supervisory authority BaFin has calculated...

CARACAS (AFP) - Venezuelan state oil giant PDVSA has decided to sign some oil contracts in euros in the face of a plummeting dollar, local media reported, citing officials. "There are some contracts in euros, contracts for crude, products and spot markets in euros. This is a subject which we are working on," said energy minister and Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) chief, Rafael Ramirez, in an interview with the journal El Universal published Friday. It remained unclear which oil sales would require payment in euros. Venezuela, Latin America's leading petroleum producer, has previously backed Iran's proposals for OPEC to abandon...

Few Americans have heard of credit default swaps, arcane financial instruments invented by Wall Street about a decade ago. But if the economy keeps slowing, credit default swaps, like subprime mortgages, may become a household term. Credit default swaps form a large but obscure market that will be put to its first big test as a looming economic downturn strains companies’ finances. Like a homeowner’s policy that insures against a flood or fire, these instruments are intended to cover losses to banks and bondholders when companies fail to pay their debts. The market for these securities is enormous. Since 2000,...

The dollar fell to a record low versus the euro on Tuesday after the Federal Reserve cut its key interest rate by an aggressive half a percentage point to prevent the U.S. economy from weakening further on turmoil in the credit and housing markets. Policy-makers reduced the benchmark lending rate between banks by the most since November 2002 to 4.75 percent, the lowest level since May last year. It was the first rate cut in four years. The Fed also lowered the discount rate it charges for direct loans to banks by a half-point. Traders sold the dollar as lower...

If you live in the Bavarian region of Chiemgau, you can exist for months at a time in a euro-free zone of hills and lakes with a population of half a million people. Restaurants, bakeries, hairdressers and a network of supermarkets will accept the local currency: the Chiemgauer. Notes are exchanged freely like legal tender. You can even use a debit card. Petrol stations are still a problem, but biofuel outlets are signing up. Dentists are next. The Chiemgauer is one of 16 regional currencies that have sprung into existence across Germany and Austria since the launch of the euro...

Courtesy of Cis Spook Besides the monuments and plaques, Belgians remember U.S. troops from World War II in other ways. The annual Tanks in Town rally in Mons, Belgium, which is the capital of Hainaut Province, drew hundreds of participants this year, many of whom dressed in WWII garb. A Belgian military association is organizing a three-day camping trip that may be of great interest to Americans, particularly servicemembers. But there’s more to the trip than a full cooler and a flaming campfire. The association, Je Me Souviens, which means “I Remember,” will stage an outdoor re-enactment called “A...

If our cultural past isn't worth defending, why should our future be? ---------------------- Five years after the (a) all too predictable blowback to U.S. foreign policy born of decades of poverty and desperation or (b) controlled explosion by Bush-Cheney-Halliburton-Zionist agents (delete according to taste), I get a lot of mail on the lines of: C'mon, man, cut to the chase--are we gonna win or lose? Well, let me come at that in an evasive non-chase-cutting manner and circle around to it very gradually. I gave a speech in Sydney last month and among the audience was a lady called Pauline...

The goals of Freerepublic are "to champion causes which further conservatism in America.". I have noticed there are a couple of posters on this forum who are actively promoting another country/supranational organization's (super-)national interests which are opposite of Ameirca national interests. For instance, there is a well-known Euro poster from Spain who, from what he posts and supports, is an ardent and enthusiastic supporter of the anti-American European Union. Since such posters clearly disagree with the stated goals of this forum as expressed by the founder as "pro-God, pro-life, pro-family, pro-Constitution, pro-Bill of Rights, pro-gun, pro-limited government, pro-private property rights,...

But for most, a missile was too distant, too unlikely a threat to interrupt their daily lives. ``A better question is when's the next earthquake,'' Ernie De Matteis said as he flipped through a newspaper in San Francisco.

TEHRAN, May 15 (UPI) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced Friday that in July Iran will abandon dollar payments for its oil and natural gas exports in favor of euros. The move comes amid a standoff between Tehran and Washington over Iran's nuclear fuel enrichment program. The Bush administration insists the program is cover for a nuclear weapons program, a charge that Iran denies. All current international oil transactions on the New York Mercantile Exchange and London's International Petroleum Exchange are priced in dollars. Middleeastforex.com reported May 13 that Ahmadinejad announced the change Friday during a visit to Baku, Azerbaijan....

At the height of the morning commute on March 11, 2004, ten bombs exploded in and around four train stations in Madrid. Almost 200 Spaniards were killed, and some 2,000 wounded. The next day, Spain seemed to be standing firm against terror, with demonstrators around the country wielding signs denouncing the “murderers” and “assassins.” Yet things did not hold. Seventy-two hours after the bombs had strewn arms, legs, heads, and other body parts over three train stations and a marshaling yard, the Spanish government of José María Aznar, a staunch ally of the United States and Great Britain in Iraq,...

EUROPE DAY Did you know there was a "Europe Day"? A day to celebrate the EU? Me neither. But May 9th is it. Here's some thoughts of mine on the poor doomed European Union: Question: What do you get when you take two world wars, add the two most malign ideologies of the century, throw in genocide, the collapse of religious institutions, radical secularism, a political elite sealed off from opinions it finds distasteful, spiraling social costs, deathbed demographics and growing numbers of an unassimilated immigrant population? Answer: You get Europe in the new millennium - mired in aggressive pacifism,...

The idea Canadians have replaced doxology with doughnuts is less Timmy than tinny ------------------------------ The other week, the Toronto Star assigned Kenneth Kidd to do a big story on Tim Hortons as an icon of Canadian identity. This was a couple of days before that odd incident with the fellow going into the men's room and blowing himself into a big bunch of Timbits, so nothing tricky was required, just the usual maple boosterism. And naturally the first thing Kidd did was call up the Canadian media's Mister Rent-A-Quote, Michael Adams, the author of Fire And Ice and American Backlash,...

Two days before Christmas, I was in a store in Vermont buying a last-minute gift when the owner’s twentysomething daughter walked in. “Thanks for the sweater, mom,” she said. “Kevin really liked his present, too.” “But it’s only the 23rd,” said the bewildered lady. “Mom,” sighed the kid, wearily. “How many times do I have to tell you? We always open our presents on the solstice.” A couple of weeks later, a neighbor of mine in New Hampshire got married. He’s a biker and a tattooist, and he’s deeply spiritual. So he and his bride were married in the middle...

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Morten Messerschmidt, a member of the Council of Europe and of Denmark's Parliament for the Danish People's Party. He is involved in the debate about the effects of Muslim immigration to Europe, Islam and terrorism. FP: Morten Messerschmidt, welcome to Frontpage Interview. Messerschmidt: Thanks. FP: Tell us the impact that Muslim immigration is having on Europe. Messerschmidt: We are seeing over the entire continent how the extreme groups of Islam are trying to impose their fundamentalist ideology, which has created awful results in the Middle East, to our part of the world. We see it...

Asia Rising Donald Rumsfeld infamously made a distinction between Old Europe and New Europe. He has been scored ever since for his sweeping and impolitic language, but he wasn't sweeping enough: In geopolitical terms, all of Europe is old, the world's most tourist-friendly museum piece. For the future of high-stakes U.S. diplomacy and of great-power politics, look no further than Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to the U.S. It is Asia that should occupy an outsized place in our strategic thinking, and it is Europe that should be the relative afterthought, not the other way around. The media and foreign-policy...

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Wednesday denounced what he called widespread fraud at Italy's general election and demanded his center-left rival Romano Prodi be stripped of victory. Prodi immediately condemned Berlusconi's efforts to overturn the results of the April 9-10 election, the closest in modern Italian history, and his allies warned that the prime minister was stoking dangerous political tensions. The stand-off between the leaders of Italy's two main coalitions pushed Europe's fourth largest economy into uncharted waters and toward a full-blown crisis. "The election result has to change because there was widespread fraud," Berlusconi told reporters after meeting President...

've had a recurring experience in the last few months. I'll be reading some geopolitical tract like Sands Of Empire: Missionary Zeal, American Foreign Policy, and the Hazards Of Global Ambition by Robert W. Merry, and two-thirds of the way in I'll stumble across: "With the onset of the Iraq War and European opposition, many Americans embraced a severe anti-European attitude. 'To the list of polities destined to slip down the Eurinal of history,' wrote Mark Steyn in the Jewish World Review, 'we must add the European Union and France's Fifth Republic.' "

A number of Middle Eastern central banks said on Tuesday that they would seek to switch reserves from the US greenback to euros. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) said that it was considering moving one-tenth of its dollar reserves to the euro, while the governor of the Saudi Arabian central bank condemned the decision by the United States to force Dubai Ports World to transfer its ownership to a "US entity", the UK Independent reported. "Is it protectionism or discrimination? Is it okay for US companies to buy everywhere but it is not okay for other companies to buy the...

Iran and Venezuela joined forces to undermine the U.S. dollar. Last year, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced that his country's plans to move its foreign-exchange holdings out of the dollar into the euro, calling for the creation of a South American central bank designed to hold in euros all the foreign-exchange holdings of the participating countries. On the other hand, Iran started since 2003 demanding oil payment in euros, not dollars, although the oil itself was still priced in dollars. The Islamic Republic has already announced plans of opening the Iranian Oil Bourse in March, challenging by that the NYMEX...

It is easy to damn the 1930s appeasers of Hitler — such as Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain in England and Edouard Daladier in France — given what the Nazis ultimately did when unleashed. But history demands not merely recognizing the truth post facto, but also trying to reconstruct the rationale of something that now in hindsight seems inexplicable. Appeasement in the 1930s was popular with the European public for a variety of reasons. All of them are instructive in our hesitation about stopping a nuclear Iran, or about defending the right of Western newspapers to print what they wish...

In the decade since they voted to join the European Union the islanders of the Aland archipelago in the Baltic Sea have been outvoted and overruled by Brussels, time and again.Now Aland, a unique, autonomous region of Finland, is about to teach Brussels a lesson in democracy it may never forget. Shopkeeper Alf-Erik, in Aland, a revolt by islanders has been brewing for some time Thanks to a quirk of early 20th-century history, Aland's 26,000 people are essentially sovereign co-rulers of their home nation of Finland. As such, they can veto any international treaty that Finland wants to enter, including...

The headquarters for the company I work for is just outside of Paris. I got back this last Saturday from a week long business trip. Being as right wing as a guy can be, I really did not want to go. I was in the Navy and have traveled abroad extensively. I had been to Europe on vacation in 1996 as well. Since 9/11, I have had no desire to leave the US. My classmates hailed from the countries of South Africa, Brazil, Spain, Thailand, and Hungary. I decided to leave the Justin's here in the States and go incognito...

Three years ago -December 2002 - I was asked to take part in a symposium on Europe and began with the observation: "I find it easier to be optimistic about the futures of Iraq and Pakistan than, say, Holland or Denmark." At the time, this was taken as confirmation of my descent into insanity. I can't see why. Compare, for example, the Iraqi and the European constitutions: which would you say reflected a shrewder grasp of the realities on the ground? Or take last week's attacks in Jordan by a quartet of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's finest suicide bombers. The day...

The European Right? Rimbauds, Not Rambos By Mark Steyn Most of us are familiar with the subtle differences between even relatively compatible cultures. One notes, for example, that what’s known to Americans as “The Hokey-Pokey” is called in Britain “The Hokey-Cokey.” Just when you think you’ve figured out what it’s all about, it turns out you haven’t quite grasped all the nuances. Accustomed as I am to these linguistic variations, I was nevertheless brought up short browsing the Guardian the other day and reading that Angela Merkel’s election victory would make Germany “the 20th of the 25 EU nations with...

After the 2000 elections, George W. Bush became president without a majority vote. Many Europeans snickered at the sorry spectacle of the world's oldest continuous democracy devolving into Third-World election chaos. Few critics cared to hear about the nature of America's two-century-old Electoral College.

The new chasm between Europe and the United States seems to widen still — even as transatlantic diplomats assure us that it has narrowed — despite a common heritage and a supposedly shared goal of global democracy, free markets, and defeating terrorists. Europeans sell arms to autocratic China that will threaten democratic Taiwan. They legitimize the terrorists of Hamas and Hezbollah, and mostly caricature the American efforts at democratizing the Middle East. All this follows the past appeasement of Yasser Arafat, strife over the Kyoto protocols and the International Criminal Court, and the use of the United Nations to hamstring...

Responding to Islamist terrorism in Britain and elsewhere, Germany is considering introducing a Muslim public holiday. As Mathias Dopfner, chief executive of Axel Springer, put it: "A substantial fraction of Germany's government - and, if polls are to be believed, the German people - believe that creating an official state Muslim holiday will somehow spare us from the wrath of fanatical Islamists." Great. At least the 1930s' appeasers did it on their own time. But, in recasting appeasement as yet another paid day off, the new proposal cunningly manages to combine the worst instincts of the old Europe and the...

WASHINGTON — The NATO alliance so far has refrained from considering the withdrawal of hundreds of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons from military bases in Europe, despite growing calls to do so by members of European governments and political figures (see GSN, April 22). Opponents had hoped to see the question discussed at a biannual meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels on June 9. That did not occur, NATO spokesman James Appathurai said in a telephone interview yesterday. During a classified meeting of NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group during the session, he said, German Defense Minister Peter Struck described the state...

My favourite headline last week was in the International Herald Tribune: "EU leaders and voters see paths diverge." Traditionally in free societies, when the paths of the leaders and the voters "diverge", it's the leaders who depart the scene. But apparently in the EU this is too vulgar and "Anglo-Saxon", and so the great permanent Eurocracy decided instead to offer up Euro-variations on Bertolt Brecht's jest about the need to elect a new people. Whatever the rejection of the European constitution means, it certainly doesn't mean the rejection of the European constitution. "I really believe the French and Dutch did...

A couple of days before Sunday’s referendum on the European constitution, Jean-Claude Juncker, the “president” of the European Union, let French and Dutch voters know how much he values their opinion: “If at the end of the ratification process, we do not manage to solve the problems, the countries that would have said ‘No,’ would have to ask themselves the question again,” “President” Juncker told the Belgian newspaper Le Soir. Got that? You have the right to vote, but only if you give the answer your rulers want you to give. But don’t worry, if you don’t, we’ll treat you...

The Eurofetishists can't seem to agree their line on this referendum business. On the one hand, the Guardian's headline writer was packing up and heading for the hills — "Europe is plunged into crisis" — and EU leaders warned that "Europe" might cease to function. Oh, come on. We won't get that lucky. On balance, Jean-Claude Juncker, the "president" of "Europe", seems closer to the mark in his now famous dismissal of the will of the people: "If it's a Yes, we will say 'on we go', and if it's a No we will say 'we continue'." And if it's...

WESTERN EUROPE It is likely Western Europe will slowly be Islamicized over the next two centuries, even in time the remoter areas like Norway, Ireland, and Portugal, as Muslim populations, through high birthrates and immigration, surpass the numbers of native Europeans. Only if the Muslims become more secular, in the manner of many Turkish Muslims, by several generations in Western Europe will that region avoid becoming Austro-stan, Belgo-stan, Holland-stan, etc. What might eventuate will be some sort of hybrid Euro-Middle Eastern culture, such as Albania and Bosnia have today. Both those nations, formerly purely European racially and at least nominally...

If I were Pope - and no, don't worry, I'm not planning a mid-life career change - but, if I were, I'd be a little irked at the secular media's inability to discuss religion except through the prism of their moral relativism. That's why last weekend's grand old man - James Callaghan - got a more sympathetic send-off than this weekend's. The Guardian's headline writer billed Sunny Jim as a man "whose consensus politics were washed away in the late 1970s". Is it possible to have any meaningful "consensus" between, on the one hand, closed-shop council manual workers demanding a...

If I were Pope — and no, don't worry, I'm not planning a mid-life career change — but, if I were, I'd be a little irked at the secular media's inability to discuss religion except through the prism of their moral relativism. That's why last weekend's grand old man — James Callaghan — got a more sympathetic send-off than this weekend's. The Guardian's headline writer billed Sunny Jim as a man "whose consensus politics were washed away in the late 1970s". Is it possible to have any meaningful "consensus" between, on the one hand, closed-shop council manual workers demanding a...

Q: Conservative essayists have been tossing around the idea that America's natural allies are in a cultural alliance known as the Anglosphere: the U.S., U.K., Australia, New Zealand, and Canada (with perhaps India as an honorary member). I have also heard that Margaret Thatcher is somehow involved in the creation of a foundation to promote the idea. What are your thoughts? Hanson: I’ve read bits and pieces of such doctrines, though not the book by, I think, James Bennett on the topic. At first glance, it makes sense. Australia, the UK, and the United States in the present war against...

I am, as Tony Blair might say, deeply passionately personally deeply personally opposed to abortion. But, unlike him, I think it ought to be an election issue.Not because of my personal beliefs: I happen to believe a lot of what we call "late-term abortion" is in reality early-term infanticide, but, if you don't accept that that's a human life that's being destroyed, my deeply personal passionate beliefs aren't likely to sway you one way or another. That's where so-called progressive politicians such as Blair and John Kerry have it all backwards: the point about abortion is not that it's a...

BEIJING -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggested Sunday that European governments are irresponsible if they sell sophisticated weaponry to China that might one day be used against U.S. forces in the Pacific. "It is the United States, not Europe, that is defending the Pacific," Rice said. She spoke in Seoul, the penultimate stop on her weeklong tour of Asia

President Bush supposedly charmed the Europeans, and now they purportedly don't hate us any more. But from the recent trip, it is clear that Americans can still expect two things from the European public and its leadership: deep-seeded anti-Americanism and embarrassing contradictions. In that context, let us examine all the recent Eurobabble.

Austin Bay goads me into losing my blogospheric virginity. It was over in minutes, but the audience made me nervous. -snip- 8. Well, since you asked, Austin… First, it’s true that the Central and Eastern European nations are markedly more America-friendly than the western ones. However, their long-term prognosis is not significantly different: they face the same deathbed demographics — right now, the only European country breeding at replacement rate is Muslim Albania. Declining population isn’t necessarily a problem — my own New Hampshire town, for example, survived a 130-year population decline from 1820 to 1950, caused by the opening...

The adage goes that the European Union counts on a more sophisticated and nuanced "soft power." In reality, that translates to using transnational organizations and its own economic clout to soothe or buy off potential adversaries, while a formidable cultural engine dresses it all up in high sounding platitudes of internationalism and multilateralism. Everything from idly watching Milosevic and the Hutus butcher unchecked to unilateral intervention in the Ivory Coast or no action in Darfur usually finds either the proper humanitarian exegesis or the culpable American bogeyman. Yet contrary to the mythologies of Michael Moore and the high talk of...

U.S. can sit back and watch Europe implode February 27, 2005 BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST Advertisement A week ago, the conventional wisdom was that George W. Bush had seen the error of his unilateral cowboy ways and was setting off to Europe to mend fences with America's ''allies.'' I think not. Lester Pearson, the late Canadian prime minister, used to say that diplomacy is the art of letting the other fellow have your way. All week long President Bush offered a hilariously parodic reductio of Pearson's bon mot, wandering from one European Union gabfest to another insisting how much...

A week ago, the conventional wisdom was that George W. Bush had seen the error of his unilateral cowboy ways and was setting off to Europe to mend fences with America's ''allies.'' I think not. Lester Pearson, the late Canadian prime minister, used to say that diplomacy is the art of letting the other fellow have your way. All week long President Bush offered a hilariously parodic reductio of Pearson's bon mot, wandering from one European Union gabfest to another insisting how much he loves his good buddy Jacques and his good buddy Gerhard and how Europe and America share...

Recent books have raved that the European Union is the way of the future. In contrast, a supposedly exhausted, broke and post-imperial United States chases the terrorist chimera, running up debts and deficits as it tilts at the autocratic windmills of the Arab World. That caricature frames the visit of the President to Europe as transatlantic pundits demand a softer George Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld. Stop the childish bickering and the tiresome neocon preening, we are lectured ad nauseam by Euro and American elites. Don’t divide Europe, we hear endlessly. Even though the European press, EU leaders, and...

Recent books have raved that the European Union is the way of the future. In contrast, a supposedly exhausted, broke and post-imperial United States chases the terrorist chimera, running up debts and deficits as it tilts at the autocratic windmills of the Arab World.

Monday, Feb. 21, 2005 9:03 p.m. EST Soros: Oil Exporters Behind Dollar Fall The weakness of the U.S. dollar is no accident, billionaire George Soros says - it's the result of Russian and Middle East oil exporters switching some of their oil transactions from dollars to euros. "The oil-exporting countries' central banks have been switching out of dollars mainly into euros, and Russia also plays an important role in this. That is, I think, at the bottom of the current weakness of the dollar," Soros told Reuters. Speaking to delegates at the Jeddah Economic Forum in Saudi Arabia, the famous...

'The change for the moment is more in tone than substance," wrote Alec Russell, reporting on President Bush's European outreach in yesterday's Daily Telegraph. You don't say. My colleague is almost right. In Brussels yesterday, the President's "charm offensive" consisted of saying the same things he always says ¨- on Iraq, Iran, Palestine, the illusion of stability, the benefits of freedom, the need for Egypt and Saudi Arabia to get with the programme, etc. But, tone-wise, the Bush charm offensive did its best to keep the offensiveness reasonably charming ¨C though his references to anti-Semitism and the murder of Theo...

Two years ago, I wrote that America and Europe were now engaged in a new Cold War. And just like the old Cold War it's not only about Jacques Chirac issuing Krushchevian boasts to Washington that "we will bury you"; it's also got room for the occasional détente phase. So this month in Washington is Be Nice To Europe month. For weeks now, the Administration's hardline Zionist Christian fundamentalist neocon unilateralist warmongers have been coming into the office to find smiley-face reminders from the White House pinned to the desk: "Have you hugged a European foreign minister today?" And they've...