Free Republic

While Carly Fiorina has unquestionable debate skills, the more I research her background, the more troubled I become. While it's clear that she is -- politically speaking -- somewhere to the left of Jeb Bush on policy, it is her business record that is most alarming. Let me start with a little history lesson and a company called Lernout & Houspie. Founded in 1987 by two Belgians, L&H went public in 1995 on NASDAQ and operated from U.S. headquarters in Burlington, MA. Specializing in voice recognition software, L&H rode the tech boom to a peak market valuation of $10 billion....

Comparing net worth, income, debt and retirement nest eggs for the typical American. Is your network higher or lower than people of a similar age? How does your pay compare with others? Do you have more debt than the average Joe or Jane? Do you have more or less money set aside for retirement than your neighbors? Knowing how you stack up financially to your peers can offer up insight that allows you to make changes that can secure your financial future, so let's take a closer look at how you stack up against the average American.Net worth varies widelyLast...

I read decades ago that the average life expectancy of a fiat economy is about 40 years. I searched and quickly found this article titled "Gold and Fiat Currency: 40 Years Later," a four-year old article dealing with the ill-advised decision to have the world's reserve currency dump the gold standard.The US economy and those of the world in general is at or is fast approaching that life span of about 40 years. These economies are moving at different speeds and thus are of differing maturities but one thing is common. Too many of them rely on some form of...

Did you see what just happened? The devaluation of the yuan by China triggered the largest one day drop for that currency in the modern era. This caused other global currencies to crash relative to the U.S. dollar, the price of oil hit a six year low, and stock markets all over the world were rattled. The Dow fell 212 points on Tuesday, and Apple stock plummeted another 5 percent. As we hurtle toward the absolutely critical months of September and October, the unraveling of the global financial system is beginning to accelerate. At this point, it is not...

China looks like it is heading for its version of the 1929 stock market crash While all Western eyes remain firmly focused on Greece, a potentially much more significant financial crisis is developing on the other side of world. In some quarters, it’s already being called China’s 1929 – the year of the most infamous stock market crash in history and the start of the economic catastrophe of the Great Depression. In any normal summer, a 30pc fall in the Chinese stock market – a loss of value roughly equivalent to the UK’s entire economic output last year – after...

"The cashpoint at the Greek parliament is reported to have been topped up three times during an emergency session on Saturday night as ministers and MPs scrambled to get their own money out"

BEIJING — The International Monetary Fund no longer believes China’s tightly controlled currency is undervalued, an IMF official said Tuesday, a stance that might help Beijing in its wrangling with Washington over exchange rate controls. The IMF’s first deputy managing director, David Lipton, also said Beijing should work toward having a floating exchange rate in two to three years. The United States has long accused of China of suppressing the value of its yuan, giving its exporters an unfair price advantage and hurting foreign competitors. The IMF had considered the yuan undervalued — a source of tension between the fund...

In all this talk about whether the economy will be strong enough to support the first policy change of this cycle, and how utterly sad it is to even have to argue about it, the larger issues about the exact operational framework remain largely unexamined. The intent of the FOMC is to undergo an orderly transition from extraordinary policy positions toward a setting more like normal. To go from A to B is not as simple as plugging in a new number, a fact that Federal Reserve officials are very quietly dealing with. The Fed has a repo problem, one...

After a rough start to the year, economists are counting on the U.S. to bounce back in 2015 much like it did in 2014. Forecasters in the latest Wall Street Journal survey estimated the U.S. economy contracted at a 0.3% pace in the first quarter because of hits from winter weather and the West Coast port slowdown. But the panel, on average, sees annualized economic growth of 2.8% in the second quarter, supported by stronger job gains and wage growth. They also see the drag from weak trade and a strong dollar dissipating by the second half, delivering average economic...

Another market disruption from higher interest rates is virtually certain, according to former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. "Just remember we had the 'taper tantrum.' And we're going to get another one," Greenspan said Wednesday at the Global Private Equity Conference in Washington, DC. "This is a very tough period to get through," he added about the Fed increasing interest rates. "Normalization is great, but the process of getting there is going to be very rocky." Greenspan said there was no way to get around bond market volatility but said it was necessary to help the Fed and other central...

The U.S. won’t put a dent into poverty and income inequity unless Democrats and Republicans can agree to raise taxes on top earners like hedge-fund and private equity managers, President Barack Obama said Tuesday. Obama, whose longstanding proposal to raise taxes on what is known as carried interest has gained little traction in Congress, said fairness demands that the nation’s wealthiest pitch in as more and more Americans are falling behind. “If I were able to close that loophole, I’d be able to invest in early childhood education,” Obama said at a poverty summit at Georgetown University in Washington. “If...

The doomsayers always come out whenever stock markets get more volatile, like they have this month. These gloomy prophets go on and on about how derivatives are going to cause another financial crisis, or how valuations are stretched, or how equities will collapse whenever interest rates rise. Individual investors read the commentary by these experts and wonder if they should adjust their portfolios, or even sell everything and wait out the impending collapse. But before you do that, take a moment to calm down and have another think. In every single one of our 30 years in the business, someone,...

Historic slowdown looms as GOP fiscal policy lets economy choke Warning bells just keep getting louder and louder as the countdown to the Crash of 2016 keeps ticking. Wall Street’s in denial, but the Washington Post warns: “U.S. economic growth slows to 0.2 percent, grinding nearly to a halt.” USA Today hears “Bubble Talk” at the Vegas “Davos for Geeks.” Earlier the Wall Street Journal warned, “declining population could reduce global economic growth by 40%.” Then recently the “slow-growth Fed” was blamed. Wrong, former Fed chief Ben Bernanke counterattacked: “I’m waiting for the Journal to argue for a well-structured program...

Let’s face it, there is one route the finance guys have yet to try. You have to pray to a saint! Am I right?We had a problem. A BIG problem! Exactly, it was all about money. We were staring two mortgages in the face. Changing houses is easy if your bank goes along with the idea. We had found our new dream residence. Signed on the dotted line and then our bank refused us a bridging loan. We needed badly to sell our old house.I mused, stared at the sky. My wife was more practical.“We will ask St Anthony,”...

U.S. job growth likely rebounded last month and the unemployment rate probably dropped to a near seven-year low, signs of a pick up in economic momentum that could keep the Federal Reserve on track to hike interest rates this year. Nonfarm payrolls likely jumped by 224,000 after increasing by 126,000 in March, according to a Reuters survey of economists. The jobless rate is seen dropping one-tenth of a percentage point to 5.4 percent, which would be the lowest since May 2008. The Labor Department will release its closely followed employment report at 8:30 a.m. (1230 GMT) on Friday. "Our view...

Fed chief Janet Yellen rattled the stock market Wednesday when she said "equity market valuations at this point generally are quite high," saying that raises "potential dangers." She added that she doesn't see "the hallmarks of a bubble," but stocks retreated from opening gains and traded lower, though the major averages closed off intraday lows. Are stocks overvalued? After a six-year bull market, a correction should be expected, although the odds favor a more garden variety downturn of 20% or so over a period of several months, not the painful free-falls of 2000-02 or 2008. Wednesday's selling prompted IBD to...

This past year's choppy indecisive unstable investment market continues as last Friday's IBD down grades our week-old uptrend back to "market under pressure".  Last week's rosy close turned sour for both the S&P500 and the NASDAQ as the major indexes immediately began a week of declines only to turn back up after the outlook was downgraded.  Precious metals weren't immune to the chaos either as they too stammered and fell back toward bases reached last Oct.That's been pretty much the story of the past half-year with market uncertainty taking over.  The irony is that it's actually been a pretty...

Supposedly the top finance news stories this week have been the Greek Bailout, the Trade Fast Track Vote, but with NASDAQ's all time high we're getting even more buzz on our new stock rally. This past week's seen the S&P500 leap almost 2% and gold fall more than 2%.  A couple percent may not seem like much but having it happen in just five trading days means we got annualized returns of a 2/3 loss on gold and 50% gain on stocks.Weird how it is though that with stocks it means that we're now officially in a "confirmed uptrend",...

  The total privately owned stocks and mutual fund shares adds up to a soaring record total $21,169,400,000 --according to the latest Federal Reserves Flow of Funds Report.  Yeah I see all the hands waving --and the big question that follows has to do with population and inflation.  We went through this back on an earlier thread when the press was tootin' about how America's private wealth was supposedly at an all time high but only as a total of inflated dollars.  The average American's total holdings in real dollars is still less than it was eight years ago. ...

  YTD  --January, February, and March 2015:   Looking ahead  --April, May, and June 2015:    Hope everyone enjoyed their first quarter!  Not bad --not only have both gold and the S&P500 come out positive but the NASDAQ punched above 3% (annualized to more than 14%) but silver's come out 6% ahead -a 26% rate/year.  Market prices are great the way we can follow up-to-the-second reports, but for stats on the general economy we'll have to wait until the folks who're paid for being smarter than us are ready to make up their minds.  What we got so far is that...