Free Republic

The watchword for 2018 is: UNHINGED!That refers to Wall Street, Washington, the Dems and the GOP, and all the far and near corners of the planet which are implicated in their collective follies.The latter begins with the fact that Imperial Washington has become so dysfunctional that the most powerful government on earth can't seem to keep its doors open for more than a few weeks at a time.The next continuing resolution (CR) deadline is January 19 and the route thereto resembles nothing less than kick-the-can-alley. It's strewn with $100 billion of unfunded disaster aid, defense and nondefense sequester caps...

I like Medved's take because he (unlike many other commentators) takes calls which are negative to his view. A good short article on Trump's budget is over at POWERLINE talking about the projected GDP (http://tinyurl.com/ltjnux5). The WASHINGTON TIMES notes that this budget is shocking! (http://tinyurl.com/mfd3yfq). To which I say.... Shock Away!

Buenos Aires (AFP) - A judge on Thursday ordered Argentina's former president Cristina Kirchner to stand trial on charges of financial mismanagement. It is the first of several cases against the combative 64-year-old leftist leader to go to trial. A string of cases targeting Kirchner and her rival, current President Mauricio Macri, are clouding Argentine politics ahead of mid-term elections later this year. Kirchner is accused of ordering the central bank to sell dollar futures at artificially low prices, causing Argentina to lose hundreds of millions. She denies wrongdoing. Kirchner's defenders say she should not be prosecuted for a mishandled...

The Republican caterwauling over Donald Trump reminds me of the lyric from “That’s Entertainment”: “There’s no ordeal/like the end of Camille.” Jeb Bush, Lyndsey Graham, and Mitt Romney have announced that they will snub the GOP convention. GOP big donors are closing their wallets. Some pundits and politicians are contemplating a third-party candidate to prove the purity of their conservative principles, even if it means Hillary Clinton will end up appointing 2-3 Supreme Court Justices. The litany of Trump’s sins is recited over and over, with the implication that such a vulgar blowhard is an unprecedented blot on American history.

Forget accumulating gold, printing money or buying mortgage-backed securities. One central bank is acquiring live ammunition and handguns instead in order to boost its security force. According to a government website for public procurements (via Bloomberg News), the National Bank of Hungry purchased 200,000 rounds of live ammunition and 112 handguns for its security company. In a letter to lawmakers, central bank Governor Gyorgy Matolcsy cited international security risks, like migration and terrorism, as reasons for the latest round of purchases. This comes as the central bank faced staunch criticism for spending money on real estate and fine art, including...

George Osborne was left reeling tonight after peers dramatically threw out the government's planned tax credits cuts - overturning the views of elected MPs. The House of Lords voted 289 to 272 delay the changes for three years until measures could be introduced to protect poor families. The tax credit cuts are central to the Government's plan to eliminate the deficit by 2020 - saving £4.4billion from the welfare bill. Downing Street said the UK was in 'unchartered waters' after the vote, which goes against centuries of tradition that the House of Commons decides financial matters.

Washington wants to spend more. Just four years ago, the nation's rapidly expanding debt was seen as Washington's number one crisis. When House Republicans took the majority in 2011, they made it their overarching mission to rein in spending. Together with the White House, they agreed to limit spending for the next decade by the use of budget caps. Now those spending ceilings are unpopular with members of both parties.

The great Achilles heel in the House Republican budget Tuesday can be found in a blue-and-white chart, tucked away on page 40 and mapping out a 10-year path for the annual appropriations bills that keep the government operating. On the surface, it appears to keep faith with the spirit of the discretionary spending caps under the 2011 Budget Control Act, a major priority for many fiscal conservatives. But to get the votes of party hawks, the budget makes a sweeping end-run around the caps by declaring an additional $94 billion as emergency spending for the war against terrorism.

New Jersey could be downgraded again because of its growing budgetary imbalance and underfunded public pension, Standard & Poor's Ratings Services warned on Monday. S&P had already cut the state's rating to 'A+' in April. Wall Street's two other main credit rating agencies soon followed in slicing the state to a single-A rating. That put New Jersey among the three lowest-rated states, along with California and Illinois.

In Fiscal Year 2013, the official federal deficit was $680 billion. Liberals have cheered this drop while subsequently ignoring how this deficit is both larger than all of Bush’s pre-recession deficits and is expected to grow dramatically over the next several decades.However, the Treasury Department’s annual report on the finances of the U.S. federal government shows that not only is $680 billion an incomplete measure of the federal government’s finances, it’s off by nearly a factor of five.From Just Facts Daily: The U.S. Treasury has just released its annual “Financial Report of the United States Government,” which provides an account...

If there were as many “fiscal conservatives” as there are people who claim to be, it is hard to see how Republicans would lose as many elections as they do. One frequently hears this political self-identification: “I’m socially liberal, but fiscally conservative.” Or: “If the Republicans weren’t conservative on so many social issues, I would vote Republican.” Or: “It’s too bad the Christian Right dominates the Republican party. I would vote for the Republicans on fiscal issues, but I can’t stand the religious Right.” The same sentiment holds among many inside the Republican party. Most secular conservatives and the libertarian...

OK, please educate me here-- How can this even be happening, constitutionally, when all fiscal bills MUST ORIGINATE in the House?

One of the dumbest things a country can do in a recession is raise taxes. Yet, after pronouncing the end of austerity, Italy's "grand coalition" government, led by Enrico Letta, is going to hike the VAT. Why? It seems they need to hike the VAT to pay for a decrease in property taxes. Recall that Silvio Berlusconi was only willing to take part in Letta's grand coalition on condition property tax hikes were rolled back. Letta agreed to do that, but now Letta says Italy needs revenue hikes to make up for it. Grand Coalition Splintering Curiously, the International Business...

A few honest left-wing Christians will admit that Jesus was conservative on issues like abortion and gay rights (he would oppose them). But they argue that Jesus would have supported their socialist economic agendas. But they fail to realize that Jesus was a small businessman for most of his adult life - he ran a carpentry business. Jesus was a businessman for a longer time than he was a preacher. His parable in Matthew 25:14-30 promoted responsible investment. Two workers were given 5 and 2 talents respectively by their master, and they doubled their master's money, and won their master's...

For some years now, we have been told about a major division within American conservatism: fiscal conservatives vs. social conservatives. This division is hurting conservatism and hurting America, because the survival of American values depends on both fiscal and social conservatism. Furthermore, the division is logically and morally untenable. A conservative conserves all American values, not just economic ones. By social conservatism I am referring to the second and third components of what I call the American Trinity — Liberty, In God We Trust, and E Pluribus Unum. It is worth noting that a similar bifurcation does not exist on...

The liberal Democrat political machine has been in high gear seeking restrictions on gun ownership ever since the December 11, 2012 massacre of twenty young children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown Connecticut. According to the left, that hideous event constitutes inarguable proof that America needs to rescind the Second Amendment. For the good of everyone, and particularly “the children,” the guns must go. It might seem difficult to surpass such phony liberal sanctimony. Yet during the last days of 2012, as the contrived “fiscal cliff crisis” reached its do or die moment, the same old class envy...

<p>Having completed yet another deficit-reduction agreement that somehow managed to increase the deficit, Congress and the Obama administration are now laying the groundwork for upcoming fights over the debt ceiling, the sequester, and the continuing resolution that will fund the government given continued refusal by Senate Democrats to pass a budget.</p>

Quantifying the "fair share"?

Dow up more than 300 points yesterday. Why? Because the ‘fiscal cliff’ has been averted. That’s what the papers say. But it just goes to show why it’s a mistake to read the news, except for a cynical guffaw. The real reason markets went up was because investors were reassured: Washington works in the same corrupt, self-serving and zombie-coddling way it always has. The politicians raised taxes, and put off worrying about spending cuts until sometime in the future. In other words, investors realised that they could trust the empty suits not to do anything different! How much of the...