Free Republic

The United Nation’s top climate change official Christiana Figueres announced this week that the group is actively working to "intentionally transform" the world's economic development model, a task she called the "most difficult" one the group has ever undertaken. "This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history," UNFCCC Executive Secretary Figueres stated at a press conference in Brussels Tuesday. The "intentional" reordering of the global economy, she told reporters, "will not happen overnight" due to the "depth of the transformation":...

Rajan: "Today, debt is making it difficult for developed countries to resume pre-2008 growth rates" http://t.co/hi4QoAqSA8 — Project Syndicate (@ProSyn) January 18, 2015 Today, debt is making it difficult for developed countries to resume pre-2008 growth rates, let alone restore the levels of GDP that would have been attained if the subsequent Great Recession had not happened. Meanwhile, industrial countries’ overall debt/GDP ratios are continuing to grow. In emerging markets, slow growth in the advanced economies has shut down a traditional development path: export-led growth. As a result, emerging markets have had to rely once again on domestic demand. This...

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) - The global economic outlook just got brighter after this week's big stimulus from the European Central Bank, leading policymakers from around the world said Saturday. In a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, they said a perkier Europe, coupled with a prolonged period of low oil prices, could help shore up the global economy following a period of underperformance that has prompted many forecasters to reduce their growth forecasts. "Lower oil prices and the big decision by ECB could further improve world economic outlook," said Haruhiko Kuroda, governor of the Bank of Japan.

The economic prophet who foresaw the Lehman crisis with uncanny accuracy is even more worried about the world's financial system going into 2015. Beggar-thy-neighbour devaluations are spreading to every region. All the major central banks are stoking asset bubbles deliberately to put off the day of reckoning. This time emerging markets have been drawn into the quagmire as well... "We are in a world that is dangerously unanchored," said William White, the Swiss-based chairman of the OECD's Review Committee. "We're seeing true currency wars and everybody is doing it, and I have no idea where this is going to end."...

Iran sees no sign of a shift within OPEC toward action to support oil prices, its oil minister said, adding its oil industry could ride out a further price slump to $25 a barrel. The comments are a further sign that despite lobbying by Iran and Venezuela, there is little chance of collective action by the 12-member OPEC to prop up prices - entrenching the reluctance of individual members to curb their own supplies.

LONDON – The global economy's problems seem to be multiplying. Hours after the leaders of the world's 20 most developed economies sought to boost confidence by promising to increase global output by $2 trillion over five years, Japan said it had fallen into recession. That leaves the country – the world's third-largest economy – on a long and growing list of troubled economies. China is slowing as well, and Europe can't seem to take off. Among major economies, only the United States and Britain are growing at decent rates, and how long that lasts depends on how much trouble their...

Despite all the gloom and doom from people like Paul Ehrlich and the warmers who say global warming will stunt food production, the reality is far different. It seems the increase in CO2 along with adaptive crop genetics may have combined to produce this bonanza. Based on the latest forecasts for production and utilization, world cereal stocks at the close of crop seasons ending in 2015 would surge to 627.5 million tonnes, up 8.3 percent from an already large volume at the start of the season and its highest level in 15 years. Maize would account for the biggest increase,...

In July 2014, ECRI’s International Cyclical Outlook reported “signs of spreading weakness in overall economic growth.” The early warning was based on our Long Leading Index of Global Growth (LLIGG), which was already “hovering near its worst levels since 2011” (top line). The LLIGG subsumes ECRI’s individual long leading indexes for 20 economies that are designed to be mutually comparable across countries, making it appropriate to combine them into a global index. At the time, we observed that, with our analogous Coincident Index of Global Growth (CIGG) “having rolled over” (bottom line) and the LLIGG “in a cyclical downturn, reports...

Barack Obama pledged to radically transform America when he took office. He didn't stop at America. President Obama's greatest legacy may be the radical reshaping of the global map. Fast forward three years. Here's where we stand. Given Europe's failure to stand up to Russian aggression in Crimea, Russia's borders have expanded to include Eastern Ukraine, northern Kazakhstan and larger portions of Moldova. As of 2014, Russia had consolidated its hold on Transnistria, the Eastern region of Moldova, which is heavily Russian; Russia had annexed Crimea; Russia had placed troops inside Eastern Ukraine. But it didn't stop there. Russia began...

Russia’s increased military buildup along Ukraine’s eastern border signals the possibility of a full-scale invasion and one that could lead to a worst-case global scenario, pitting NATO allies against old Russian foes and debilitating the global economy to nothing short of catastrophe if nothing is done to stop Moscow’s aggression, U.S. officials and analysts told TheBlaze. And the crisis seems to be heading in that direction. On Friday, more Russian troops and armored vehicles were seen offloading from ships in the Crimean harbor, reporters in the area said. The day before, Russia had already massed more than 8,000 troops and...

If you have been waiting for the "global economic crisis" to begin, just open up your eyes and look around. I know that most Americans tend to ignore what happens in the rest of the world because they consider it to be "irrelevant" to their daily lives, but the truth is that the massive economic problems that are currently sweeping across Europe, Asia and South America are going to be affecting all of us here in the U.S. very soon. Sadly, most of the big news organizations in this country seem to be more concerned about the fate of Justin...

Over the years, I’ve shared many charts, graphs, and tables to help people understand that the welfare state is fundamentally unsustainable. And, assuming there’s not genuine entitlement reform, many of these fiscal estimates show that the United States has a very perilous future. According to the Bank for International Settlements, the United States is in worse shape than every nation other than Japan and the United Kingdom. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States has a bigger long-run fiscal problem than all countries other than New Zealand and Japan. And according to International Monetary Fund...

Last week, as many of gold investors may already know, we saw the largest one-day withdrawal in over a year as the JPMorgan (JPM) warehouse withdrew a stunning 321,500 ounces of gold (10 tonnes). Additionally, we also saw a large withdrawal from the Scotia Mocatta warehouse, which brings the total withdrawal for the week to almost 5% of all COMEX gold stocks. .... As investors can see, last week's action finally saw a rise in registered gold by a small 5,002 ounces. But that was paired with a huge 350,968 ounce withdrawal from eligible gold stocks - the vast majority...

Ballooning debt levels in advanced economies pose biggest threat to the global economy, World Economic Forum report warns ___ pose the biggest threat to the global economy in 2014, a report by the World Economic Forum has warned. Ahead of next week's WEF annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, the forum's annual assessment of global dangers said high levels of debt in advanced economies, including Japan and America, could lead to an investor backlash. This would create a "vicious cycle" of ballooning interest payments, rising debt piles and investor doubt that would force interest rates up further.

While the mainstream economists were quick to believe that the U.S. economy is growing as the key stock indices suggest, I stood by my opinion that it isn’t. After the first estimates of gross domestic product (GDP) for the U.S. economy came out, a wave of optimism struck and stock markets rallied. It seemed as if everything was headed in the right direction. Sadly, they were wrong. In its third and final revision of GDP, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported that the U.S. economy grew at just 1.8% in the first quarter of 2013 from the fourth quarter...

While an economic slowdown is looming over the global economy, no one seems to care, as stock markets continue to reach new record-highs—giving investors false hopes of economic growth. But how long can this mirage actually last? The economic slowdown in the global economy I’m talking about is a worldwide pullback in growth. Take India as the first example. According to India’s Central Statistics Office, the Indian economy is growing at five percent—its slowest pace in a decade! The director general of the Confederation of Indian Industry was quoted late last week as saying, “With no visible pick-up in any...

This essay is a call to citizens to put real work, ingenuity, and community above false promises and disgraced authority. Empowerment, in this essay, is not about pumping up self-esteem but rather equipping citizens to take control of the global economy. When political and economic leaders fail to act effectively, we will have to be the ones to succeed. Capitalism stands and falls upon care, not the superficial “I-feel-your-pain” type, but the deep, committed “I-give-a-damn” type. What does it mean to give a damn? “I give a damn” means: I get broadly and deeply involved, I refuse to ignore what...

Vedomosti reports that Sergey Glaziev, the economic mastermind behind the Eurasian Union, sent an official report to Kremlin, stating the necessity of a radical revamp of Russia’s economic policy in the wake of the second wave of global economic crisis. “Unknown sources” have provided the media with the contents of this highly controversial document, igniting a fierce debate in the press and blogosphere. Glaziev’s report features apocalyptic predictions in regard to the state of the world economy but the most interesting part of the text refers to the so-called “currency wars”. Basically, one of the most influential advisors of the...

Last August, a Vermont farmer named Roger Pion was arrested with a small amount of marijuana on his person. At the station, the cops allegedly roughed him up. Not a scholar of passive resistance, Pion returned to the jail after his release driving a 20,000-lb. Case tractor. He then crushed six Orleans County cop cars and a police van. Now, months later, all the cars have been replaced. Roger Pion was arrested again, then placed in a mental health facility. But his legacy lives on, in the hearts (and jammies) of freedom fighters across the land.

Monday’s crash in the gold market has been a long time coming. Buying opportunity? Only if you enjoy pain. And a few of you do. I know it. I could hear the howling from the mercantile exchanges. I don’t want to write I told you so, but I did. Many of us warned against the modern gold rush. But we weren’t looking at a crystal ball, it was history talking.