Free Republic

A carefully researched study by economists at the Brookings Institute estimates that the Chinese government inflates its gross domestic product by about 12%.  The reason this is important is that even with the Chinese overestimating their national wealth, they still have a huge economy.  And the current downturn in economic growth in China threatens to hurl the world into a serious recession. Zero Hedge: Since China managed to weather the fallout from the financial crisis without registering much of a slowdown in its "official" GDP figures, playing "guess the real growth rate" has become one of the most popular parlor...

Cityscape of Pretoria, the capital of South Africa in 2010. The official who oversees South Africa's capital, Pretoria, says the city will have a new name by the end of next year. The mayor of Tshwane municipality, Kgosientso Ramokgopa, says all of Pretoria will be renamed Tshwane by the end of 2012. The ruling African National Congress party has been working for years to rename the capital Tshwane, but the move has been strongly resisted, mainly by white South Africans. Ramokgopa says the issue is currently before the culture minister for approval, adding his municipality would be "resolute and stubborn"...

As every major developed economy hits Bass's Keynesian Endgame, the status quo is set to change dramatically. Nowhere is this climax playing out louder than in Europe and the implicit solution of Germany-uber-alles (while seemingly inevitable though nevertheless lengthy in execution) is likely to not sit well with many of the EMU nations. To wit, The Telegraph today reports that Britain's Foreign Office is advising its overseas embassies to draw up plans to help expats should the collapse of the Euro turn explosive. Almost incredibly, a senior minister has revealed that Britain is now planning on the basis that a...

Pumping money into the “disappointingly slow” economy hasn’t fixed the it yet, so why not try again – and this time go for a hail mary! That is Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke’s game plan. The Fed is looking to inflate the economy even more by adding $75 billion a month to the it over the next eight months, totaling to a $600 billion pump. Of course, that does not include the $35 billion a month the Fed is expected to spend to replace retiring mortgage bonds. Previously in my articles Like a Thief in the Night Part I and Part...