Free Republic

In 72 nail-biting hours, an investment bank turned from healthy to nearly insolvent Bear Stearns Cos., the 85-year-old Wall Street firm known for its tough trading culture, was rescued from impending bankruptcy by a deal with J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. on March 16, 2008 -- making Bear the first major casualty of the financial crisis. The firm spiraled from being healthy to practically insolvent in about 72 hours. The meltdown began in earnest the evening of Thursday, March 13, 2008, when Bear executives made a shocking discovery: They were nearly out of cash. Faced with a slew of withdrawals...

The worst economic turmoil since the Great Depression is not a natural phenomenon but a man-made disaster in which we all played a part.In the second part of a week-long series looking behind the slump,Guardian City editor Julia Finch picks out the individuals who have led us into the current crisis Alan Greenspan, chairman of US Federal Reserve 1987- 2006Only a couple of years ago the long-serving chairman of the Fed, a committed free marketeer who had steered the US economy through crises ranging from the 1987 stockmarket collapse through to the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, was lauded with...

7,760.80 down -236.48 -2.96%

Barack Obama's White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, told business leaders assembled by the Wall Street Journal in November that the economic crisis facing the country is "an opportunity to do things you could not do before." That has to be one of the most chilling statements I have ever heard uttered by an American political official in my lifetime. It ranks right up there with the transparent arrogance of Clinton administration hotshot Paul Begala's July 1998 explanation of the use of executive orders by the president to go over the heads of Congress: "Stroke of the pen. Law...

AND NOW . . . amidst billowing clouds of fragrant, aromatic first- and second-hand premium cigar smoke. . . it is time for . . . that harmless, lovable little fuzz ball, the highly-trained broadcast specialist, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have, from behind the golden EIB microphone, firmly ensconced in the prestigious Attila-the-Hun chair at the Limbaugh Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies, serving humanity simply by showing up, and he’s not retiring until every American agrees with him, do NOT doubt him, with shrieks of joy at the mere mention of his name...

George Soros has always been the type of guy who went above and beyond For Example. On December 20, 1998, there appeared this exchange between Soros and Steve Kroft on "60 Minutes": Kroft: "And you watched lots of people get shipped off to the death camps." Soros: "Right. I was 14 years old. And I would say that that's when my character was made." Kroft: "In what way?" Soros: "That one should think ahead. One should understand that—and anticipate events and when, when one is threatened. It was a tremendous threat of evil. I mean, it was a—a very personal...

Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama favor government support for people losing their homes because they can’t repay their subprime mortgages. But what about the financial wheeler-dealers in the hedge fund industry who may stand to make billions of dollars from this terrible debacle? Foremost among them is billionaire hedge fund operator George Soros, who has committed his life and immense financial resources to bringing the Democrats to power in the White House.

Labor unions, environmentalists and liberal advocacy groups are getting behind president-elect Barack Obama's economic stimulus plans geared toward public works. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters, and the Economic Policy Institute Campaign for America's Future and People for the American Way Foundation, both backed by financier George Soros, are among groups launching a major lobbying push in favor of Obama's stimulus spending programs. Soros has been a harsh critic of the Bush administration. The AFL-CIO, Service Employees International Union, National Education Association and AFSCME government workers union are the main labor drivers...

<p>Forget Bernard Madoff’s $50 billion fraud. The SEC, and the press, should be focused on short-sellers’ attempts to destroy the U.S. banking system, Cramer said.</p> <p>Just in the 12 days leading up to the Nov. 24 Citigroup bailout, short selling accounted for over 49% of the total trading volume in that company’s stock. For JPMorgan Chase , it was 41%. Bank of America : 35%. Goldman Sachs : 40%. Morgan Stanley : 37%. Wachovia : 42%. Wells Fargo : 42%.</p>

  United Nations and its carefully managed One World Order The new world devised by Maurice Strong and George Soros  By Judi McLeod  Monday, November 24, 2008 Have you ever wondered how capitalism was pushed over the edge of the cliff just six weeks before the American presidential election? According to financial experts, the world, as we know it will change dramatically by the year 2012.  People, who provided for their families only three years ago, will be desperately searching for food. The story of the economic meltdown of 2008 begins and ends with the United Nations and its carefully managed...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Jim Rogers, one of the world's most prominent international investors, on Thursday called most of the largest U.S. banks "totally bankrupt," and said government efforts to fix the sector are wrongheaded. Speaking by teleconference at the Reuters Investment Outlook 2009 Summit, the co-founder with George Soros of the Quantum Fund, said the government's $700 billion rescue package for the sector doesn't address how banks manage their balance sheets, and instead rewards weaker lenders with new capital. Dozens of banks have won infusions from the Troubled Asset Relief Program created in early October, just after the Sept...

Fleckenstein to Shutter Short-Selling Hedge Fund December 8, 2008, 7:25 am Topics Hedge FundsIndustries Financial Services One of the most public defenders of short-selling is closing down his fund. Bill Fleckenstein, the hedge fund manager, wrote in his Daily Rap column that he was closing down his Fleckenstein Capital fund. Mr. Fleckenstein’s column was reprinted on the Calculated Risk blog. In it, the fund manager writes that he always intended to return to the long side of investing, as opposed to the short-seller’s strategy of betting against stocks. He became a short seller in part because of what he described...

> The New York Stock Exchange still far outweighs the London Stock Exchange — with the value of shares traded at the NYSE in 2007 nearly triple the $10.33 trillion traded in London. However, the financial sway of cities such as London has been growing faster than New York's. From 1997 to 2007, the new capital raised yearly in New York dropped by nearly one-quarter — while in London the figure almost quadrupled, according to the World Federation of Exchanges. >

BERLIN (Reuters) - The U.S. economy needs additional support measures of between $300 billion and $600 billion to help it withstand the financial crisis, U.S. billionaire investor George Soros was quoted as saying by a German weekly. Soros, one of the world's first and best-known hedge fund managers, told Der Spiegel magazine the United States needed an infrastructure programme, as well as a large economic stimulus package to provide its cities and states with sufficient cash. "It has exceeded my most daring expectations," Soros told Spiegel weekly in an advance copy of an interview due to be published on Monday....

The problem: the settlement system for the US government bond market has broken down THE US TREASURY market, the foundation of government bond and corporate bond markets worldwide, is suffering a crisis of confidence at the worst possible moment. Investors in treasuries are the lenders enabling the US government bail-out of the country’s broken financial institutions. That leaves them financing purchases of equity of volatile and highly questionable worth and backing a ragbag of distressed assets. For now, treasury yields are at record lows across the term structure as investors with cash to invest conclude that they can trust no...

Every passing day brings more news of more financial bailout requests and more congressional promises for more taxpayer funded bailouts. It's as if the concepts of freedom and capitalism have gone completely missing in Washington DC today. What started a few weeks ago as a $70 billion dollar mortgage crisis (caused by congressional Democrats) has fast become a multi-trillion dollar international disaster that crosses all industry boundaries. According to the same illustrious leaders in Washington DC who caused all of it to begin with, only printing more play money and putting American taxpayers even deeper in multi-generational debt, is the...

Above left: George Soros testifies before U.S. Congress, November 13, 2008. Above right: Ten months earlier, a much healthier-looking Soros speaks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 23, 2008.DEMOCRAT money man George Soros looks ill.At his November 13, 2008 testimony before Rep. Henry A. Waxman’s House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, a photographer captured Mr. Soros looking more frail and sickly than this reporter can ever recall seeing him. Soros turned 78 in August.The photo (above left) was published in a November 18 report at Bloomberg.com, titled, “Soros-Funded Democratic Idea Factory Becomes Obama Policy Front“.Judging by...

Thanks to Barak Hussein Obama and his communist ACORN friends, America is poised for a multi-trillion-dollar Depression. Ever since Obama decided to run for President last year, the stock market and “Main Street” – the backbone of our economic system – have been teetering on a Depression collapse. How the Democrat Party chose Obama to represent their party remains a mystery. Obama, the most liberal tax-and-spend Senator in the United States Congress, owes his Presidential candidacy to an unrepentant communist terrorist and childhood friend, William Ayers. The Democrat party must have known about Bill Ayers, the 1960s bomb-thrower who hates...

Wall Street and the Rise of Obama By Cliff Kincaid Joe Biden made headlines by talking about a “generated crisis” for Obama. But is the current financial meltdown another “generated crisis?” Why did this crisis suddenly occur only six weeks before the election? Is it just a coincidence that it occurred at a time when John McCain was leading in the national public opinion polls and appeared to be on his way to a November 4 election victory? “If it were not for the financial crisis,” commented Byron York of National Review, “McCain might have won” the election. It was...

SPIEGEL: So you support stricter regulation and more efficient control of the markets? Soros: Indeed. However, you have to recognize that regulations will never be completely successful and they will always be full of holes. You must constantly be ready to fill new holes. Actually regulation should be kept to a minimum, but there has to be some cooperation between market participants and authorities -- as was the case in the early postwar years. The Bank of England was a very successful regulator by cooperating with market participants. This cooperative spirit was broken by the market fundamentalists. SPIEGEL: Not in...