Free Republic

The Federal Reserve has created America’s version of India’s caste system. At the top of the neo American caste system are bankers and the political donor class. The top 1%. The other 99% are losing ground to the Brahmin Banker Class. In 1913, Woodrow Wilson and his progressives promised that the Federal Reserve would avert both depressions and inflation, while preventing the wealthy from controlling America’s financial markets at the expense of the poor, the new untouchable class. More than a century later, it’s clear that was all a lie, and the Fed has helped create a permanent American underclass...

The combined net worth of the 10 richest people in finance reached $446.9 billion in 2024.Here, Visual Capitalist's Niccolo Conte ranks them based on Forbes data as of Feb. 1, 2024.The Oracle of Omaha93-year-old Warren Buffett heads the list. The chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway has a net worth of $128.7 billion.Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway portfolio is 62% invested in only three stocks: Apple (42.9%), Bank of America (10.2%) and American Express (9.1%).Based in Omaha, Nebraska, where he has spent much of his life and where Berkshire Hathaway is headquartered, Buffett is also the 6th richest person in the world.In...

Seems like a plethora of historical examples would be ample evidence, but the average leftist isn’t really the thinking type. The dirty little secret about the wealth distribution of the leftist ruling class is that they only redistribute the wealth—to themselves. Have you ever considered why leftist ruling-class leaders are extraordinarily rich while they also preach wealth redistribution? And why is it that leftists never bring this up? Look at the evidence down through history and around the world, and you will see the same pattern repeated with every leftist regime. Let’s begin with the now-defunct USSR, which was supposed...

A longtime investment banker named David Webb is exposing a global plot dubbed “The Great Taking” to steal stocks and other assets from Americans and people across the world, explains The New American magazine Senior Editor Alex Newman in this episode of Behind The Deep State. As part of the plan, laws were quietly changed to strip security owners of their property rights and instead give them a “security entitlement.” Now, those assets have been used as collateral by financial institutions as part of the massive derivatives complex. And when the system crashes, which Webb suspects will happen this...

According to mythology, Hades made King Sisyphus roll a huge boulder endlessly up a steep hill in Tartarus. Unfortunately, the modern day version of Sisyphus is the middle class pushing a boulder endlessly up a steep hill while the top 1% (the elite class) horde more and more wealth. An example of the Sisyphus economy? The top 1% of earners (blue line) have seen an incredible increase in net worth, particularly after Fed Chair Alan Greenspan’s big rate cuts (green line) from 2000 to 2004. Each subsequent rate cuts under Bernanke (2007-2008) and Yellen (who just kept rates too low...

In early February, Mark Zuckerberg added $28 billion to his wealth in a matter of hours as Meta’s shares soared after the company announced its first dividend payout.This follows a banner year for the Facebook founder, who saw his wealth surge 173% in 2023. Like Zuckerberg, many tech billionaires added huge sums to their wealth as the stock market rebounded.Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld shows in the following graphic from Preyash Shah, the biggest winners and losers in billionaire wealth in 2023...The Top Risers and FallersBelow, we rank the world’s top 50 billionaires by their net change in wealth:Adding $113.5 billion...

America's wealthiest families held an astounding $8.5 trillion in untaxed profits in 2022...This term, the Supreme Court will decide Moore v. United States...According to a report by The Lever, the Moores' case has been backed by billionaire think tanks and conservative dark money groups.

On Saturday, August 8, 2009, in a wood-paneled room inside the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor became Justice Sonia Sotomayor, ***Sotomayor was worth around $750,000 at the time. Now, she is worth an estimated $5 million. Her position has brought her fame, and that fame has led to book deals, providing $3.8 million in earnings since she joined the court. The post also allowed her to hire staff, which she used for many things—including reportedly pumping up her book sales, something that drew scrutiny but apparently stayed within the bounds of the law, if only because Supreme Court justices have...

Bidenomics is the pride of the donor class. After all, much of the Federal spending splurge in green energy has gone to big donors, including the Chinese. The top 1% of US earners now have more wealth than the middle class. Biden’s song. All he wanted to do was destroy the US middle class. And The Fed’s snakejuice flows to the 1%.

For many kids, playing in the National Basketball Association (NBA) is a dream come true. But for many ballers plucked out of high school or fresh out of college, getting drafted and earning millions of dollars isn’t the fast break they think it is. **SNIP** Kenny Anderson Chris Washburn Delonte West Rick Mahorn Tim Duncan Erick Strickland Glen Rice Gilbert Arenas Larry Johnson Randy Brown Dan Issel Derrick Coleman Jason Caffey Antoine Walker David Harrison Latrell Sprewell more...

Stop complaining about President Joe Biden’s economy, Americans! You’re wealthier than ever! Yes, CNN reached new heights of gaslighting when it tried to sell that line with a straight face to readers. CNN Reporter and in-house Bidenomics shill Matt Egan ran a false story riddled with utter nonsense. “Americans have never been wealthier,” read Egan’s headline. “Fueled by a resurgent stock market and rising home values, US household wealth hit a record $154.3 trillion during the second quarter of this year, according to federal data.” But as Heritage Foundation economist EJ Antoni bluntly put it, CNN’s framing was flat-out “wrong.”...

What does it take to be wealthy in America? It depends, of course, on where one lives.According to the 2023 Modern Wealth Survey by Charles Schwab (see below), you need a net worth of at least $1.7 million to be "financially comfortable" in San Francisco, and $4.7 million to be considered "wealthy."And in Houston? $606k is "financially comfortable," while $2.1 million is "wealthy."As Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld notes:Wealthy in America: A Closer LookOverall, the net worth that Americans say that is needed to be “wealthy” in the United States is $2.2 million in 2023.Here are the average wealth numbers indicated...

New York City taxpayers, some of the most tax-burdened in the nation, are seeing a massive transfer of wealth as they foot the bill for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to help carry out Mayor Eric Adams’ migrant hotels scheme. Since the spring of last year, more than 100,000 border crossers and illegal aliens have arrived in the sanctuary city of New York City. Less than 15 percent were sent on buses by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and the majority remain living in the city’s network of shelters, which now includes luxury hotels.

Recently a Young guy from Virginia wrote a song. He sang it in his backyard to a microphone and his dogs. Surrounded by dead cars from the 1990s and a deer hunting stand, he sang it loud. The words were his feelings and simple, and he yelled them loudly so they could echo down the holler. Like the silent shock waves from a thunderclap, the message from his heart and his soul reverberated out of the woods, out of the holler, onto the internet, around the world, and the pain from his acoustic guitar shocked millions of people. Overnight, his...

The recent annual Global Wealth Report by UBS, a prominent Swiss bank, reveals that Europe and the United States lost trillions of dollars. Reportedly, the US lost more wealth in comparison to any country in 2022. In 2022, the United States experienced the largest decline in wealth compared to any other nation, with a reduction of $5.9 trillion. Additionally, the report unveiled that North America and Europe lost a combined $10.9 trillion in 2022. The US saw a decline in millionaires, with a reduction of 1 million millionaires by the end of 2022. Nevertheless, the US maintained a substantial global...

oday we travel to Cherokee in North Carolina to witness a tribe that's doing extremely well financially. Kids graduate high school with hundreds of thousands of dollars set aside in an account, higher education and health care are paid for by the tribe, and their land is some of the most beautiful in America. Join me for this eye-opening experience!

With all the focus on President Trump and his legal woes, the question arises: How did Trump get rich? And how did the Democrat elites persecuting him now get rich?Let's start with the Clintons:How did the Clintons get rich?The Clintons took no risk, made no investments, and didn't borrow money. Nope, they just used Hillary's powerful position slurping from the public trough to sell access to all comers, for huge amounts of money. See here:Clintons charge big fees to small groups...and... Clinton's cash for access diplomacyClinton ran a pay-to-play program at the Clinton Foundation while she was Secretary of State....

There are many possible lessons that can be drawn from this new study on elite college admissions but however you slice the data, it reveals that it’s very good to be rich if you want to get into a top school. Take a look at this graph. The x-axis is parent’s income. The y-axis is half-as-likely to be admitted up to twice-as-likely to be admitted.There are all sorts of caveats here but the basic idea is that people who all scored the same on the SAT have a much higher chance of getting in if they are in the top...

Tesla CEO Elon Musk reclaimed his throne as the richest man on earth Thursday, wrestling the title away from LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault as shares of Musk’s electric vehicle giant surged to their highest level this year. Tesla stock rallied 3% to as high as $233 in Thursday trading, on pace for its 10th straight day of gains. Musk’s firm is on pace for its highest closing share price since October 6, 2022. After cratering to a two-year low in early January, Tesla shares are up 109%, the third-largest return of any company in the S&P 500, which is up...

Norway hiked its wealth tax. A bunch of rich people got the hell out.If your net wealth is approximately $135,000 or more and you live in Norway, you've long been subject to a 0.85 percent wealth tax. That rate has, as of this year, been hiked to 1.1 percent by the center-left government, and even more gobs of cash will be taken from rich people worth roughly $1.8 million, who will be taxed at a rate of 1.3 percent. Unfortunately for the Norwegian lefties—and their American counterparts who argue for similar taxes to be instituted here—this wealth tax hasn't really...