Free Republic

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) blasted 2016 rival Donald Trump on Monday, questioning his ties to Democrats and previous support for liberal positions as the two battle for the top spot in Iowa."If he's giving checks to Democratic politicians and he supports their views... then it starts to suggest, 'gosh if he publicly supports their views if he finances their causes,'" Cruz told Boston radio station WRKO. "Then suddenly when he announces as a candidate for president, every single one of his views changes - listen if he has had a change of heart, I am thrilled." Cruz, who is competing...

The epic-crash in oil prices has wiped out tens-of-thousands of jobs, caused dozens of bankruptcies and spooked global financial markets. The fallout is already being felt in oil-rich states like Texas, Oklahoma and North Dakota, where home foreclosure rates are spiking and economic growth is slowing. Now there are calls in at least some corners for the federal government to come to the rescue. "It is time to send out an S.O.S., before it's too late," John Kilduff, founding partner of energy hedge fund Again Capital, wrote in a recent CNBC column. In the Kilduff dictionary, by the way, S.O.S....

Billionaire businessman Maurice "Hank" Greenberg backed away from an alleged $10 million contribution he was said to have made to a PAC affiliated with the presidential campaign of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.

The Obama Administration's Justice Department is now suing Volkswagen for "up to $90 billion for allegedly violating environmental law." Politically-favored General Motors was fined $900 million, or 1% of that amount, for covering up an ignition switch defect that led to the deaths of at least 124 people. At last count, the number of people who lost their lives as a result of emissions' tampering by VW stood at zero. Meanwhile, the GM board unanimoulsy elected CEO Mary Barra as its Chairman, demonstrating that it is still not independent of the White House political operation, even years after the...

Liberals are trumpeting a looming “humanitarian crisis” that demands a federal bailout: Otherwise, Puerto Rico will have to cut spending on schools and hospitals. Conservatives are emphasizing a governance crisis: Many Puerto Rican politicians have won votes by overspending; and if they get away with it, their counterparts in California, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and other states will keep running toward the cliff. One piece of political evidence: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio flew to Puerto Rico last month and marched with thousands who demanded that Washington send more...

When Barack Obama was campaigning for the presidency in 2008 and when he was selling Obamacare to the public in 2010, he made insurance companies the villains. In fact, on the eve of the passage of the Affordable Care Act, every Democratic spokesperson who appeared on TV to support the health reform legislation had one and only one argument to make: We needed Obamacare to protect ordinary people from ruthless, profit mongering insurance companies. They said almost nothing about insuring the uninsured or controlling costs or making health care delivery more efficient. Instead, every advocate produced at least one example...

I have a friend in Texas who believes everything you see on the news is made up. The 9/11 attacks? A media creation. Newtown? Secret footage exposes the fraud.  The recent Paris attacks? A false flag operation to get us all scared.Part of me thinks my friend is a little wacky, but part of me thinks he has a point. It does seem a lot of what the government treats as a crisis is a crisis only for those who stand to profit from it.  Take the 2008 financial "crisis." After the $800 billion TARP bailout, what truly needed to...

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is not working out the way many insurance companies thought it would. Despite the individual mandate and massive new government subsidies delivered directly to insurers, many participating insurers, whose continued participation is essential to the ACA’s future, are losing substantial money. In order to assist those insurers, the administration is now seeking a taxpayer-financed bailout for them. Congress can block taxpayer funds from being used for this purpose by extending language contained in the 2015 government funding bill. Congress could also look to end the back-end subsidy that transfers money from people with workplace coverage...

How dare the Obama administration bail out insurance companies with our money in order to hide ObamaCare's failures. Thursday, just hours after giant insurer UnitedHealthcare said it's losing money selling ObamaCare plans and will likely exit the health exchanges next year, the Obama administration quietly promised to bail out insurers for their losses - using your money. Nearly all insurers are bleeding red ink trying to sell the unworkable plans. Without a bailout, more insurers will abandon ObamaCare, pushing it closer to its demise. A bailout would benefit insurers and the Democratic Party, which is desperate to cover up the...

The Department of Health and Human Services attempted to reassure private insurers on Thursday that they'll be able to recover losses from participating in Obamacare by claiming it was an "obligation" of the U.S. government to bail them out. At issue is a provision within the law known as the risk corridors program. Under the program, which runs from 2014 through 2016, the federal government is to collect money from health insurers doing better than expected and use those funds to provide a federal backstop to other insurers who incur larger than expected losses from rising medical claims. The idea...

In an otherwise sensible economic debate last week, all the Republican candidates flunked the stress test on bank bailouts. Instead of pledging to end bailouts forever, they said they might do it all over again. This a big problem for the party, because the 2008 taxpayer rescue of the big banks, AIG and investment houses continues to cast a long shadow. Americans still think of the GOP as the party of corporate bailouts. Here's how John Kasich put it: "When a bank is ready to go under, and depositors are getting ready to lose their life savings, you just don't...

Officials in the Treasury Department are discussing a radical and aggressive response to the fiscal chaos engulfing Puerto Rico that could involve a broad debt exchange assisted by the federal government. The proposal calls for the federal government to help Puerto Rico collect and account for local tax revenues from the island’s businesses and residents, according to people briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the proposal. An inability to collect all the taxes owed is widely seen as contributing to Puerto Rico’s debt crisis. The tax proceeds...

The European Commission will release €2 billion to Greece in the coming days to help the country manage the current migration crisis, a top Commission source told MNI Friday, but as German daily Wirtschaftswoche reports, the German Government is considering 'helping' Greece more financially – but only if Athens is more involved in the refugee crisis. The European Commission will release €2 billion to Greece in the coming days to help the country manage the current migration crisis and the upgrade its public administration system, a top Commission source told MNI Friday. The €2 billion will be the first disbursement...

As CEO, she lobbied for a tax holiday on corporate profits to create jobs. Instead, the money was used to buy back stock while HP fired 14,500 workers. Had Donald Trump been talking about Carly Fiorina’s essence rather than her appearance, he might have had a point. Not that it should matter one way or the other, Fiorina has an altogether pleasant physical presence, markedly more so than does Trump. But a blind person could see that Fiorina was the very face of corporate greed and income inequality during her five-year tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard. Take, for example, the...

The response of the Justice Department to General Motors’ ignition switch defect cover-up was announced last week. GM’s failure to address the deadly defect led to the loss of lives of at least 169 people. Any hopes for the families of the victims that the crony status of GM would not stand in the way of justice were squashed as the company was given a slap on the wrist by its friends at the Obama Administration. The Justice Department’s news release regarding the meager $900 million penalty reeked of hypocrisy as it tried to paint a picture of a repentant...

You can pinpoint the moment that financial trust was lost in America: Sept. 17, 2008, the day the government bailed out American Insurance Group after not bailing out Lehman Brothers in the same week. The sheer arbitrariness of the bailout policy was even worse than the fact of the bailouts. And the Obama administration locked in the trend by continuing where President George W. Bush left off. Voter trust did not return after markets picked up in 2009. Here not only the White House is to blame: The Federal Reserve chose to ease monetary policy and continues easy monetary policy...

BERLIN — Germany's parliament overwhelmingly approved a third bailout for Greece on Wednesday, removing a key hurdle to providing new loans to the country and keeping it from defaulting on its debts in as little as 24 hours. The vote's result also seemed to dispel any speculation that Chancellor Angela Merkel would have difficulty getting her conservative bloc to sign on. Lawmakers voted 454-113 in favor, with 18 abstentions. The approval is among the last due from parliaments across Europe, with the Dutch scheduled to vote later Wednesday, after which Greece is expected to get the first installment of its...

Greece’s third bailout in five years appears to be a done deal. After months of bitter wrangling with creditors and European Union authorities, the Greek government is being thrown yet another financial lifeline weeks after defaulting on a payment owed to the IMF. Greece’s new ruling party, the hardline left wing Syriza Party, led by brash Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, swept to power at the beginning of the year, promising not to accept any further “austerities” (tax hikes, spending cuts, reductions in benefits, and the sale of state-owned assets) from international creditors. But in the end, after seeing their...

As yet another key debt payment date closes in on Puerto Rico, here's a primer on what you should know, and who it will affect the most ahead of the deadline. Q: If the Puerto Rico Public Finance Corporation (PFC) doesn't pay bondholders on Aug. 1, will it be considered a default? A: Yes. According to Moody's vice president and senior credit officer, Ted Hampton, if there is no payment made on Friday, it will be the first default of a U.S. state, or state-like entity, since Arkansas couldn't make its bond payments during the Great Depression in 1933. Q:...

Greece wildly overcommits in spending on its welfare state, spending the country to the brink of collapse and then failing to live up to the terms of not one but two IMF bailouts, both of which were heavily financed by Germany I don’t even know what to do with this. If you ever help anyone with a problem, don’t expect to get credit for it from the Washington Post. Because it might be necessary for you to make the recipient of the help shed some bad habits, and if you do that . . . hey, remember how cruel Hitler...