Free Republic

Some of you are already shaking your head and arguing with my headline. I can hear the conservative craniums rattling all across America’s fruited plains, her mountain’s majesty, and from sea to shining sea. Let me clarify my title. Let’s start with the first half: Obama Has Won! But you scream back angrily at me, “NO he hasn’t! He didn’t win! We’ll never admit defeat!” Good for you. I appreciate and respect your patriotism and tenacity. Unfortunately, you’re wrong. There’s no denying that one. He was re-elected, and he’s achieved every goal he set out to win short of disarming...

Caught in the sluggish recovery from the last recession, Social Security and Medicare face an increasingly dismal fiscal future, the federal government reported Friday in its annual review of the two mammoth entitlement programs. Medicare, which now provides health insurance to some 47 million elderly and disabled Americans, could begin running a deficit in 2024, five years earlier than projected last year. And Social Security, which last year began paying out more in benefits than it collected in taxes, now faces insolvency in 2036, compared to 2037 in last year’s projections. Over the years, the Social Security and Medicare trustees...

Deepening Economic Crisis: Inflation, Rising Interest Rates, Surge In The Price Of Gold And Silver Economics / Inflation Apr 24, 2011 - 12:43 PM By: Bob Chapman Economic recovery does not seem to be taking effect in spite of more massive expenditures by Congress and the Fed. The IMF says financial stability has improved, but then again their vision is almost always clouded. US tax revenues are not increasing in a meaningful way, manufacturing struggles to expand and Wall Street flourishes in a cascade of mega salaries and bonuses. In another six months the US will be three years what...

Q.E. Money Printing Negative Feed Back Loop to Hyper-Inflation Oblivion Interest-Rates / Quantitative Easing Mar 09, 2011 - 09:16 AM By: Jim Willie CB USFed Chairman Bernanke and the Quantitative Easing programs are caught in a negative feedback loop, the instruments at risk being the USDollar and the USTreasury Bond. The former suffers from lost integrity and direct inflation effect. The latter suffers from direct intervention and market ruin. The next QE round is guaranteed by the failure of the previous program in an endless cycle to be recognized later this year. Leaders are confused why the recovery does not...

That was the headline on this March 2000 story in England’s Independent: Britain’s winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain’s culture, as warmer winters – which scientists are attributing to global climate change – produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries. The first two months of 2000 were virtually free of significant snowfall in much of lowland Britain, and...

Most Houstonians don't spend much time thinking about hurricanes in mid-December as the winter solstice and the shortest day of the year approach. Although next Tuesday marks the first day of winter, solstice also represents a seasonal nadir, when the sun reaches its lowest point in the southern sky and begins its northerly climb toward future summer. So far this season, the nights have been bracing, but with no hard freeze in the metro area. If urban gardeners have a complaint, it's about the paucity of rain that has left us six inches below normal and flirting with drought. So...

Interview With Marc Faber: It Is Not A Matter Of If With Hyperinflation, But When Ron Hera, Hera Research, LLC Sep. 23, 2010, 1:28 PM The Hera Research Newsletter (HRN) is delighted to present the following powerful interview with noted speaker and best selling author Dr. Marc Faber, whose newsletter, The Gloom Boom & Doom Report, highlights unusual investment opportunities. Dr. Faber is a popular speaker at investment seminars and conferences around the world and is best known for his contrarian investment approach. Born in Zurich, Switzerland, Dr. Faber went to school in Geneva and Zurich and finished high school...

"Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point, answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of the things that May be only?" Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood. "Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead. But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!"The Spirit was immovable as ever. -- Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol Even the United States of America is...

From Dow Jones: The U.S. banking industry continued to struggle in the fourth quarter, as the number of banks on the brink of failure continued to rise and the government's fund to protect deposits fell sharply into the red. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said Tuesday that its deposit-insurance fund fell to $20.9 billion at the end of 2009, a $12.6 billion drop in the final three months of the year, as bank failures continued at a pace not seen since the savings and loan crisis. The fund's reserve ratio was -0.39% at the end of the quarter, the lowest...

There's been many letters and symbols used over the last year to describe the shape of the U.S. economic recovery. There's the strong V-shaped recovery; the square root shaped recovery to connote a strong recovery followed by a period of flat to no growth; and the W-shaped recovery favored by those believing in a double dip recession. Tech Ticker guest Michael Pento has a new twist on the discussion. Pento, senior market strategist with Delta Global Advisors believes this is a tee-pee shaped recovery with the top of that tee-pee having already formed in the fourth quarter.

HURRICANE EARTH Joe Weisenthal Feb. 4, 2010, 5:40 PM From the time the market started rallying last March, skeptics have been warning of a coming storm ahead. Today, it felt like we experienced it. As one market pro put it today: This was real. Here are the key highlights: * The 15 sovereigns at risk of collapse > * 20 reasons the economy can't recover > * Morgan Stanley: We can't believe how fast the euro unraveled > * The Dow crashes through 10,000 > * It's a good thing you're hedge with gold > * The crazy action in...

President Obama’s proposal to ban most proprietary trading wouldn’t affect regional banks, which are among the top performers on a tough day for stocks overall. Fifth Third (FITB) jumped 10%, KeyCorp (KEY) 7% and Comerica (CMA) 9.5%. All three banks reported losses, but their loan loss provisions were flat or lower, suggesting the crisis is easing for the nation’s regional and local banks. That sent the entire sector higher. As of mid-afternoon, five regional bank groups were in the top 13 out of IBD’s 197 industries.

Worst Debt Crisis Since The Great Depression To Claim 200 More U.S. Banks During 2010 Economics / Credit Crisis 2010 Jan 18, 2010 - 03:56 AM By: Martin D Weiss Washington has so thoroughly botched its supervision of the banking industry that 200 banks are likely to fail this year — easily surpassing last year’s 140 bank failures … inevitably involving the greatest bank losses in history … and already costing the FDIC ten times more than the great S&L and banking crisis of the 1980s did. I am not basing these conclusions on conjecture. They come straight from official...

Only 434,000 Americans filed for unemployment benefits, the second week in a row that claims have fallen to levels unseen since August 2008. Fewer than 435,000 Americans filed for first-time unemployment claims last week, the second week in a row that claims have been this low in more than a year. The trend suggests that the economy is nearing the point when job growth will outstrip job loss in the US economy. But economists are cautious about the report released Thursday by the US Department of Labor because of the enormous variation between the seasonally adjusted and unadjusted numbers. For...

For some reason Zero Hedge is prone to take a great deal of heat (both directly radiated and reflected) whenever we opine on the (rather obvious to us) prospect that interest rates might actually (quelle surprise) rise in this environment. Today, rather than engage in "we told you so" gloating, or endure the repetitive pleadings of commentators that this or that Treasury auction was really a success if you just look a little deeper at the figures, we'll just quote Bloomberg quoting other fixed income observers on today's auction of two years, in an article "ambiguously" titled "U.S. 2-Year Yields...

I am not alone in my warnings that the slowed money supply will send the economy into a double digit recession. Professor Charles Goodhart, a former top official at the Bank of England now at the London School of Economics, said policymakers have neglected the flashing danger signal of the monetary data, writes Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. "What has happened to all the monetarists? Growth in money holdings and lending has plummeted. Thirty, or 40, years ago they would have been forewarning doom and destruction at this juncture, and casting anathemas at the authorities," he wrote in a consultant report for Morgan...

The Goebbels Ministry Of Truth is at it again... Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States -- increased at an annual rate of 2.2 percent in the third quarter of 2009, (that is, from the second quarter to the third quarter), according to the "third" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the second quarter, real GDP decreased 0.7 percent. Notice a few things here. "Goods and Services produced by labor and property"? Uh, property produces things? Me thinks not. But we'll leave that...

China, once a proud holder of United States post-World War II debt, is getting scared. For years the People's Republic has bought U.S. Treasuries, eventually becoming the largest holder of U.S. debt ($799 BILLION to be exact!). Those days are long gone, though. During 2009, China hasn't been buying many Treasuries and has been unloading dollars in a way that makes Geithner shiver at night. And other big U.S. debt carriers like Japan may follow suit if confidence is lost. This presentation, courtesy of RBS, takes a deeper look into China's holdings and associated volumes since 2005. Get ready for...

The nausea we feel with respect to Citigroup (C) and our Treasury Secretary just hit a new high. Perhaps it's true that civilization would have ended if we had just allowed Sandy Weill's colossal junk pile to finish blowing itself up. But at this point that seems a more attractive alternative. In case you missed it, here's the latest outrage: As of yesterday afternoon, the United States taxpayer owned 34% of Citigroup's common stock, in addition to a massive amout of TARP preferred stock. The US taxpayer did not own 34% of Citigroup's common stock by choice. We owned it...

Upbeat reports in the financial media, belie the effects of the ongoing credit contraction. Massive injections of central bank liquidity have prevented the collapse of financial markets, but have done nothing to ease the deleveraging of households or stimulate activity the broader economy. The crisis has stripped $13 trillion in equity from working families who now find their access to credit either cut off or severely curtailed by the same banks that received hefty taxpayer-funded bailouts. The fiscal strangulation of the millions of people who are no longer considered "creditworthy" is progressively weakening demand and spreading pessimism across all income...