Free Republic

Volatile stock markets are eroding the retirement savings of America’s teachers and firefighters after public pension systems ended last year with equity holdings at a 10-year high.

President Joe Biden blamed “confusion” in the American electorate on Wednesday for his party taking a beating politically in elections across the country. “I just think that people are at a point, and it’s understandable, where there’s a whole lot of confusion,” Biden said, referring to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, potential tax breaks, and schools remaining open.

TOKYO – China is so keen to maintain control over its sprawling and expanding economy that it’s even willing to go communist. For all the claims from Communist Party bigwigs that President Xi Jinping isn’t on an anti-wealth crusade, the losses are too jarring to dismiss as “capitalism doing its thing.” Indeed, the more than US$1 trillion of market capitalization losses tied directly to Xi’s recent policies has China bulls mutating into China bears. First, it was Jack Ma’s Ant Group getting stomped by Xi’s regulators. Then Didi Global and the $100 billion private tutoring sector got the boot. Next...

The far-left, late-night talk shows are suffering some serious ratings losses, which probably has more than a little to do with President Trump leaving office. As you read through the numbers below, keep this number in mind: 6.3 million. During the 1986-87 television season, with nearly 100 million fewer people in the country, that was the number of viewers Johnny Carson averaged throughout the entire 1986-87 television season.

LONDON (AP) – The number of people in the U.K. who lost their jobs hit a record high in the three months through October during the run-up to the planned ending of a government salary support scheme, official figures showed Tuesday. The Office for National Statistics said redundancies reached 370,000 in the August to October period, a record for a three-month period. At the end of October, the British government had been planning to end the Job Retention Scheme, which saw it pay the majority of the salaries of people who had become idle due to the coronavirus pandemic but...

Nielsen Cable Ratings are in for yesterday. Here are Fox ratings losses on Monday over 2 weeks: Cavuto -52% Baier -46% McCallum -45% Ingraham -45% Fox and Friends -45% Hannity -39% Carlson -33% Nielsen ratings at the link.

Did you know that Donald Trump paid very little in taxes in certain years? Seriously, I read it in the New York Times…several times. The latest “bombshell” story designed to take out the President is yet another rehash not only of things the media has reported in 2016 and 2018, but things he’s publicly admitted himself. In other words, it’s not news at all. Never people to let the facts stand in the way of a good narrative, the media dutifully snapped into action to parrot the latest reworking of an old story as if it were new. The gang...

ALBANY — Gov. Andrew Cuomo walked back threats from last week that he would raise taxes on the state’s wealthiest should Washington fail to grant additional federal aid to state and local governments hit hard by COVID-19. “If Washington does not step up to the plate here and get us financial aid, we are going to be in a whole world of hurt for a long time. This state, between the state and the local governments we need about $50 billion,” the governor said Tuesday during an interview with Long Island Radio. New York budget officials have estimated a high...

Central bank actions have for the most part suppressed market volatility since the financial crisis of 2008. This is part of a deliberate strategy to lower risk, which is measured by volatility. Reduced risk, it’s hoped, will facilitate borrowing to boost growth. Yet these measures have failed in their primary objective, instead encouraging speculation — which now exerts significant influence over markets and prices. Artificially low volatility has driven a wide range of investment strategies which generate small returns under stable conditions but are vulnerable to large losses under stressful conditions. Depending on how it is measured, an amount of...

Consider this scenario. A state holds its elections one year before an unpopular incumbent president is up for reelection. Some candidates won’t even commit to supporting the president’s reelection bid for fear of it hurting their own chances. When the ballots are counted, the president’s party loses control of the state senate, which means the other party controls the legislature and the governor’s mansion. Pundits say that the outcome of Virginia’s election is a bad omen for the president. Wait, isn’t this what just happened in Virginia this week? And surely the fact that Republicans have lost control of a...

In a post on his website, Young said he hoped the calamitous fires would urged people to take action on the impact of climate change. “Firefighters have never seen anything like this in their lives. I have heard that said countless times in the past two days, and I have lost my home before to a California fire, now another,” he wrote. “Hopefully we can come together as a people to take climate change on. We have the tools and could do it if we tried. There is no downside.”

More than $45 million in revenue is believed to have been lost when the state suspended highway toll collections to help speed evacuations and relief efforts for Hurricane Irma, Florida's Turnpike system estimates. However, the estimated $3 million-a-day impact is not expected to hinder operations of the system or ongoing work programs, “as impacts such as toll suspensions due to a hurricane are taken into consideration during the annual budgeting process,” turnpike spokesman Chad Huff said in an email Friday. Funding 404 full-time positions, the turnpike system is budgeted at $1.57 billion for the current fiscal year, which began July...

Jon Ossoff’s loss in Georgia’s Sixth Congressional election on Tuesday isn’t just a disappointment for liberals. It’s a bright red warning sign, a blaring siren that should alert Democrats everywhere that they will not take back Congress without a radical change in direction. It looked to some like the party could retake at least one branch in Congress in 2018 just by staying the course. “I don’t think Democrats want a new direction,” House Minority Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said on CBS Face the Nation the week after the election. But since then, Democrats have lost four straight special elections in...

DAMASCUS, SYRIA (4:50 P.M.) – Following the loss of Tabqa and three villages in northern Raqqa, the Islamic State launched a localized counter-offensive against the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) beginning on Wednesday evening.Targeting Kurdish-held territory in western Raqqa, convoys of ISIS vehicles attacked the villages of Ayed al-Kabeer, Ibad and Al-Mashirfa where SDF garrisons came under enormous pressure, forcing them to call upon US air support to repel the attack.With skirmishes persisting throughout the night and early hours of Thursday, ISIS had not been able to break through the Kurdish defensive line.Thus far, 26 ISIS militants have been...

Why is China’s huge toll road system running massive losses despite billions of income from toll fees? It’s another strategy devised by the communist regime to siphon wealth from the public, says Cai Shenkun, a well-known Chinese economist and blogger.The Chinese state operates the largest toll road system in the world. Toll roads across the country collect more than 400 billion yuan (US$60 billion) each year. But strangely, this profitable monopoly industry reports huge losses year after year. According to recently released data by China’s Ministry of Transportation, revenue from toll roads was 409.78 billion yuan in 2015 while operating...

The effect on Mezvinsky’s hedge fund has been gruesome. It raised $25 million for its investments, but had already lost about 40 percent of its value by early 2015. Rather than shuttering the fund then, Mezvinsky pressed ahead.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democrats are planning an extensive review of what went wrong in the 2014 and 2010 elections, hoping to find ways to translate success in presidential campaigns into future midterm contests. A party committee will conduct a "top-to-bottom assessment" of the Democrats' performance in recent midterm elections and try to determine why they have struggled to turn out its core voters in nonpresidential elections. "It's apparent that there are increasingly two separate electorates: a midterm electorate and a presidential electorate. We win one and we don't seem to be able to win the other,"

Fiat SpA’s deal to complete its purchase of Chrysler helped widen first-quarter losses, the Italian car maker reported Tuesday following a day-long presentation in Detroit of its new five-year business plan for the combined automakers. The Italian carmaker, based in the northern city of Turin, saw first-quarter losses widen to €334 million ($465 million) from €83 million last year, due to expenses related to the Chrysler deal logged in the first quarter. …

Nevada's largest casinos, still climbing out of the recession, suffered a combined net loss of $1.35 billion in 2013, marking the fifth straight year without an overall profit, state regulators reported Friday. [Snip] While the casinos' losses grew by 11.2 percent or $136 million, a control board analyst said much of that was tied to increased expenses.

Successful recall elections Tuesday of two Democratic state senators in Colorado were because of “voter suppression, pure and simple,” Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said Wednesday. Wasserman Schultz blamed lawsuits filed by opponents of gun control to prevent voters from mailing in ballots, the late announcement of polling locations, and “efforts by the NRA, the Koch brothers and other right wing groups who know that when more people vote, Democrats win.” “The recall elections in Colorado were defined by the vast array of obstacles that special interests threw in the way of voters for the purpose of reversing