Free Republic

On Wednesday, National Public Radio had a spot about how some states are reviewing laws on their books that let them yank driver's or professional licenses from those who default on their student loans. To set the story up, the NPR reporter focused on the plight of Clementine Lindley, who recalls how after graduating she had to "decide whether to pay rent, buy food or make her student loan payments" because her debt was so massive. How did Lindley rack up so much debt? NPR doesn't say, but a little sleuthing shows that Lindley got her Bachelor's degree in "Liberal...

Depositions for General Motors’ executives, including CEO Mary Barra, will begin in May, according to the Detroit News. The testimonies will be at the center of class-action lawsuits (set for trial in January, 2016) against GM for its ignition switch defect cover-up and are slated to conclude in early October of this year. It will not be the first time Barra has testified under oath about the recall debacle which is now blamed for having caused 74 deaths. Attorneys for plaintiffs now claim they have evidence that GM executives knew about (and covered-up) the defects long before they admitted...

<p>Last week we reported that as part of the latest "check kiting" bailout scheme, Greek pensioners (and now utility companies) are being raided by the Greek government so that it can repay its debts to the IMF, which in turn would go ahead and fund a part of the recently approved $17.5 billion bailout of Ukraine, which then would have the money to pay its debts to Russia... and the IMF. And, as we also noted, "The only question is how long will it take the current puppet government to syphon off enough funds into various illegal ventures and offshore accounts before the IMF has to step back in a la Greece with bailout #2."</p>

ities: The problem with socialism, Margaret Thatcher once noted, is you eventually run out of other people's money. In progressive Chicago, that's hit home as Moody's has cut its credit rating to two grades above "junk." Chicago's finances are staggering under the weight of an unfunded pension liability that Moody's Investors Service has estimated at $32 billion, eight times the city's operating revenue. Chicago has a $300 million structural deficit. And Illinois law requires the city to up its 2016 contributions to its police and fire pension funds by $550 million. "This is an unfortunate wake-up call for anyone still...

How did the federal student loan program rack up such massive debt so quickly? Let's take a look at Obama's recent reform efforts and programs to help provide relief to student borrowers. A few days ago, Politico revealed a little gem hidden in the Obama budget: “In obscure data tables buried deep in its 2016 budget proposal, the Obama administration revealed this week that its student loan program had a $21.8 billion shortfall last year, apparently the largest ever recorded for any government credit program.” That’s a nearly $22 billion loss—for one program, for one year. Politico described how that...

Greece’s finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has spelled out the negotiating strategy of the Syriza government with crystal clarity. “Exit from the euro does not even enter into our plans, quite simply because the euro is fragile. It is like a house of cards. If you pull away the Greek card, they all come down,” he said. “Do we really want Europe to break apart? Anybody who is tempted to think it possible to amputate Greece strategically from Europe should be careful. It is very dangerous. Who would be hit after us? Portugal? What would happen to Italy when it discovers...

Greece's government will not cooperate with the EU and IMF mission bankrolling the country and will not seek an extension to the bailout program, its finance minister said on Friday. Jeroen Dijsselbloem, head of the euro zone finance ministers' group who is in Athens for talks with the new government, said the two sides would decide what would happen next before the program ends on Feb. 28.

Bailouts: President Obama is going to Detroit Wednesday to brag about how he saved the U.S. auto industry. What he's really doing is exposing the folly of his industrial policy. Just days before Obama's planned swing through Detroit, the Treasury Dept. reported that the final taxpayer cost of the auto industry bailout was $9.26 billion. That equals $441 for every single car and light truck that GM and Chrysler have sold since 2009. That's an awfully big price tag for Obama to claim bragging rights over. Maybe the outsized bailout cost explains why Obama will give his talk at an...

It did not take long. The game is very much in play. Greek voters are being bombarded with warnings about what is at stake when they go to the polls on 25 January. There is little that is coded in these messages. When a country has been bailed out to the tune of €240bn (£187bn; $286bn) there is no such thing as non-interference in Greece's internal politics. Most of the European political establishment does not want Greece to elect the radical left party Syriza led by Alexis Tsipras. The party is currently narrowly ahead in the polls. Mr Tsipras is...

Russia’s central bank on Wednesday launched another initiative to shore up the ruble, offering hard currency loans to help companies and banks service their debts. Stabilizing the ruble, which is one of the world’s worst-performing currencies this year following the slide in oil prices and the sanctions imposed on Russia for its involvement in Ukraine, is a priority for Russia’s monetary authorities. Russia’s largest lender, Sberbank, admitted again that it faced a run last week when the ruble was in freefall and individuals fretted over the value of their deposits. Its chairman, Alexander Torbakhov, conceded to Russian news agencies that...

Russian mid-sized lender Trust Bank is to receive up to 30 billion rubles ($530 million) from the central bank to stop it going bankrupt in the first bailout of its kind during the current rouble crisis. The central bank also said its Deposit Insurance Agency, responsible for managing crisis-hit lenders, would take over interim supervision of Trust Bank as of Monday. The measures "will make it possible for Trust to continue smooth payments operations. All the bank's clients, including depositors, can use its services as usual", the central bank said in a statement. Trust, which hired actor Bruce Willis as...

The death toll for General Motors' faulty ignition switch victims continues to rise with the last reported number being 42. There has been speculation that the death count is significantly higher, as safety advocate Clarence Ditlow has written to GM to request an expansion of efforts to uncover victims of accidents resulting from defective GM vehicles. GM has known about the ignition switch defect for years and failed to recall the deadly vehicles for almost five years after the Obama Administration took over the company in June of 2009. President Obama's Auto Task Force guided the company through a...

Courtesy of the Cronybus(sic) last minute passage, government was provided a quid-pro-quo $1.1 trillion spending allowance with Wall Street's blessing in exchange for assuring banks that taxpayers would be on the hook for yet another bailout, as a result of the swaps push-out provision, after incorporating explicit Citigroup language that allows financial institutions to trade certain financial derivatives from subsidiaries that are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, explicitly putting taxpayers on the hook for losses caused by these contracts. Recall: (more at link)

On Wednesday I noted the arrival of carpetbaggers in Ukraine. (See Enter the Carpetbaggers: Ukraine's New Finance Minister a US Citizen, New Economy Minister from Lithuania). No carpetbagging mission is ever complete without at least one visit from the IMF. On Friday we learned that Ukraine will be blessed with a second visit from the IMF as its Foreign-Currency Reserves Dip Below $10 Billion. UkraineÂ’s central bank reported foreign-currency reserves at their lowest for almost a decade, raising pressure on the West to provide more financing to the country being squeezed by Russia. It also presents a dilemma for the...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Google billionaires request $539 million federal bailout after spending $1.6 billion of “stimulus” funding on failed solar power project Ivanpah is a solar power company owned by Google, BrightSource Energy, and NRG.In April 2011, as part of Obama’s “stimulus,” Obama gave Ivanpah a $1.6 billion loan guarantee to build a solar power plant.In November 2014, when the plant was up and running, it produced only half as much electricity as what Ivanpah had predicted.Ivanpah blamed this failure on “clouds,” and asked Obama for a $539 million bailout.Google is owned by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. At...

The government’s subprime lending debacle that came to a head in the form of the Great Recession in 2007 is about to be repeated, thanks to a repeat of conditions by the federal government. Recent newspaper headlines have announced that the Obama regime plans to provide more electricity to the still-lackadaisical housing industry by torquing home lending rules that will once again make it easer for banks to make loans to marginal buyers.

The evidence continues to mount that General Motors has been less than transparent, if not outright culpable, regarding its ignition switch recall fiasco. As the death toll mounts (from the original 13 casualties reported by GM to the just revised 32 deaths) for victims involved in crashes of GM vehicles with defective ignition switches, new evidence has emerged that GM actually ordered replacement parts for the defective switches a full two months before they even reported a problem. A Wall Street Journal article published on Sunday unveiled the damning evidence that GM placed an order for half a million replacement...

Today I sent the following letter to Dr. Gretchen Green, the Acting Chair of the National Women's History Museum: We ask the National Women's History Museum (NWHM) to withdraw its planned award to General Motors CEO Mary Barra. As you know, Barra is scheduled to receive the Katharine Graham Living Legacy Award on November 17 as part of your annual de Pizan Honors at The Mead Center for American Theater at Arena Stage in Washington, DC. Barra has indeed made history - of the wrong kind. Just three months ago, she sat in front of Congressional Committees and desperately tried...

I’ve gone through only the first day of testimony from the AIG bailout trial, and we are already up to our third bombshell. The first witness called by the plaintiff, Starr International (an investment vehicle controlled by Hank Greenberg), was Scott Alvarez, general counsel for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Part of the testimony covered a discussion that took place late in the evening of September 15, the day Lehman declared bankruptcy in the wee hours of the morning. The topic was AIG. The participants included Alvarez, Timothy Geithner, Fed governors Don Kohn and Kevin Warsh, Ken Wilson, a...

Imagine you have a friend who drinks a lot and often. Until now, they always seem to have a good time. He tells the best stories, gets all the girls. He’s the life of the party. Then, one day, he wrecks his car. And you and some buddies, who happened to be in the neighborhood, see your pal trapped. Of course, you rush to the rescue. You try to break open the door with a tire iron. Ultimately, you smash the window and pull the poor fellow out. And just when you’d think this guy would sober up and see...