Free Republic

Socialism’s Greek Staring Contest The day will come when America faces its own inner Greece. July 5, 2015 Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. The Greeks gambled in their referendum that European elites were more committed to their ideological obsession with integrating Europe than with mere economics. Stand up to a bunch of corrupt Greek civil servants and Europe risks going back to the bad old days of nation states and independent economies. It is likely that their bet will pay off. After all even a cursory...

Talk about a horrible way to start the week. A number of hedge funds that were already bracing for losses on Greek debt also found out late Sunday night that they would likely have to swallow big losses on investments in Puerto Rico as well. [SNIP!] ...Another loser in Greece has been Marc Mezvinsky, the husband of former, and potentially future, first child Chelsea Clinton. Mezvinsky’s firm EagleVale, which has made bets in Greece, was down nearly 4% last year. A small fund the firm runs that is completely dedicated to investing in Greece was down 48%.

The governor of Puerto Rico said in a televised address Monday that the island cannot pay back more than $70 billion in debt, setting up an unprecedented financial crisis that could rock the municipal bond market and lead to higher borrowing costs for governments across the United States. “This is not about politics,” said Puerto Rico’s governor, Alejandro Garcia Padilla. “It’s about math.” “The first step is to revive economic growth...We will never get out of this vicious cycle,” said Garcia Padilla. “But we need to do more—much more—to return to riches and to become more competitive and have an...

Puerto Rico’s governor, saying he needs to pull the island out of a “death spiral,” has concluded that the commonwealth cannot pay its roughly $72 billion in debts, an admission that will probably have wide-reaching financial repercussions. The governor, Alejandro García Padilla, and senior members of his staff said in an interview last week that they would probably seek significant concessions from as many as all of the island’s creditors, which could include deferring some debt payments for as long as five years or extending the timetable for repayment. “The debt is not payable,” Mr. García Padilla said. “There is...

Do you remember when Detroit when bankrupt and resident Obama refused to intervene in order to help Americans in a beleaguered American city? This was both baffling and maddening to the American people. After all, this "hope and change" resident promised to fundamentally transform America. Little did we realize that the Detroit bankruptcy would open the floodgates to the total foreign control of American's most precious resource, namely water, where the UN has gained a significant foothold in Detroit and its influence is spreading across the country. When Obama refused to help Detroit's bankruptcy and its ensuing water crisis, subsequent...

San Bernardino, once a sturdy, middle class "All-America City," is now bankrupt, the poorest city of its size in California, and a symbol of the nation's worst urban woes.

WASHINGTON -- Elfriede Rinkel's past as a Nazi concentration camp guard didn't keep her from collecting nearly $120,000 in U.S. Social Security benefits. Rinkel admitted to being stationed at the Ravensbrueck camp during World War II, where she worked with an attack dog trained by the SS, according to U.S. Justice Department records. She immigrated to California and married a German-born Jew whose parents had been killed in the Holocaust. She agreed to leave the U.S. in 2006 and remains the only woman the Justice Department's Nazi-hunting unit ever initiated deportation proceedings against. Yet after Rinkel departed, the Social Security...

The Illinois Supreme Court struck down the state’s 2013 pension overhaul, unraveling an effort by lawmakers to rein in benefits for the consistently underfunded public-sector system. The current pension shortfall is estimated at $111 billion, one of the largest nationally. The high court affirmed a decision in November by a state circuit court that the legislative changes violated pension protections written into the state constitution. The decision is a victory for a consortium of public-sector unions while creating a huge challenge for new Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, who already faces a yawning budget deficit for the coming fiscal year.

Chicago has a simple financial choice: Stay in frying pan or get in the fire. That in simple terms is what Moody's Investors Service said in a report today about the difficult options the Emanuel administration faces over the city's woefully underfunded pension funds. The city must cut spending and raise taxes now or the risks of becoming insolvent will grow, forcing even harsher decisions later. The credit rating agency offers a sobering reminder of what's at stake in the eight-page report, which focuses on the pensions problems. ... A CUT ABOVE JUNK. Moody's, typically the most conservative of the...

With new immigration proposals, state lawmakers hope to build By MELANIE MASON California lawmakers hope to keep momentum going with new immigration-related proposals Proposal would offer Medi-Cal to people who qualify regardless of immigration status. Democratic lawmakers will unveil a slew of new immigration-related proposals Tuesday, including measures that would extend state-paid health coverage to those in the country illegally and offer more protection against deportation. Legislators behind the 10-bill package aim to build on the landmark immigration laws passed in California in recent years, such as one that allows people without legal residency to obtain driver's licenses. By keeping...

California legislative leaders took a bold step Tuesday toward protecting immigrants living in the country without documentation by backing legislation to offer Medi-Cal and other public services to a population they said they want to help move out of the shadows. The leaders of the California Senate and Assembly joined lawmakers and advocates in announcing the “Immigrants Shape California” legislative package at a press conference in Sacramento, saying the federal government’s inaction on immigration reform forced them to act.

Some of the worst public-sector pension problems in America are playing out in states and cities where legislation or local court rulings have granted extraordinary protections to workers’ retirement benefits—far beyond those enjoyed by private-sector employees. ... One can see a glimpse of Illinois’s possible future in Arizona. Last year, the state’s Supreme Court overturned 2011 pension reforms that, among other things, sought to curb expensive annual cost-of-living increases for judges, legislators, and ... The predicament faced by Illinois and Arizona should be a warning, especially to other states where government pensions enjoy extraordinary legal protections. Raising benefits or shortchanging...

(CNSNews.com) -- The U.S. has a $210 trillion “fiscal gap” and “may well be in worse fiscal shape than any developed country, including Greece,” Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff told members of the Senate Budget Committee in written and oral testimony on Feb. 25. “The first point I want to get across is that our nation is broke,” Kotlikoff testified. “Our nation’s broke, and it’s not broke in 75 years or 50 years or 25 years or 10 years. It’s broke today. "Indeed, it may well be in worse fiscal shape than any developed country, including Greece," he said. (See...

John Mauldin February 16, 2015We do not have to look to Greece to find massively underfunded obligations. Here in the US we can find hundreds of examples, willingly created by politicians and businessmen who proclaim they are working for the public good. We call them pension funds, but they’re just another form of unfunded debt. A sovereign bond is a promise to pay a certain amount of money over time. A defined-benefit pension fund is a promise to pay a certain amount of income over time. The value of either is determined by the ability of the government or the...

The federal judge who oversaw Detroit's historic bankruptcy case ruled on Thursday that the nearly $178 million charged to the city by law firms and consultants for fees and expenses was reasonable. U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Steven Rhodes said he based his decision mainly on the complexity of the bankruptcy case filed in July 2013 as well as substantial reductions that the firms agreed to make in their bills. "The city is now on a path to success precisely because of the expertise, skill, commitment, endurance, personal sacrifice, civility and proficiency of all of the professionals in the case, including...

DETROIT (AP) – Chris Mathews’ crew showed up this month to demolish one of the thousands of vacant homes destined for demolition as part of Detroit’s grand plan to bulldoze its way to prosperity when a call from his office stopped them in their tracks: Someone was living there. A middle-aged woman who watched the crew tear away the home’s warped wooden steps the day before had called their company, Adamo Demolition, to point out she was living on the second floor, despite no power, heat or gas and a flooded basement. “It was like a swimming pool. We would...

Illinois' only two harness horse racing tracks kept their promise to the Illinois Racing Board as they filed for bankruptcy on Wednesday to continue operations into 2015 and protect themselves against property seizure. Balmoral Racing Club Inc. and Maywood Park Trotting Association Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after a state court handed down a $78 million lawsuit judgment earlier this month for the tracks' ownership's role in an extortion scandal involving former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. **SNIP** The ruling stems from a federal racketeering suit that claims that John Johnston acquiesced to Blagojevich's request for a $100,000 campaign contribution in...

Pension debt in the Land of Lincoln is a big problem. So big, in fact, that it would take three years of a complete government shutdown, during which the entire general fund went toward pensions, just to break even. No funding for schools, no money for public safety and nothing for health care and human services. Illinois’ unfunded pension liability grew to more than $111 billion this year, according to official estimates. That’s a $48 billion increase just since 2009. ... That $111 billion pension shortfall means the state now has only 39 cents of every dollar it should have...

One Bankruptcy, Many Adversaries by James J. S. Johnson, J.D., Th.D. * Theistic evolution is like a mega-bankruptcy case containing an almost countless number of adversaries and contests, like piecemeal mini-lawsuits that in aggregate address smaller conflicts within a large-scale mess.1 Within this big picture it’s important to keep in mind that every small-scale “contested matter” and every “adversary” conflict is an important opportunity to advocate for truth.2 Imagine the component problems involved in these famous bankruptcies: Texaco, Chrysler, Enron, CIT Group, Worldcom, General Motors, Washington Mutual, and Lehman Brothers.1 Let’s quickly review some federal bankruptcy law.

The federal government paid $2,007,358,200,000 in benefits and entitlements in fiscal year 2013 from government programs, according to data from the Bureau of the Fiscal Service’s Monthly Treasury Statement. The treasury statement summarizes the financial activities of the federal government, including data on government receipts, outlays, and surplus and deficit totals. The September 2013 monthly treasury statement calculates these metrics for the entire fiscal year of 2013, which began on October 1, 2012 and ended on September 30, 2013. According to the statement, the federal government’s total outlays, otherwise known as spending, for means-tested and non-means tested government programs—not including...