Free Republic

New Hampshire Democrats have an important choice to make on Feb. 9. And the choice is clear: Donald Trump for President. For decades, Trump has consistently supported bigger government, and ridiculed conservative principles.During his first - run for the Presidency in 1999, Trump told Larry King, “I believe in universal health care.” He repeated that support in his 2000 book, backing a system like Canada’s single-payer system. And Trump has been consistent, praising Scotland’s single-payer health care system this year. Trump can carry the Democrat’s banner as a longtime advocate for government takeover of health care.Trump has a long history...

If The Big Short, Adam McKay’s adaptation of Michael Lewis’s book about the 2008 financial crisis and the subject of last month’s Vulture cover story, got you all worked up over the holidays, you’re probably wondering what Michael Burry, the economic soothsayer portrayed by Christian Bale who’s always just a few steps ahead of everyone else, is up to these days. In an email, which readers of the book will recognize as his preferred method of communication, the real-life head of Scion Asset Management answered some of our panicked questions about the state of the financial system, his ominous-sounding water...

Bart Daley and his employees at Capitol Quality Corp watched in horror the reports from San Bernardino of the mass shooting carried out by two Islamic terrorists. Fourteen people were killed in the attack. Twenty-two others were injured. Four hours after the attack began, police pursued and stopped a black SUV carrying Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27, a married couple, and after a fierce gun battle killed the two Islamic extremist. Daley watched the unfolding events and as he says, “I made the difficult decision to arm members of my management team to provide a level of...

A popular bike path became the scene of a gruesome murder late Thursday when a life insurance executive was killed while running near her Connecticut home. Melissa Millan, 54, a triathlete and mother of two, was found stabbed at about 8 p.m. in the Hartford suburb of Simsbury, Conn. Police have stepped up patrols of the bike path and scoured the area on Saturday, but no suspect has been named and the murder weapon has not been recovered, WFSB reported. Millan, a senior vice president who had been with MassMutual Financial Group since 2001, was transported to an area hospital,...

A couple of readers asked me to comment on the news Regulator Fines Barclays Over the Pricing of Gold. A British financial regulator has fined Barclays $43.9 million after accusing a former trader at the bank of improperly influencing gold prices at the expense of a customer. The F.C.A. also fined the former Barclays trader, Daniel James Plunkett, £95,600 and barred him from participating in any regulated financial activity. The authority said Mr. Plunkett, who settled with it, had profited at the expense of a customer, who was later fully compensated by Barclays. Mr. Plunkett’s improper conduct occurred on June...

A week ago I was in Belgrade watching a panel on "blockchain." The makeup of the panel was typical: a young, plugged-in VC, an older banker guy and a crypto-anarchistic dude in a T-shirt. It was like watching a movie called "Bitcoin is Good And Bad" for the 50th time. I knew what was happening but I couldn't look away. The panel started normally - VC guy said he liked the blockchain specifically but was iffy about those bitcoins, the older gentleman said bitcoin was bad, but then the anarchist dude was quiet. He let the banker talk. The banker...

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...

At the Republican Presidential debate earlier this week, Texas Senator Ted Cruz did something unusual for a politician -- he gave a straightforward answer to a question. Yes, Cruz made clear, if the Bank of America was on the brink, he would let it fail. That answer made perfect sense to millions of Americans who are tired of politicians doing special favors for their well-connected friends on Wall Street. But doing such favors is what Washington politics is all about. That reality was highlighted by Neil Barofsky, who served as the Special Inspector General for the TARP bailouts. His book...

As central planners the world over grapple with the effective "lower bound" that's imposed by the existence of physical banknotes, there’s been no shortage of calls for a ban on cash. Put simply, if you eliminate physical currency, you also eliminate the idea of a floor for depo rates. After all, if people can't withdraw paper money and stash it under the mattress, then interest rates can be as negative as the government wants them to be in order to "encourage" consumption. If, for instance, you’re being charged 10% for saving your money, then by God you will probably spend...

Protesters hijack Monday Night Football: Two men abseil from the stands and dangle unhindered for TWO QUARTERS as Colts play Panthers - but how did they get rappelling gear past security? Two protesters rappelled down from the upper balcony to unfurl a banner protesting against Bank of America during Monday night's game between the Indianapolis Colts and the Carolina Panthers. The protesters dangled over fans in the lower bowl and in front of press-box windows in Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina, late in the third quarter, then displayed a banner telling the Charlotte-based financial institution to 'dump...

The largest United States banks would face a US$120 billion (S$168 billion) total shortfall of long-term debt under a Federal Reserve proposal aimed at ensuring their failure would not hurt the broader financial system. The rule on total loss-absorbing capacity, or TLAC, is a key part of regulators' efforts to avoid another financial crisis. If US banks were to fail, investors in their stock would lose everything, but the debt would be converted into equity in a new, reconstituted bank under the plan.

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton on Tuesday said she would be willing to let big banks fail — a break from what President Obama did in 2009, according to CNN. Appearing on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” Clinton was asked by Colbert, “If you're president and the banks are failing, do we let them fail?” Her response was clear: “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.” “First of all, under Dodd-Frank, that is what will happen because we now have stress tests and I'm going to impose a risk fee on the big bank if they engage in risky...

Only weeks after the White House made headlines with a directive urging prosecutors to get tougher on corporate crime, the Obama administration has moved to protect a convicted financial firm from punishment. The bank, Credit Suisse, has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to President Barack Obama’s political campaigns. It also employs the Podesta Group, a lobbying firm with family connections to the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. In 2014, Credit Suisse pleaded guilty to criminal charges for operating “an illegal cross-border banking business that knowingly and willfully aided and assisted thousands of U.S. clients in opening and...

The concept of earning interest on money in the bank is so deeply ingrained into economic life that few people even know that the opposite can happen too: Banks can take a percentage of cash from your account in the form of negative interest rates, under certain conditions. Normally, this doesn't happen. Banks want your cash, and pay you interest on it, because the more deposits they have, the more they can lend it to others who pay them even more on their investments. But interest rates in Europe are so close to zero — and economic activity is so...

Global law enforcement agencies have arrested a gang member behind the theft of £20 million ($30.7 million) via a piece of malicious software that records banking details, and are on the hunt for the remaining members. The malware – known as Dridex – is believed to be developed by in eastern Europe and it's able to harvest bank details online in order to steal money from people. Global financial institutions and a variety of different payment systems have been targeted, the U.K.'s National Crime Agency (NCA), one of the authorities involved, said on Tuesday. "Thousands" of Brits have been infected...

Cheap oil is creating headaches for the Wall Street firms that bankrolled America's oil boom. That's because the crash in oil prices is putting energy companies under financial stress. Oil revenue has dried up, yet these companies are still saddled with tons of debt. America's largest banks are now raising red flags about the health of those loans. For the second-straight quarter, the banks have warned investors about an uptick in troubled energy loans. Banks "are going to lose money on the loans they've made. That's pretty evident -- whether oil prices go to $30 or $80 a barrel," said...

Taking on a new case that tests Congress’s power over the courts, but also gets into a sensitive question of U.S.-Iran dealings, the Supreme Court agreed on Thursday to review a legislative mandate on legal rights at issue in a case filed by victims of terrorism. The case filed by Iran’s central bank, Bank Markazi v. Peterson, was one of thirteen new cases that the Justices accepted for review in the new Term that formally opens next Monday. It is likely that the Court will hear oral arguments in the new cases in January and February.

With countless settlements documenting the rigging of every single asset class, it was only a matter of time before the regulators - some 10 years behind the curve as usual - finally cracked down on gold manipulation as well, even though as we have shown in the past, central banks in general and the Fed in particular are among the biggest gold manipulators. That said, we are confident by now nobody will be surprised that there was manipulation going on in the gold casino. In fact, ever since Germany's Bafin launched a probe into Deutsche Bank for gold and silver...

S&P Says China’s Banks Face Growing Risk From Bad Debt Problems in the real-estate sector are also a factor as ratings firm revises assessment to negative from stable By Mark Magnier Sept. 21, 2015 8:18 a.m. ET 0 COMMENTS BEIJING—In the latest sign of headwinds hitting the Chinese economy, a U.S. credit-rating firm said China’s banks face growing risk tied to rising bad loans and problems in its real-estate sector. Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services said Monday it had revised to negative from stable its assessment of the economic risks facing China’s banking industry, one of Beijing’s major levers as...

While the world breathlessly awaits the outcome of this week’s FOMC meeting—will the Federal Reserve raise interest rates or won’t it?—one thing is clear regardless: the Fed is driving the U.S. into a 2nd depression in order to carry out its one and only remit now that America’s ability to produce real jobs has been reduced to ash, namely, propping up criminal banks with multi-trillion-dollar giveaways. What’s so disturbing about the fatal path that the Fed has been on for 7 years is that it's one the Fed went down before, when—by its own admission—it extended and deepened the Great...