Free Republic

Sonja Kohn may be literally running for her life. The woman once known here as "Austria’s woman on Wall Street" has disappeared. Kohn collected more than $2 billion from rich investors in Russia and across Europe for Bernard Madoff through her firm, Bank Medici. Touting her connections, she promised investors entrée to bigger fish in the finance world, including Madoff. Some say it’s not out of the question that she’s hiding from Russian clients (do we dare say, perhaps, the Russian mob?) who trusted her with their cash and have had their wallets hit even harder by the Russian stock...

As part of his stimulus package Obama is planning to throw billions of dollars at America's school system. The only thing this will stimulate is contractors' accounts and teachers' salaries. America is spending more per student in real terms then it has ever done and the result is dismal. If Obama was really interested in education he would move to raise standards and introduce choice for the poor who want the best for their children. (When it comes to choice and children, it's only allowed in Obama's world when it comes to abortion). Apart from his outrageous hypocrisy (there is...

After I wrote a recent column on the fiscal mess in some states, I got an e-mail from a beleaguered New Jersey resident asking what I thought were the prospects for a tax revolt in the Garden State. It is an interesting and pertinent question because tax uprisings tend to occur during difficult and uncertain economic times, especially in places where the first impulse of state and local governments is to raise taxes to make up for shortfalls in revenues. The two most notable tax revolts in recent memory, for instance, occurred in the mid-to-late 1970s and again in the...

* The 20 percent spending increase projected for 2009 represents the largest government expansion since the 1952 height of the Korean War (adjusted for inflation). * In 2009, federal spending is projected to reach 25 percent of GDP—the highest level in American history outside of World War II. The next economic “stimulus” package would push this total even higher. * From 2001 through 2008, federal spending surged 60 percent—6.9 percent per year, on average. Had spending increases been limited to 35 percent—4.4 percent annually—the 2008 budget would have been in balance. * The projected 2009 budget deficit of 8.6 percent...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices slid 12 percent on Wednesday, the largest percentage drop in seven years, after a U.S. government report showed crude inventories rose much more than expected in the world's top energy consumer. Crude oil stocks swelled by 6.7 million barrels, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said, more than seven times the 900,000-barrel increase analysts had expected. Gasoline and distillate stocks also rose as refinery utilization climbed and demand remained sluggish. U.S. crude for February delivery settled at $42.63 a barrel, down $5.95 or 12.25 percent, the biggest single-day loss, percentage-wise, since prices plunged 15.25 percent...

Pundits are fond of talking about the disconnect between the GOP and the American electorate. Conservatives are out of step, so the wisdom goes. They need to drop the frightening Pentecostalism of Sarah Palin and the bellicosity of John McCain. Republicans must consider dismantling the whole trickle-down apparatus and turning their direct attention to the neglected segment of the population for whom “the promise of America,� as Barack Obama likes to call it, remains unfulfilled. True, voters may not be in sync with Republican leaders. But if the current political climate is any indication, they could end up feeling mightily...

Germany is one of the few countries with leverage over Gazprom. The former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has strong links to the Russian company The bust-up between Russia and Ukraine that threatens to gum up the gas supplies of much of Southern and Eastern Europe hardly comes as a surprise. It is almost part of the new year ritual and somehow always seems to strike during a cold spell. Across the Continent, radiators run cold. So why hasn’t the European Union devised some kind of strategy to deal with the threat by now? Years of talk about energy security have generated...

The U.S. Dollar Arguably the biggest story in 2009, Scatigna predicts, will be the dramatic decline in the value of the U.S. dollar. As a result of the declining dollar, Scatigna predicts gold will reassert itself as a safe haven, possibly reaching record highs in value during 2009. Currently valued at $850 per ounce, gold could, according to Scatigna, nearly double in value over the next 12 months. "I expect gold to trade over $1,200 per ounce in 2009," Scatigna says. "If there is a dollar crisis in 2009, as there very well may be, gold could rise to $1,500...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Everybody should have known the holidays would only delay it. The freight train of job cuts, plunging earnings and massive spending cutbacks set to hit the economy was, thankfully, pushed back a few weeks while stunned investors and workers across the globe caught their breath after the worst fourth quarter in decades. But now the great dying has begun, and I'm not talking about German billionaires throwing themselves in front of trains or French aristocrats slitting their wrists, as alarming as these incidents have been. No, earnings season, the time for companies to 'fess up just...

BP names Russia troubleshooter as U.S. boss British oil major BP Plc (BP.L) appointed the man who led negotiations with its oligarch partners in Russian joint venture TNK-BP (TNBPI.RTS) as head of its U.S. unit. BP said on Tuesday Lamar McKay, formerly leader of the company's Special Projects Team, had been appointed chairman and president of BP America. He succeeds Bob Malone, who was appointed to the expanded role in 2006 to repair BP's reputation in the United States which had been battered by an oil spill in Alaska and a refinery explosion in 2005 killing 15 workers. Malone is...

Governor Paterson just finished up his first State of the State speech, reminding attendees of his favorite theme—fiscal calamity—and averred that “the state of our state is perilous.” In contrast to speeches of years past in better times, Mr. Paterson laid out relatively few new initiatives that would come at any substantial cost. In terms of economic development, his calls for new revenue for projects were confined to the federal government, asking Congress to pass a stimulus package “by the end of the month.” He devoted much of his speech to issues of energy, asking for an "energy revolution" that...

President-elect Barack Obama confirmed to CNBC that he plans to lay out a roughly $775 billion economic stimulus plan on Thursday but indicated that the amount could grow once it gets taken up by Congress. "We've seen ranges from $800 (billion) to 1.3 trillion," he said in an exclusive interview with CNBC's chief Washington correspondent John Harwood. "And our attitude was that given the legislative process, if we start towards the low end of that, we'll see how it develops." Obama plans to propose $310 billion in tax cuts for the middle class and businesses as part of the stimulus...

The words “economic stimulus” have a certain appeal to them because, after all, who wouldn’t want the U.S. economy to be stimulated? But, as the country is nearing his inauguration on Jan. 20 and the inevitability of President Barack Obama’s stimulus project looms, many in the news media have neglected to determine the who, what, when, where, why and how much aspects of the stimulus. Even before Obama is able to sign a economic stimulus package into law, as most are expecting, the Congressional Budget Office is reportedly expecting a $1 trillion deficit, more than double what it had forecasted...

A currently active malware campaign is taking advantage of bogus LinkedIn profiles impersonating celebrities in an attempt to trick users into clicking on links serving bogus media players. LinkedIn is among the latest social networking services considered as a valuable asset in the arsenal of the blackhat SEO knowledgeable cybecriminal, simply because this approach works. For instance, Googling for “Keri Russell nude” or “Brooke Hogan Naked pics” you’ll notice that the bogus profiles have already been indexed by Google and are appearing within the first 5/10 search results. This is a proven tactic for acquiring search engine traffic which was...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Congress must approve a sweeping economic stimulus package by mid-February or the United States will face a deepening crisis and more job losses, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Wednesday. Democrats wanted to present President-elect Barack Obama with a plan on January 20, his first day in office, but the target has slipped with political realities taking hold. At a Democratic-sponsored forum on suggestions for a recovery plan, Pelosi said lawmakers must ensure any response has a rapid and meaningful impact on the reeling economy. "Failure to act quickly will only lead to more job losses and...

PARIS (AFP) – A cold front is sweeping across Europe after gripping swathes of North America last month, but the deep freeze does not mean the threat of global warming has abated, caution scientists. "The major trend is unmistakably one of warming," Michel Jarraud, secretary general of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), told AFP. "If we look at the trajectory over the last 160 years, it overlays a large natural variability, and that's what causes confusion." The cooler weather that was a hallmark of 2008 can be explained partly by La Nina, a reversal of the phenomenon by which warm...

So Obama’s government is going to save the day? Uh-huh. Let me tell you a story about government "help." I was privileged to serve in the US Naval Service for over twenty years. Hands-down, simply the finest organization in the world. But after I retired I made the mistake of taking a job for the civilian side of the Government. As Arnold Schwarzenegger said in “The Last Action Hero,” Big Mistake! The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston was looking for an electronic technician – someone to install, repair, and reinstall the myriad of CCTV cameras, monitors, door strikes, man-traps, VCRs,...

Satyam Computer Services, a leading Indian outsourcing company that serves more than a third of the Fortune 500 companies, significantly inflated its earnings and assets for years, the chairman and co-founder said Wednesday, roiling Indian stock markets and throwing the industry into turmoil. The chairman, Ramalinga Raju, resigned after revealing that he had systematically falsified accounts as the company expanded from a handful of employees into a back-office giant with a work force of 53,000 and operations in 66 countries. Mr. Raju said Wednesday that 50.4 billion rupees, or $1.04 billion, of the 53.6 billion rupees in cash and bank...

Hartford (WTNH) - As the state decides where to make cuts in a bad economy, there's a group of janitors pleading with the very lawmakers they clean up after. The union representing the cleaning crews at state buildings say if the state doesn't add money to an insurance fund, the children of the janitors will not have health care. His dad Felippe Trevitaso is a janitor at a state building and his seven year old son is one of nearly 400 kids who will not have health care come February 1st. The insurance fund that pays for their family's healthcare...

There will be plenty of time to rip apart whatever economic stimulus plan Barack Obama and his Congress eventually settle upon. But in the meantime, I'd rather offer up an alternative stimulus plan that fiscal conservatives could support in full, and more importantly, that would work. President-Elect Obama campaigned as a new kind of politician, a man who would look at the best ideas available, who would avoid the partisan squabbles of the past. Taking him at his word, Obama has a tremendous opportunity here. If he enacts a plan that addresses the following aspects of our current economic problems,...

LBANY — Gov. David A. Paterson will propose that private employers be required to offer health insurance to workers’ dependents who are ages 19 to 29, part of what the administration hopes will be a step toward universal health care coverage in New York. Currently, employers are not required to offer health insurance to dependents who are older than 18 or, if they are in college, 22. The proposal would amount to a wide expansion of coverage to some 800,000 people 19 to 29 years old who are uninsured. And it ties into a continuing initiative by Mr. Paterson, who...

Science writer Matt Ridley on the causes of poverty and prosperityMatt Ridley, an Oxford-educated zoologist, turned to journalism in 1983, when he got a job as The Economist’s science reporter. He soon became the magazine’s Washington correspondent and eventually served as it’s American editor. This time in the United States had a profound intellectual effect on Ridley, ultimately leading him to become a self-described classical liberal, a “person who believes in economic freedom and social freedom, too.� Ridley, 50, has written several superb books that combine clear explanations of complex biology with discussions of the science’s implications for human society....

The Government may resort to printing extra money if interest rates keep falling. It is being considered as a desperate measure if base rates fall so far that they cease to work as an economic lever. Base rates are set to plunge tomorrow to the lowest level since the Bank of England was founded in 1694, with another big cut of at least half a point to 1.5 per cent or even lower. Chancellor Alistair Darling and Bank of England governor Mervyn King are considering whether to embark on a new policy of expanding the money supply, or quantitative easing,...

Two days after the suicide of one of Germany's richest men -- who was apparently despondent over financial troubles -- banks agreed to rescue his business holdings, the companies said in a statement. Adolf Merckle, 74, was hit by a train in the southwestern town of Ulm Monday. Details of the incident were unclear, but Ulm police said Merckle was apparently dragged for some time after being struck, as they found blood some distance away from the body. Merckle's family said that he had been "broken" by the global economic crisis. But on Wednesday, Merckle's VEM Group said it had...

Homebuilders are asking for up to $150 billion in the economic stimulus package being drafted by President-elect Obama’s administration and congressional Democrats. The National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB) is working with 80 of its members to lobby lawmakers on their plan, which includes a mortgage foreclosure reduction effort, a homebuyer tax credit and a temporary program to reduce interest rates. “This ain’t the time to be subtle. There is not a congressman or senator on the Hill who is looking forward to talking to you," NAHB Chief Executive Officer Jerry Howard told homebuilders at a meeting Wednesday morning. Democrats have...

The Consumer Product Safety Commission gives a preliminary OK to exempt some items from testing after complaints of hardship to thrift stores and sellers of handmade toys. By Alana Semuels January 7, 2009 The Consumer Product Safety Commission has given preliminary approval to changes in new lead-testing rules after complaints that the measures could have forced thrift stores and sellers of handmade toys to dispose of merchandise or even go out of business.

Syracuse, New York (WSYR-TV) - Families who depend on thrift stores and consignment shops for kid's clothing could lose that option in a few weeks. That’s because a new federal safety law is written so broadly, it could force these stores to stop selling kids clothes entirely. The new Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act takes effect February 10. It requires any store to certify that clothing sold for children 12 and under is free of dye laced with lead or other chemicals. Beth green smith owns the golden hangers consignment store in western lights: “When you're talking about consignment, it's...

(Very) Poor Man's Gold. The post office sells the new Liberty Bell "Forever" stamps, which have no denomination, but are good each for one first-class letter. These are not only convenient (you don't have to remember the latest first-class rate), but they are like gold. They increase in nominal value as the first-class rates increase, and are a hedge against inflation. As with gold, you also lose the use of the money invested in them, so you get no interest; but on the other hand, there does not seem to be any way for the tax people to get you...

NEW-CYCLE SUNSPOT: The first sunspot of the new year has appeared. Sunspot 1010 in the sun's southern hemisphere is a member of new Solar Cycle 24.

Electronic unemployment systems in at least three states crashed under the crush of thousands of new claims from unemployed Americans. Along with having trouble keeping up with online filings, state unemployment centers are also swamped with telephone inquiries. The situation has an upside though, some states are hiring workers to deal with the increased workload created by other people losing a job. New York, North Carolina and Ohio ...

Servers suffer as gratuities, and their incomes, plummet with the economyNobody is sitting at the rack at Mary’s Club on a Friday afternoon. The rack is the counter that lines the stage at Mary’s, an institution among Portland strip clubs, at 129 S.W. Broadway Ave. Customers who sit at the rack, up close to the dancers, are expected to tip dollar bills or more throughout the performances. In fact, there’s a sign in Mary’s Club that reads, “If you’re watching and not tipping, you’re stealing.” But it’s easier to watch and not tip from seats further back or at the...

City Council members on Tuesday approved a resolution authorizing the city to file suit against national lenders who they say created a foreclosure crisis in Memphis and Shelby County that disproportionately affected African-Americans. The resolution alleges lenders engaged in "deceptive" and "discriminatory" lending practices targeted at the black community and "other select groups" that caused "substantial" and "irreparable" harm to neighborhoods and the governments. The Shelby County Commission recently approved a similar resolution, claiming the foreclosure epidemic has devastated neighborhoods, slashed property values, eroded the tax base and drained local government coffers because of a host of direct and indirect...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. budget deficit will swell to a record $1.186 trillion in fiscal 2009 as the global recession saps the economy, congressional forecasters said on Wednesday, presenting a daunting challenge to President-elect Barack Obama who has said tough choices will be necessary. The Congressional Budget Office also forecast the deficit will likely fall to $703 billion in the 2010 fiscal year which begins October 1, 2009, as the U.S. recession begins to ease in the second half of this year.

Drugstore operator/retailer Walgreen Co. said Monday its sales rose 10.8 percent in December, with sales at its older stores growing as consumers stocked up on necessities. The company reported $6.11 billion revenue in December, up from its $5.51 billion total in December 2007. Walgreen said its same-store sales, or sales at locations open at least one year rose 4.9 percent. Sales at older pharmacies increased 8.5 percent, and sales at the front end of those rose grew 0.4 percent. Front-end sales refers to sales of nonprescription products. Same-store sales are considered a key measurement of retailer health because they compare...

How about fill-in-the-blank stories? These generic scripts and articles would report on the most commonplace current events. They could fill the pages and airtime between the advertising and keep conglomerates' revenue incoming with far less outgoing to the writers, reporters, producers, etc, now that so many have been laid off. Radio and TV stations can keep up their pretense of serving the community by having announcers simply read from these templates. We could call it "Rip Reed and the News". It would be a snap. Look at how many of our stories are so similar: * ________ has asked Treasury...

Earnings reports released by the New York Times Company in October indicate that drastic measures will have to be taken over the next five months or the paper will default on some $400 million in debt. With more than $1billion in debt already on the books, only $46 million in cash reserves as of October, and no clear way to tap into the capital markets (the company’s debt was recently reduced to junk status), the paper’s future doesn’t look good.

As it turns out, there really may be a bug in your soup. The Food and Drug Administration has finalized a rule that will require food companies to list cochineal extract and carmine on the label when they are used in food and cosmetics. But the new rule contains one glaring omission. It doesn’t require companies to tell you that the ingredients come from a bug. Cochineal extract and carmine, used to dye food, drinks and cosmetics various shades of red, orange, pink and purple, are extracted from the dried bodies of the female cochineal bug. The F.D.A typically doesn’t...

BOISE, Idaho -- Rick and Noreen Capp recently reduced their credit-card debt, opened a savings account and stopped taking their two children to restaurants. Jessica and Alan Muir have started buying children's clothes at steep markdowns, splitting bulk-food purchases with other families and gathering their firewood instead of buying it for $200 a cord. [Just Browsing] As layoffs and store closures grip Boise, these two local families hope their newfound frugality will see them through the economic downturn. But this same thriftiness, embraced by families across the U.S., is also a major reason the downturn may not soon end. Americans,...

Next automotive must-have: the coconut husk interior. Eco-minded engineers develop a way to do it commercially - and increase the annual incomes of 11 million poor coconut farmers.

President-elect Obama has announced plans for a new stimulus package containing $500 billion to $700 billion worth of public works projects.The package would be "the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the federal highway system," he said. America's governors already are scrambling to compose lists of "shovel-ready" projects so no bridge or highway is left behind. But while a "new" New Deal will produce certain visible results — more construction materials will be sold, more construction workers will be employed and some of the nation's infrastructure may indeed be improved — it is unlikely to give the...

Slowing tax revenues and an historic bailout of the U.S. financial system will drive the annual budget deficit to nearly $1.2 trillion this year, even without the massive economic stimulus package now under review by Congress, the Congressional Budget Office reported this morning. The CBO also projects that the deficit will hit $703 billion in the fiscal year that starts in October. The CBO budget outlook provides the first official estimate of how rampant federal spending aimed at stabilizing markets and reviving the economy have affected the government's finances. The picture is grim: both numbers represent deficits far larger than...

The collapse of the stock market last year left corporate pension plans at the largest companies underfunded by $409 billion, reversing a $60 billion pension surplus at the end of 2007, according to a study released today. Shoring up the plans could cause further pain for workers, businesses and the struggling economy at a time when they can least afford it, pension specialists said. "The chaos that has been observed in the world's financial markets over the last 12 months has had a major adverse impact on pension plan funding and will negatively impact corporate earnings," the Mercer consulting firm...

One Trillion A Year? The Market Ticker Wednesday, January 7. 2009 Posted by Karl Denninger at 07:52 One Trillion A Year? Change we can believe in? Where?This is Obama's idea of "change": WASHINGTON (AP) - President-elect Barack Obama says the nation probably faces huge deficits for years to come, but heavy spending is needed now to spur the economy. Obama said Tuesday the deficit appears on track to hit $1 trillion soon. Speaking to reporters after meeting with top economic aides, Obama said: "Potentially we've got trillion-dollar deficits for years to come, even with the economic recovery that we...

A Tennessee woman has filed complaints with three government agencies alleging that a local farm discriminated against her for being an American. Sabrina Steele, 28, says that when she applied for work at Pope's Plant Farm in Greenback, Tenn., a man she believed to be the farm's owner discouraged her from taking the job so that he could hire foreign workers instead. Critics say the case demonstrates that changes to the government's H-2A foreign worker program will make it harder for Americans to find work. In November 2007, Pope's Plant Farm applied to the Department of Labor for 75 foreign...

General Motors(GM Quote - Cramer on GM - Stock Picks) has enough government loans to cover the worst-case scenario it described last month and added it won't need more if the economy stabilizes, according to a Bloomberg report. "The U.S. Treasury's $13.4 billion bridge loan to GM, coupled with the separate transaction for GMAC, meets our liquidity needs under the scenarios outlined in our December plan to Congress," a GM spokesman told Bloomberg Tuesday. Last month, the U.S. government approved a bailout of automakers GM and Chrysler. GM received $13.4 billion, while its financing arm GMAC got $6 billion. GM...

With the opening of the 111th Congress yesterday, all of Washington is tingling with the allure of a fresh start. Not so fast. We've got some leftover business from the 110th Congress -- namely, Chris Dodd's July 2008 promise to release the details of his sweetheart loans from Countrywide Financial. The Connecticut Senator got favored treatment from the subprime mortgage purveyor, even as he was a power broker on the Banking Committee that regulates the industry. When the news broke, the Senator first denied that he sought or expected preferential treatment. He later admitted that he knew he was considered...

Ukraine Says Russia Shuts Down All Gas Supplies to Europe By DAVID JOLLY and ANDREW E. KRAMER PARIS — All gas supplies to Europe via Ukraine were shut down Wednesday as the pricing dispute between Russia and Ukraine escalated. The European Union called for an immediate solution to the crisis. The cutoff showed the first signs of hitting the European economy as the Hungarian unit of the Japanese automaker Suzuki said it was halting production because of restrictions on industrial users of gas. The Hungarian news agency MTI quoted a spokeswoman as saying Suzuki hoped to restart production Monday. The...

With England's economy gasping in the mid 1970s due to a combination of nosebleed rates of taxation and a currency in freefall, the fortunes of many of its flagship companies similarly reflected the ailing health of a country in decline.High tax rates and inflation bat a thousand when it comes to the disappearance of investors, and with Coventry-based carmaker Jaguar in major financial trouble, its executives went to the government for help. Jaguar was effectively nationalized by the British government in 1975 thanks to skeptical credit markets, and it remained that way until Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's privatization program freed...

Planned layoffs at U.S. firms eased in December from the previous month's seven-year high but they were up an astounding 275 percent annually as the year-old recession cut a huge swathe of destruction through job market. AP -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The economic slump, which is likely to be the longest since the Great Depression of the 1930s, also produced the worst year of layoffs since 2003, outplacement company Challenger, Gray & Christmas said Wednesday in its monthly report on U.S. job cuts. The report said heavy job-cutting could continue through at least the first half of 2009, and the outlook afterward hinges...

A judgment against Turner Broadcasting System in December following a trial related to the 2004 sale of its winter sports teams, resulting in an aggregate charge of approximately $280 million... The restructuring of a lease for space in the Time & Life Building, held by a lessee who recently declared bankruptcy, that will require a charge of $50 million to $60 million. An increase of approximately $40 million in reserves for potential credit losses related to several customers of Time Warner who have recently declared bankruptcy. The economic environment has proved somewhat more challenging than the Company previously expected, particularly...