Free Republic

Economy In Crisis: A new study by the Illinois Policy Institute shows in the past four years, the number of new food-stamp recipients in the state has outpaced new jobs nearly 2-to-1. Illinois Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn, locked in a tight re-election battle with self-made billionaire Republican Bruce Rauner, has been arguing that Illinois, arguably the bluest of blue states, has turned the fiscal corner and is on its way back. The recovery may be slower than Quinn wants it to be — but, he says, it is real. It is an odd recovery, though, that makes more people dependent...

Investors have bought billions of euros in German treasury notes that pay negative interest—meaning the purchasers agreed to pay a small fee for the privilege of lending the German government their money. […] Germany auctioned €3.34 billion ($4.3 billion) Wednesday in two-year notes at an average yield of minus 0.07 percent. Rates are very low all over, and German debt is considered ultra-safe, so security-minded investors are paying for safety. Expectation the European Central Bank will buy bonds has also driven down yields, which move opposite to prices. And the small negative yield on the notes is still a better...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Federal Reserve signaled Wednesday that it plans to keep a key interest rate at a record low for a considerable period because a broad range of U.S. economic measures remain subpar. The Fed said it planned to keep its benchmark rate near zero as long as inflation remains under control, until it sees consistent gains in wage growth, long-term unemployment and other gauges of the job market. The central bank retained language signaling its plans to keep short-term rates low "for a considerable time" after it ends its monthly bond purchases after its next meeting in...

Although the overall Consumer Price Index dropped by 0.2 percent in August, the price index for food rose 0.2 percent, with the average price for a pound of ground beef rising to $4.013 per pound--the first time it has ever topped $4 per pound. In July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average price for a pound of ground beef had been $3.884 per pound—which was the record price up to that point. From July to August, the average price jumped 12.9 cents, an increase of 3.3 percent in one month.

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. – New federal school food regulations promoted by First Lady Michelle Obama are becoming a massive headache for many schools that participate in the National School Lunch Program. And many, like Missouri’s Notre Dame Regional and Saxony Lutheran high schools, are taking matters into their own hands. Those schools and numerous others across the country are ditching the federal regulations and the funding that comes with them to save their cafeteria programs, which have experienced a nose-dive in sales and skyrocketing waste since the new rules were implemented in 2012. At Notre Dame, school officials turned to...

On Friday, the California State Assembly outdid itself. You can always count on the leftist leaders of what is supposed to be the “people’s house” never lets a crisis go to waste. With the passage of AB 1739 (Dickinson-D), SB 1168 (Pavley-D), and SB 1319 (Pavley-D), 100 years of history was reversed. The authors painted a grim picture of California’s groundwater future. Most of what they said is true. The only problem they didn’t bother to tell you two key truths: 1.It was these same so-called leaders who give up our seat—the property owner and the farmer’s place at the...

Odile will unload tremendous rainfall over a large part of the Southwest United States that will run off the mountains and into the desert valleys and plains through the end of the week. While the rain will continue to ease the long-term drought in the region, too much rain will fall too quickly for the landscape to absorb.

There are many sharks in the water – so many, in fact, that even public exposure in courts of law doesn’t guarantee that the most predatory of attacks will necessarily garner public attention. Well, here’s one that should, assuming two related court actions by the bankrupt oil drilling equipment holding company Gulfco Holding Corp. against Prospect Capital Corp has real merit. It’s a dilly, a true watermark of an intrinsically tainted business culture. In Gulfco Holding Corp. v. Prospect Capital Corp. (U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware) – and in a separate lawsuit filed May, 2014 in Jefferson...

For climate change activists and those hoping for an energy future dominated by renewables or even less-polluting natural gas, the death of coal cannot come quickly enough. But with coal still the dominant form of cheap electricity throughout the world, it is unlikely the bogeyman of climate change will disappear anytime soon. That's because the price of coal, compared to other fuels, is just too good to refuse. Just look at China, where the country's double-digit economic growth has largely been fueled by coal, which fulfills 60 percent of its energy mix.

The Census Bureau's annual report on poverty, released Tuesday, is noteworthy because this year marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson's launch of the War on Poverty. Liberals claim that the war has failed because we didn't spend enough money. Their answer is to spend more. But the facts show otherwise. Since its beginning, U.S. taxpayers have spent $22 trillion on Johnson's War on Poverty (in constant 2012 dollars). Adjusting for inflation, that's three times more than was spent on all military wars since the American Revolution. The federal government currently runs more than 80 means-tested welfare programs. These...

The uninsured rate fell 1.3% in the first three months of this year to the lowest point since the Centers for Disease Control began tracking it in 1997. The CDC's survey, on top of others by Gallup, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Urban Institute, appears to show that ObamaCare is succeeding in its main goal of cutting the ranks of the uninsured. But the picture is far murkier than these surveys suggest. In fact, it's not entirely clear what impact ObamaCare is having on the uninsured, or what part of the law deserves credit if it is.

Premier Li Keqiang is determined to drive through deep reforms and wean the economy off exorbitant levels of debt before the damage becomes irreversible ___ China’s leaders have brushed aside warnings of an incipient credit crunch in the Chinese economy, determined to purge excesses from the financial system despite falling house prices and the deepest industrial slowdown since the Lehman crisis. Industrial production dropped 0.4pc in August from a month earlier, a rare event that highlights how quickly China is coming off the boil. The growth of fixed asset investment fell to record lows. “It is a shockingly sharp deceleration,”...

The OECD has drastically cut its growth forecast for Italy. The depression will drag on though most of 2015. The economy will contract by 0.4pc this year. It will remain stuck in the doldrums next year with growth of just 0.1pc. If so, Italy’s public debt will spiral to dangerous levels next year, ever further beyond the point of no return for a country without its own sovereign currency and central bank. “This is catastrophic for the finances of the country. We’re heading for a debt ratio of 145pc next year,” said Antonio Guglielmi, global strategist for Mediobanca. “Who knows...

Sales of subprime mortgage bonds have withered since the financial crisis, but fresh concerns are arising as issuance of some other types of securitisations surges. Sales of bonds backed by loans used to finance car purchases undertaken by the least creditworthy borrowers have reached pre-crisis levels in the US, prompting a Department of Justice investigation. While losses on subprime auto asset-backed securities (ABS) remained low during the crisis, there are concerns that new specialised lending companies are making riskier loans which are then being bundled into the bonds. Fitch Ratings has been hired to rate only four of the 29...

Medical Office Cancels Health Plan After ObamaCare Doubles Premiums (September 10, 2014) - click link to view

This week, the U.S. Census Bureau is scheduled to release its annual poverty report. The report will be notable because this year marks the 50th anniversary of the launch of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. In his January 1964 State of the Union address, Johnson proclaimed, “This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.”[1] Since that time, U.S. taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs (in constant 2012 dollars). Adjusted for inflation, this spending (which does not include Social Security or Medicare) is three times the cost of all military wars in...

About half say there is too much regulation; 22% say there is too little .....From 2003 through the remainder of the George W. Bush administration, however, these attitudes settled into a pattern in which Americans were more likely to say there was too much rather than too little government regulation of business. After Barack Obama took office in 2009, the percentage saying "too much" regulation rose into the high 40s, including a reading of 50% in 2011, and has remained at these relatively high levels since. Less than a quarter of Americans have perceived in the last two years that...

NASA has awarded the highly-anticipated space taxi contract to Boeing and SpaceX, a move which will end the agency’s reliance on Russian technology to transport U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station. The Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract aims to restore an American capability to launch astronauts from U.S. soil to the International Space Station by the end of 2017. Since the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011, American astronauts have been transported to space on Russian-built Soyuz vessels. …

Russian authorities told people not to panic on Tuesday as the battered ruble plunged to record lows, floored by tensions with the West over Ukraine, new sanctions and falling oil prices. The national currency fell to 38.82 rubles per dollar after weakening on Monday to below 38 against the dollar for the first time. It also broke through the symbolic level of 50 rubles per euro for the first time in several months. The ruble has slumped as investors fret about the impact of ever more stringent Western sanctions on the economy, which is already teetering on the verge of...

’ve complained over and over again that America’s tax code is a nightmare that undermines competitiveness and retards growth.Our aggregate fiscal burden may not be as high as it is for many of our foreign competitors, but high tax rates and poor design mean the system is very punitive on a per-dollar-raised basis.For more information, the Tax Foundation has put together an excellent report measuring international tax competitiveness.Here’s the methodology. The Tax Foundation’s International Tax Competitiveness Index (ITCI) measures the degree to which the 34 OECD countries’ tax systems promote competitiveness through low tax burdens on business investment and neutrality through...