Free Republic

There is so much chaos going on that I don't even know where to start. For a very long time I have been warning my readers that a major banking collapse was coming to Europe, and now it is finally unfolding. Let's start with Deutsche Bank. The stock of the most important bank in the "strongest economy in Europe" plunged another 8 percent on Monday, and it is now hovering just above the all-time record low that was set during the last financial crisis. Overall, the stock price is now down a staggering 36 percent since 2016 began, and...

Jeremy Corbyn has been told to prepare for a snap General Election later this year amid fears that David Cameron could quit as Prime Minister following the EU referendum. Toby Perkins, Labour MP for Chesterfield, warned that Labour would be 'hurtling towards catastrophe' if it faced an election soon - pointing to the Lib Dems as an example of the 'scale of devastation' that the party could face. The party is currently 'under-prepared, divided and under-resourced' and could face an 'existential battle that may be upon us much sooner than some expected', he added. ...

Amid another battering for stocks Monday, billionaire businessman Donald Trump contended that markets still look overvalued. "I hope I'm wrong, but I think we're in a big, fat, juicy bubble," the Republican presidential candidate said on CNBC's "Power Lunch." Major U.S. stock averages were down more than 2 percent each Monday afternoon, continuing a rocky year in which the S&P 500 has fallen 10 percent. Fears about slowing growth in the United States and around the globe have contributed to the recent selling. Trump, who was in New Hampshire ahead of Tuesday's primary voting, criticized the state of the economy...

Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City, confirmed on Monday that he is actively considering running for president as an independent. In a dramatic interview, the 73-year-old said he was 'looking at all the options' and expressed disgust at the current state of the White House race. Bloomberg would be the richest candidate in American political history with a fortune of $36 billion, dwarfing the resources of Republican Donald Trump and enabling him to self-fund a campaign many times over.

The euro zone needs to press ahead with structural reforms and closer integration, including an euro zone finance ministry, to deliver sustainable growth, the heads of the French and German central banks wrote in a German newspaper on Monday. In a guest article for the Sueddeutsche Zeitung entitled "Europe at a crossroads", they said the European Central Bank (ECB) was not in a position to create sustainable long-term growth for the 19-country single currency bloc. The ECB has undershot its 2-percent inflation target for three straight years and is unlikely to return to it to for years to come given...

During this election year, we are destined to hear many words that are toxic in the way they misrepresent reality and substitute fantasies that can win votes. One of these words is "entitlement." To hear some politicians tell it, we are all entitled to all sorts of things, ranging from "affordable housing" to "a living wage." But the reality is that the human race is not entitled to anything, not even the food we need to stay alive. If we don't produce food, we are just going to starve. If we don't build housing, then we are not going to...

Gannet paper, link only: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/02/08/company-tracked-iowa-caucusgoers-phones/80005966/#

Greece aims to play the role of an economic force to strengthen ties between the European Union and Iran, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said Sunday after he arrived in Tehran for an official visit. "Greece will become an energy, economic and trade bridge between Iran and European Union," Tsipras said, according to a translation by the Mega television channel. He further called Iran "a key player for stability and peace in the Middle East, and a significant economic partner." Tsipras's comments come after Iran's nuclear deal with world powers came into force, allowing the United States and the European...

"This is football, not Hollywood, and I thought it was really outrageous that she used it as a platform to attack police officers who are the people who protect her and protect us, and keep us alive," he said. "And what we should be doing in the African-American community, and all communities, is build up respect for police officers. And focus on the fact that when something does go wrong, okay. We'll work on that. But the vast majority of police officers risk their lives to keep us safe."

U.S. stocks tumbled Monday morning to their lowest level in 22 months as a fresh drop in oil prices amid continuing fears of economic slowdown pushed investors to the perceived safety of government bonds and gold. "Is the market throwing out the baby with the bath water?"said James Meyer, chief investment officer at Tower Bridge Advisors, referring to the "rapid fall in prices for the high flying tech and biotech names that have been leading the market for the past 12 months." "The former leaders of the previous bull cycle are the ones that get taken to the woodshed in...

Drought conditions may be the default position of the American Southwest now, according to a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters. A study of the region from 1979 through 2014 shows that drier conditions have set in as lower precipitation has become the norm, and it is expected to continue.

Steve Forbes ran for president twice -- in 1996 and 2000 -- spending a reported $69 million of his own money in failed bids to win the Republican nomination. His campaigns mostly focused on establishing a flat income tax and other similar economic reforms. The multi-millionaire chairman and editor-in-chief of Forbes Media isn't running for president this time around, but he does have a new book out this week (Reviving America), promoting three big reforms he believes America should adopt: repeal and replace Obamacare with something akin to a free-market health-care system; scrapping the Federal income tax code in favor...

A Super Bowl ad promoting tourism in Colonial Williamsburg made a questionable choice in showing video of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. The commercial, which aired in New York, Philadelphia and Washington, begins with reversed footage of achievements throughout American history:

Donald Trump said Sunday that there's one issue on which he and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) agree: trade. In a CNN interview Sunday, Trump pointed out that he and Sanders both opposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the multinational trade agreement brokered by the Obama administration. The deal aims to reduce tariffs and put legal standards in place in the 12 participating countries. "The one thing we very much agree on is trade. We both agree that we are getting ripped off by China, by Japan, by Mexico, everyone we do business with," Trump said. But though the mogul suggested that he...

Pennsylvania will be about $6 billion short of being able to fund all the projects legislators promised their constituents during passage of Act 89, the transportation funding bill of 2013. Secretary Leslie Richards will break the news to the Senate Transportation Committee when she testifies Tuesday, according to a copy of her testimony obtained by the Tribune-Review. Pennsylvania's 12-year transportation plan covers about 2,800 projects at a cost of about $34 billion. But that exceeds the $28 billion in revenue projected to come in for that time frame. “The Corbett administration over promised projects by at least $6 billion compared...

..... The Republican presidential candidate has repeatedly said that "Muslims love him" despite his provocative policies, but has so far failed to name any single individual Muslim supporter. Asked by the Telegraph to elaborate, Mr Trump again ducked the question responding: "Oh, I could give you about 20 of them."... Donald Trump Junior, Mr Trump's son, was also unable to tell the Telegraph who his father's Muslim friends were, saying only that they had "completed a lot of business deals" in the Middle East.

The most interesting question this year for political junkies is who - if anyone - can rebuild Ronald Reagan's electoral coalition. Plenty of candidates would like to do it, and plenty of them want to convince America right now that they're already doing it. But the key group of voters who could make that happen are up for grabs - and they're skeptical. The big cultural story of the year, it's now clear, is how elites and intellectuals now abruptly admit that downwardly mobile middle-class whites, especially men, have become an important constituency and a political problem. "As we know,"...

Link only, per agreement with Gannett

Presidential elections are about, above all, just two things: our security and our prosperity. Promises of prosperity have all but faded into the background... except by Donald Trump. In the last debate in which he participated Donald Trump hit the voters' target bull's eye in stating "I want to use that same up here, whatever it may be, to make America rich again." None of the other candidates came close to featuring The Message we voters wish to hear. Prosperity. If the other candidates - most notably #2 Ted Cruz - wished to gain the voters' hearts, or at least...

This year's Republican presidential race has generated an unusual number of unusually bad ideas -- Donald Trump on Muslims, Ted Cruz on carpet bombing, Marco Rubio on male footwear. It has also has produced one of the best: Jeb Bush's 4 percent plan. No, that wasn't his desired share of the vote in the Iowa caucus, where he got less than 3 percent. It's his goal for annual economic growth, which he argues would "restore the opportunity for every American to rise and achieve earned success." When Bush said last June, "There is not a reason in the world why...