Free Republic

Yesterday (March 31st), Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson announced the laying of the government's foundation stone for the next big financial bubble, heralding an era of hyperinflation and probable further runs on the U.S. dollar. Of course, like most politics, there is usually a 'good' reason and a 'real' reason for actions. Today's announcement was no exception. In today's case, the 'good' reason was the effective 'policing' of the financial, derivative, insurance and mortgage markets. Some cynics could be excused for thinking that the so-called 'restructuring' and massive increase in the powers of the Federal Reserve Board were like locking the...

The prevailing force-fed sentiment is that the US financial sector has bottomed out, the worst is over, the mechanisms for remedy are here, and time to get back in the water for profound bargains again. Let me rebutt! The financial sector is merely taking a breather in a long death march after the great bond bust and horrific unwind of reckless mortgage creation. Monoline bond insurers are nowhere near properly capitalized to handle upcoming substantial losses, nor are banks with loss reserves. Hundreds of billion$ in overvalued and soon-to-be hit mortgage bonds still have yet to occur. And besides, the...

There has been no shortage of commentators and players willing to vouch that this is the worst financial crisis they have ever seen. Equally, there has been no shortage of bailout moves by the Federal Reserve–remedies that put “the Greenspan Put” to shame in their magnitude. And yet the market meltdown continues, and the casualties continue to mount, with Bear Stearns the latest–and surely not the last. In all this, no one yet seems to have posed the question of “why now?”. Why is the crisis clearly more severe this time than ever before, and why are remedies that worked...

Is Barack Obama guilty of elder abuse? Has granny-bashing become the centerpiece of his campaign? The frontrunner for the Democratic nomination is touted as the president for post-racial America -- the messiah who will heal our wounds and unite us in a common cause. Black and white together, we shall overcome -- on the day Barack Hussein Obama becomes the 44th President of the United States. In truth, Obama is old racism in a new bottle. He is the latest in a long line of race-hustlers, from Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. and Jesse Jackson to Al Sharpton and the Reverend...

This article by Jeff Randall in the Telegraph does a nice job of looking at the causes of our credit mess and articulating implications. And he quotes my hero Paul Volcker (do you know that he stayed at the Fed fixing the economy even though his wife was very sick and he was having trouble paying the medical bills on his meager government salary? He had sterling reasons to get out of the pressure cooker and get a more lucrative private sector job, yet he saw his program through). I found this piece colorful, pointed, and on the money. From...

Quigley was a favorite professor/mentor of William Clinton at George Washington University. Clinton gave Quigley credit many times during his campaign and tenure as President, signaling to those "in the know" that he was solidly behind the globalist movement. Like most politicians and industrialists of the 20th century, Quigley had given up on the American Constitution, openly espousing a conspiratorial view of global world government. He agreed with the plan of the globalists to subvert our constitutional order and insert themselves as the elite rulers, as much as possible by stealth, but, if necessary, by force. His only disagreement, apparently,...

A recent Pravda headline stated, “USA absolutely defenseless against possible attack from Russia or China.” Of course, this headline seems ludicrous to most Americans. But there is nothing ludicrous about it. In 1998 a leading Russian military defector told me that Russia and China could combine to defeat the United States in a future war. Yes, such a war is possible, even if the Americans think it’s some kind of joke. According to Pravda, “No matter how mighty it may seem, the United States of America is defenseless in the face of an external enemy. Neither the U.S. Army nor...

The falling stock market, rising unemployment, skyrocketing oil prices, subprime mortgage collapse and the Michigan recession have moved to front and center in the primaries. Will the Republicans get it? Or will they just keep mouthing their tired mantras about free trade, the global economy, the world is flat, we have to be more competitive, send more students to community colleges, and teach more math and science? Will the Democrats get it, or just keep mouthing their Big Government mantras that we need more taxpayer-paid social services? The liberal New York Times calls on us to "embrace globalization," and to...

Wednesday’s choice of a home-schooling educator to be the State Board of Education’s chairwoman in 2009 signals a new dynamic in the state’s crusade to fix its troubled public schools. Kristin Maguire, of Clemson, would be the nation’s only home-schooling educator to lead a state school board if she took office this year, according to the National Association of State Boards of Education. Maguire lobbied intensively for legislation that created a statewide charter school system and has voiced support for Sanford allies who want the Legislature to OK financial incentives for parents who send their children to private schools or...

While many pro-life supporters trace Mike Huckabee's rise in the polls to his success in the Sept. 17 Values Voter Presidential Debate, his recent success can also be traced to increased coverage by the Council on Foreign Relations. The CFR's increased focus on Huckabee began with a speech on foreign policy posted Sept. 28 on the Council on Foreign Relations website. The Sept. 28 speech, delivered at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., focused entirely on foreign policy, portraying Huckabee as a cautious supporter of Bush administration policy in Iraq. An Oct. 29 University of Iowa...

I am a small-government conservative/libertarian and have hated the concept of socialized medicine almost all my life. But now, I could live with universal health coverage in the U.S.. Here's why. We now have the worst of both worlds: we are paying for universal health coverage, but not getting it. In fact, we pay more for health care in taxes than countries that provide universal coverage. Then we pay more than that amount again in private coverage. Additionally, what we have now in the U.S. is nowhere near a free market in health care. Defending the status quo is not...

The December 3rd 2007 issue of Sports Illustrated will be of special interest to education reformers. Next to the cover photo of Chase Daniel, the University of Missouri’s plucky quarterback, is a smaller photo of Tim Tebow. Tebow is also a QB, but he conducts his business, not on the plains but in “the Swamp,” the football stadium at the University of Florida in Gainesville. All of 20 years old, he is a serious contender for this year’s coveted Heisman Trophy, the annual award given to the most outstanding collegiate football player in the nation. If the strapping 6’3” 235...

It is already clear that one of the great election issues of 2008 will be the relative impoverishment of the American middle class, defined in the American rather than the British sense to include well established blue collar workers with families and mortgages. Republicans who ignore this problem will find themselves talking only to the winners, the top 1% in the income scale – laughably inadequate as an electoral base. Democrats who propound the usual socialist nostrums to cure it will find themselves ardent proponents of an economics that doesn’t work. A new intellectual paradigm is required. The declining share...

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the modern home education movement was in its infancy. At that time, most Americans viewed home-styled education as a quaint tourist attraction or the lifestyle choice of those willing to endure more hardship than necessary. What a difference a few decades makes. Homeschooling has undergone an extreme makeover. From maverick to mainstream, the movement has acquired a glamorous, populist sheen. Flip through a few issues of Sports Illustrated, circa 2007, and there's no shortage of news about photogenic homeschoolers who make the athletic cut. Like Jessica Long who was born in Russia, resides...

David Rosenberg isn't buying it. He is one of a number of economists who say the concerns about too few workers are vastly overblown. Rosenberg recently studied the issue and put out a report entitled Is There a Labor Shortage? ... The issue may not be the number of workers, but rather the level of pay. ... argue that in a market economy, there's really no such thing as a true shortage. If you want more of something, you can ... have it. When employers say that there's a worker shortage ... they can't get enough workers at the price...

Mr. Booker is trying to turn around a city plagued by violent crime, poverty and failing schools. Problem cities can be found all over the country, but most of them don't have mayors like Cory Booker. "It may be like taking castor oil to fix all these problems, but at the end of the day, this city will be financially healthy and people will be better off for it." A major part of the mayor's grand solution is developing Newark's private sector. "You want to create a more vibrant private sector that's going to generate more economic activity, more economic...

After three years on the ADHD drug Ritalin, kids are about an inch shorter and 4.4 pounds lighter than their peers, a major U.S. study shows. The symptoms of childhood ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) usually get dramatically better soon after kids start taking stimulant drugs. But this benefit may come with a cost, says James Swanson, Ph.D., director of the Child Development Center at the University of California, Irvine. "Yes, there is a growth-suppression effect with stimulant ADHD medications," Swanson tells WebMD. "It is going to occur at the age of treatment, and over three years it will accumulate."...

We've learned about "profiling" from watching crime dramas on television. Profiling is the collecting and recording of a person's behavior, and then analyzing psychological characteristics to predict or assess reactivity in certain situations. Profiling is also used to identify a particular group or kind of people, like consumers. It determines personality types and future behaviors. Law enforcement profilers identify how and when a felon is likely to commit his next crime. In newspapers and magazines, reporters perform background profiles as a part of feature stories by detailing a person's history and notable behaviors. In the corporate world, profiling has become...

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's government, which complains violent drug cartels are battling each other with firearms bought in the United States, slammed slack U.S. gun laws as absurd on Thursday. Mexico complains most of the often high-powered weapons used by warring Mexican traffickers come from gun shops in the United States and Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said there was not enough control over their sale. "I think the American (gun) laws are absurd because they ... make it very easy for citizens to acquire guns," he told a meeting of academics and businessmen. Mexico is locked in...

I volunteer for a music organization in which my son is involved. Recently, through a community outreach program, my son's group was augmented by some boys from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. These boys are really nice kids. They have no "attitude." Instead, they're just sweet little people, and they obviously come from caring homes. They're also very pleased to be where they are, and are enjoying the cachet associated with this organization. I have noticed something significant about these little boys during music theory class, though. Just as all the other boys do, they wiggle and chat -- all the time....