Free Republic

You know me too, Frank -- we met at McStain's campaign shindig at the University Club in Washington DC in the summer of 2008. I recall that you and Governor Ridge both refused to take a stand on all the frauds in the mortgage market -- the very frauds that just a couple of months later led to the failure of Lehman, the market crash in general and the ensuing disaster. It figures that you're now the President and chief executive of the American Bankers Association [ABA]. It must be really, really awesome to have your candidate suspend his campaign...

Maybe its incompetence or maybe it's something more, but in the end does it really matter when dead is dead? According to State Department and military sources, dozens of highly armored vehicles called GMV's, provided by the United States, are now missing. The vehicles feature GPS navigation as well as various sets of weapon mounts and can be outfitted with smoke-grenade launchers. U.S. Special Forces undergo significant training to operate these vehicles. Fox News is told the vehicles provided to the Libyans are now gone. Along with the GMV's, hundreds of weapons are now missing, including roughly 100 Glock pistols...

WASHINGTON – Asserting the Senate’s constitutional role on treaties, U.S. Senator Bob Corker, R-Tenn., ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, in a letter today warned the Obama administration against taking any action to implement the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty without Senate advice and consent. “The ATT raises significant legislative and constitutional questions. Any act to implement this treaty, provisionally or otherwise, before the Congress provides its advice and consent would be fundamentally inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution, law, and practice,” said Corker. Full text of the letter is included below and in the attached document. Dear President Obama,...

While some have argued that the Fed is flying blind, given their endless efforts to convince the market that their actions (or inactions) are now all data-dependent - what happens when that data simply does not exist? As SMRA notes, the official word from the BLS [Bureau of Labor Statistics] is that they are working under the assumption that there will not be a government shutdown and the employment data will be released as scheduled; but what happens if the un-negotiation reaches beyond October 1st? How will our central-planners know what to do? Via Ray Stone of Stone McCarthy, The...

Americans who are fed up with Obamacare won a victory yesterday. The House voted to defund Obamacare while still funding the federal government to avoid a “devastating” shutdown. (I shall not digress, but it’s beyond distressing to hear liberals try to convince Americans that any government slowdown is comparable to “terrorism.”)Now the battle goes to the Senate, and we’ll find out if Harry Reid is so committed to the horrendous “Un-affordable Care Act” that he’ll be the one to shut down the government to fund the unworkable Obamacare.Let’s be clear. Republicans in Congress aren't advocating a government shutdown. That’s why...

This much has been determined yesterday -- The Fed could not handle a 2.8% 10 year Treasury rate. Nor could it handle any further increases. But consideration of the impact of this policy on the common man, along with the destruction of purchasing power and outright theft from the people who produce the services (and few goods remaining) in this nation was damned -- exactly as has been the case for the last three decades. What Bernanke did yesterday was guarantee a crash. He guaranteed it because he took what was a clear opportunity to take what had been priced...

MULBERRY, Fla. (AP)— Polk County sheriff’s deputies arrested Pastor Terry Jones, 61, and his associate pastor, Marvin Sapp Jr., 34,..He had said he was heading to a nearby park to burn 2,998 Qurans — one for every victim of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks... Mulberry’s mayor, along with area elected officials, a sheriff’s deputy and several Polk County residents have talked about the need to express love and tolerance for all faiths on Sept. 11. [snip]

On Poland and Detroit. Not For the Faint of Heart. Back to finance. Poland did exactly what I and a few others have been warning about for years with regards to private retirement accounts and pensions. Poland confiscated 50% of all private pension funds last week. PRIVATE pensions. As Warren Pollock and I have been screaming, one of the largest chunks of collateral left in the system is private retirement money, both in the form of 401(k)s and IRAs and in private pension accounts. In the U.S., the latest data for 2012 shows that there are now $10.5 Trillion in...

[To Moderator - the title contained an obscene reference for one to do something physically impossible to oneself.] Mr. Lew, I know you continue to say that the Congress has "no choice" but to raise the debt limit. You're wrong. Congress has the choice to say no. You have a credit card but the limit is set not by your King but rather by Congress. And Congress has the right to cut that card up any time it so chooses. So says the Constitution: Article I Section 8: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts...

Are we, the people, going to allow yet another unlawful military action to take place? Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel suggested Friday that the Pentagon was moving naval forces closer to Syria in preparation for a possible decision by President Obama to order military strikes. Hagel declined to describe any specific movements of U.S. forces. He said Obama asked that the Pentagon to prepare military options for Syria and that some of those options "requires positioning our forces." I don't seem to recall a Declaration of War by Congress. And there is certainly no exigent emergency that requires an immediate response...

Last night I had a surreal experience at the American Legion building in Ft. Walton. If you live around here, you know where it is. There's a tank out front. It's a patriotic place. Last night it hosted The Republican Club of Okaloosa County for their regular meeting, dinner and a speaker -- in this case, Jeff Miller (R-FL-1) The food, hospitality, and crowd were a nice change from my usual evening routine (that often includes a nice hard run) but the surreal began when Mr. Miller stepped to the microphone. What followed was an astonishing display of fear, cowardice...

Wondering why the ES is soaring? Because the NYSE just broke, too. NASDAQ HAS DECLARED SELF HELP AGAINST NYSE ARCA (ARCA) NASDAQ DECLARES SELF HELP AGAINST NYSE ARCA AS/OF 15:26:42 E.T NYSE ARCA HAVING DIFFICULTY PROCESSING OUTBOUND TAPE C QUOTES And BATS too: BATS HAS DECLARED SELF-HELP AGAINST ANOTHER MARKET CENTER BATS SAYS ROUTING TO NYSE ARCA HAS BEEN SUSPENDED AS OF 15:39 An absolute circus meant only to preserve confidence in a rigged, manipulated system based on incorrect electronic trades.

I can't remember if I have ever written this up, or maybe just explained it in a interview at some point, but I have had several people ask, so I'll explain it. This is how Hillary Clinton "made" $100,000 off of an initial "investment" of $1000 in cattle futures back in the early 80's. It was textbook money laundering. I know you're shocked - SHOCKED to think that a Clinton could be involved in anything untoward, but I'm afraid it is true. Back in the 80's in Arkansas, Bill and Hillary were the power couple ascending first to the position...

According to researchers at EMPact America, an organization dedicated to studying and preparing for the possibility of large-scale electro magnetic pulse threats that can destroy our modern day electrical infrastructure, the earth came dangerously close to a serious destabilization event. A couple of weeks ago the sun emitted a massive CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) that, had it been earth-directed, would likely have wiped out critical portions of the world’s power grid and sent developed nations back to the stone age within a matter of seconds. ‘The world escaped an EMP catastrophe,’ Henry Cooper, who now heads High Frontier, a group...

The Russian military recently dispatched a guided-missile warship to Cuba as part of what U.S. officials say are growing military, intelligence and economic ties between Moscow and Havana. [snip] “The cruiser Moskva and the large seagoing tanker Ivan Bubnov set off for Havana..." [snip] After Havana, the warship will visit Caracas, Venezuela; Managua, Nicaragua; and Praia Port in the Cape Verde Islands off eastern Africa. The visit to Cuba is part of what the U.S. officials said is a push by Moscow to boost relations with Cuba in the military, energy and transportation sectors. The effort was kicked off in...

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog, If you want to frighten Baby Boomers, just show them the list of statistics in this article. The United States is headed for a retirement crisis of unprecedented magnitude, and we are woefully unprepared for it. At this point, more than 10,000 Baby Boomers are reaching the age of 65 every single day, and this will continue to happen for almost the next 20 years. The number of senior citizens in America is projected to more than double during the first half of this century, and some absolutely enormous financial promises...

This gets really tiring....(Robert Reich vomits forth) "In other words, much in modern America depends on where you draw boundaries, and who's inside and who's outside. Who is included in the social contract? If "Detroit" is defined as the larger metropolitan area that includes its suburbs, "Detroit" has enough money to provide all its residents with adequate if not good public services, without falling into bankruptcy. Politically, it would come down to a question of whether the more affluent areas of this "Detroit" were willing to subsidize the poor inner-city through their tax dollars, and help it rebound. That's an...

Listen up folks, after you read the bankruptcy filing for Detroit. 1. Right now, the City cannot meet its basic obligations to its citizens. 2. Right now, the City cannot meet its basic obligations to its creditors. 3. The failure of the City to meet its obligations to its citizens is the primary cause of its inability to meet its obligations to its creditors. 4. The only feasible path to ensuring the City will be able to meet obligations in the future is to have a successful restructuring via the bankruptcy process that recognizes the fundamental importance of ensuring the...

A very interesting thing happened in the Zimmerman fiasco. The state, in its closing rebuttal arguments, appealed to the hearts of the jury, not to the evidence. Florida is an odd state when it comes to criminal law. In most states the prosecution gets its closing argument, then the defense. In most states the defense goes last, which is in line with the premise that one is innocent until proved guilty, and the defense gets one last stab an introducing reasonable doubt. But in Florida the prosecution gets a rebuttal -- they get the last word before the jury retires...

There are a lot of hard-headed people out in the investment and banking world. Most of them are hard-headed because they have never known anything else. A few are a bit smarter -- they know that their business model is cooked if the underlying assumptions change and they're being intentionally dishonest in trying to grab the last few nickels in front of the steamroller, and to hell with you (their customer.) Then there are those who have it figured out and are attempting to find a way to adapt to what is going to happen. More than 30 years ago...