Free Republic

With Donald Trump set for a yuuge victory in tomorrow's Super Tuesday slugfest - oddsmakers see 80% chance of Trump being the nominee - tensions are mounting dramatically within the Republican establishment. As The FT reports, many mainstream Republicans believe Mr Trump would struggle to beat Hillary Clinton and are urgently rallying around their man Rubio with some senior Republicans saying privately that they might consider voting for Mrs Clinton if Mr Trump were to end up as their party nominee as one conservative commentator exclaimed "we are on the verge of a real meltdown in the Republican party." Trump's...

Minister for Immigration and Jerusalem Affairs Ze'ev Elkin (Likud) gave a talk at Bar Ilan University this morning (Monday), in which he presented his approach to the challenges that will face Israel once Mahmoud Abbas no longer runs the Palestinian Authority. "The current wave of terror is a preview for the collapse of the PA. Most of the likely scenarios for the day after Abu Mazen [another name for Mahmoud Abbas] will lead to a lack of organized inheritance, to an internal fight for succession, to anarchy and the dismantling of the PA," he said. "The ones who will have...

Ever since the financial crisis, many outside the wealthy elite (sometimes referred to as populists) have argued that the largest banks are too big and too risky. Minneapolis Federal Reserve president Neel Kashkari recently echoed those beliefs.Yet if a new Federal Reserve proposal goes through, Wells Fargo and other large banks might get even bigger and riskier, adding billions to their balance sheets that could increase the banks’ risk profiles.The Federal Reserve says the proposal, which specifies the amount and kind of debt that systemically important large banks must hold, could help make sure that those banks can be wound...

Did you know that there are some U.S. states that have already officially fallen into recession? Economic activity all over the planet is in the process of slowing down, and there are some areas of the country that are really starting to feel the pain. In particular, any state that is heavily dependent on the energy industry is hurting right now. During the years immediately following the last recession, the energy industry was the primary engine for the growth of good paying jobs in America, but now that process is completely reversing. All over the U.S. energy companies are...

NEW HAVEN - In what could well be a final act of desperation, central banks are abdicating effective control of the economies they have been entrusted to manage. First came zero interest rates, then quantitative easing, and now negative interest rates - one futile attempt begetting another. Just as the first two gambits failed to gain meaningful economic traction in chronically weak recoveries, the shift to negative rates will only compound the risks of financial instability and set the stage for the next crisis. The adoption of negative interest rates - initially launched in Europe in 2014 and now embraced...

Saudis, Russia Agree to Freeze Oil Output; Iran Still Resists by Reuters Feb 16 2016, 9:34 am ET Top oil exporters Russia and Saudi Arabia agreed on Tuesday to freeze output levels but said the deal was contingent on other producers joining in - a major sticking point with Iran absent from the talks and determined to raise production. The Saudi, Russian, Qatari and Venezuelan oil ministers announced the proposal after a previously undisclosed meeting in Doha. It could become the first joint OPEC and non-OPEC deal in 15 years, aimed at tackling a growing oversupply of crude and helping...

The world is facing a new crisis caused by an explosion in debt. So warns William White, the central banker who famously predicted the crisis of 2008. As financial markets reeled last week and fears of a fresh recession or even banking crisis sparked panic, White was more than willing to issue yet another prophecy of doom. The world is now facing a crunch that could see a collapse in property prices, including those in London; a new global banking crisis; waves of cheap commodities savaging Western industrial centres; and the need for debts to be written off on a...

PARIS (AP) -- Questions are growing over the financial health of banks, particularly in Europe and the U.S., as they face a toxic mix of low economic growth, bad loans and squeezed earnings. France's Societe Generale became Thursday the latest bank to issue a confidence-shattering profit warning, which helped trigger a new sell-off in financial stocks. The bank saw its share price stumble 12 percent and major rivals like Deutsche Bank and UniCredit saw losses of nearly 10 percent. European banks are not the only ones to suffer. Japanese bank Mitsubishi Financial fell 7 percent on Thursday. In the U.S.,...

"I Don't Trust Deutsche Bank" David Stockman Unleashes Truth Bomb: "When The Crunch Comes, Bank CEOs Lie" Following this morning's proclamation by Deutsche Bank co-CEO John Cryan that Germany's largest bank is "rock solid," David Stockman exposed the ugly truth that everyone appears to have forgotten from just 7 years ago... "in my experience is that when the crunch comes, bank CEOs lie" Stockman details the Morgan Stanley, BofA, Lehman, and Bear Stearns bullshit that occurred before exclaiming... "I don't trust Deutsche Bank. I don't trust what they're saying. And there's reason why the banks are being sold all across...

NEW YORK (Reuters/IFR) - U.S. bank stocks and bonds took a pounding on Monday as recession fears compounded concern about their exposure to the energy sector and expectations that global interest rates are unlikely to rise quickly.... Meanwhile, bonds issued by U.S. banks extended their decline, with the yield premium demanded by investors to hold these securities, rather than safer U.S. Treasury debt, climbing to the highest in three-and-a-half years, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch Fixed Income Index data. "Investors' attitudes seem to be worsening relative to the likelihood of a global recession. I think that's what financials...

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...

n what appears to be an extraordinary snub of White House budget director Shaun Donovan, the Republican chairs of the House and Senate Budget Committees announced on Thursday they would not host Donovan’s testimony on President Obama’s final budget submission next week. Obama will unveil his fiscal 2017 budget request next Tuesday, just barely meeting the statutory deadline for submitting a new budget to Congress. But Senate Budget Committee Chair Mike Enzi (R-WY) and House Budget Committee chief Tom Price (R-GA) issued a joint statement tonight saying Donovan wasn’t welcome to testify because the administration wasn’t serious about addressing the...

A pernicious cycle of collapsing commodities, corporate defaults, and currency wars loom over the global economy. Can anything stop it from unravelling? A global recession is on the way. This truism of economics holds at any point in which the world is not in the grips of a contraction. The real question is always when and how deep the upcoming downturn will be. "The crash will come, but it would be nice if it came two years from now", Thomas Thygesen, head of economics at SEB told over 200 commodity investors and analysts in London last month. His audience was...

One person was killed and another was critically injured when a construction crane tumbled onto a Tribeca street Friday morning, officials said. The crane fell on a row of parked cars when it toppled over on Worth St. near Church St. about 8:30 a.m. as heavy snow fell onto the city. One person died at the scene, officials. A second person was trapped inside a vehicle and was freed by responding firefighters.

The only question now is whether Venezuela's government or economy will completely collapse first. The key word there is "completely." Both are well into their death throes. Indeed, Venezuela's ruling party just lost congressional elections that gave the opposition a veto-proof majority, and it's hard to see that getting any better for them any time soon — or ever. Incumbents, after all, don't tend to do too well when, according to the International Monetary Fund, their economy shrinks 10 percent one year, an additional 6 percent the next, and inflation explodes to 720 percent. It's no wonder, then, that markets...

Bob BryanJanuary 29, 2016 Based on today's GDP release, it appears that the US economy is slowing but not near any sort of massive collapse. Peter Schiff begs to differ. The CEO and chief global strategist for Euro Pacific Capital, and noted perma-bear, said that serious economic destruction is just a few months away. "I think the Fed is going to have negative interest rates before the election because we're going to be in a serious recession," Schiff told Business Insider on Friday. In fact, Schiff said that we may already be in recession and this one is going to...

In November 2014 the OPEC countries met in Vienna and agreed to keep pumping oil to maintain their market share rather than cut production to support the oil price. In a post written a month later I addressed the question of how these countries were positioned to withstand an extended period of low oil prices and high budget deficits. More than a year has now passed, so it's time to take a look at how they have done so far and to see what their actions presage for the future. Results to date: OPEC is known to have suffered economic...

Digital Currency: The Key Tool of 21st Century Monolithic Nanny State Tyranny   January 28, 2016 - 6:47 am | Current Events & Politics, Economics & Investing There has been talk of doing away with paper currency for several decades, but up until now that has mostly been idle conjecture and mostly bluster. Gradually, however, the building blocks of such a system have indeed been developed. These enabling technologies include: Credit cardsDebit cardsPostal metersCredit and debit card enabled pay phonesCredit and debit card enabled vending machinesCredit and debit card enabled “pay before you exit” parking garage kiosksGrocery and warehouse...

We have not seen global economic activity fall off this rapidly since the great recession of 2008. Manufacturing activity is imploding all over the planet, global trade is slowing down at a pace that is extremely alarming, and the Baltic Dry Index just hit another brand new all-time record low. If the "real economy" consists of people making, selling and shipping stuff, then it is in incredibly bad shape. Here in the United States, the dismal economic numbers continue to stun all of the experts. For example, on Monday we learned that the Texas general business activity index just...

"...Daniel Yergin, founder of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, said it is impossible for OPEC to knock out the US shale industry though a war of attrition even if large numbers of frackers fall by the wayside over coming months. Mr Yergin said groups with deep pockets such as Blackstone and Carlyle will take over the infrastructure when the distressed assets are cheap enough, and bide their time until the oil cycle turns. "The management may change and the companies may change but the resources will still be there," he told the Daily Telegraph. "It takes $10bn and five to...