Free Republic

The Ebola virus can spread through the air from pigs to macaques, a new study suggests. Transmission of the virus — which causes an often fatal hemorrhagic fever in people and primates — was thought to require direct contact with body fluids from an infected animal or person. But in the new study, published online November 15 in Scientific Reports, piglets infected with Ebola passed the virus to macaques housed in the same room even though the animals never touched. “The evidence that the virus got from a pig to a monkey through a respiratory route is good,” says Glenn...

Hazardous materials released at Institute for Genomic Biology. Escape area if safe to do so. Otherwise seek shelter.

This is the worst-case scenario from Europe, and it just might come true: Italy defaults on its debts. Every major Italian bank collapses. Recession grips the eurozone. Sovereign defaults and bank failures ripple across the Continent. Saddled with bad loans to nations and lenders in Europe, American banks hemorrhage cash. Credit freezes in the United States. Multinational companies, unable to raise money, curb U.S. investment and hiring. Wall Street demands, but fails to get, new bailouts. The entire developed world plummets into recession and, quite possibly, depression. This, in contrast, is the placid warning that President Obama gave Americans about...

ATLANTA (CBS Atlanta) – The home base for Occupy Atlanta has tested positive for tuberculosis. The Fulton County Health Department confirmed Wednesday that residents at the homeless shelter where protesters have been occupying have contracted the drug-resistant disease

Barack Obama never put forth a debt reduction plan. Ever. All Obama did was talk in generalities about what he might be willing to consider as part of a “grand bargain,” but it always was vague, the equivalent of voting present. But when Republicans put forth actual plans to deal with entitlements (the Ryan plan) and to take dramatic action as to spending (Cut, Cap and Balance) the White House went along with Democratic demagoguing of the issue. The beauty of voting present is that it allows one to sit back and watch, and then say “I told you so”...

Greece sneezed, and now most of Europe has a cold. The European debt crisis has already spread like a virus from Greece to Ireland, and other countries are now at risk: Portugal, Spain, and Italy are probable candidates for financial problems. Economists call this the “contagion effect.” How does this spread? Some of it has to do with confidence. When investors see one country encounter financial problems, they may doubt the health of other countries that seem to share economic or even political characteristics. Contagion also has much to do with actual economic links among countries. Researchers have identified financial...

Blue Chip Economists See Limited U.S. Contagion From Eurozone Debt Crisis by: Research Recap June 10, 2010 Most economists polled by Blue Chip Economic Indicators appear to anticipate that “contagion” effects on the American economy will be limited, as lower than previously expected inflation and mortgage rates offset the impact of weaker equity prices and export demand. Consensus forecasts of 2010 and 2011 inflation-adjusted (real) GDP growth in the U.S. went essentially unchanged over the past month according to Blue Chip’s June 2nd-3rd survey of economists. However, predictions of nominal (current dollar) GDP growth and inflation this year and next...

Dow Now Down Over 220 As Europe Explodes Gregory White May. 6, 2010, 2:09 PM The Dow is down 2.0% on worries over the European sovereign debt crises as investors move into less risky assets. Gold is up to nearly 1200. Volatility on the S&P 500 is up as well, over 13.09%: The center of all this, the euro, down against the dollar over 1.1%:[snip]

On Tuesday, Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, called for the abolition of municipal fire departments. Firefighters, he declared, “won’t solve the problems that led to recent fires. They will make them worse.” The existence of fire departments, he went on, “not only allows for taxpayer-funded bailouts of burning buildings; it institutionalizes them.” He concluded, “The way to solve this problem is to let the people who make the mistakes that lead to fires pay for them. We won’t solve this problem until the biggest buildings are allowed to burn.” O.K., I fibbed a bit. Mr. McConnell said almost everything...

Several Louisiana ACORN leaders, including the recently ousted state leader, are expected to announce today that they have started a new organization under the same name after national authorities of the community action network voted to take over the chapter. A notice of a news conference scheduled for 3 p.m. in Light City Church, 6117 St. Claude Ave., says the event will include "Louisiana ACORN Executive Director Beth Butler, " who was fired from that post Oct. 12 by national ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis. The document states that Butler will be joined by several Louisiana ACORN officers, board members and...

Japan closes 2,000 schools as swine flu spreads by Shingo Ito Mon May 18, 3:35 am ET KOBE, Japan (AFP) – Japan has confirmed 129 swine flu cases and shuttered more than 2,000 schools and kindergartens in a bid to slow the spread of the virus that may already have infected hundreds. The number of (A)H1N1 cases has risen rapidly in the urban areas of Kobe and Osaka since the first confirmed domestic infection -- a 17-year-old Kobe high school student who had not been abroad -- was reported on Saturday. Authorities said the real number of infections could already...

North Korea Also Hit by Financial Crisis By Moon Sung Hwee, from Jagang in 2006 [2008-10-27 18:12 ] ※ A U.S. dollar is approximately 3,600 North Korean won. The global financial crisis has even hit North Korea, via China. A North Korean inside source, in an interview with the Daily NK on the 24th, said, "Exports as well as smuggling have been blocked. Everyone is worried about how far the financial crisis will go." According to the source, Chinese traders and smuggling business partners cut the price of North Korea's exports and natural resources such as minerals and scrap iron...

Warning: Worldwide wipeout ahead Think US stocks are on a life raft? Look around the globe, where seas are much rougher. This is serious, folks. Brace for a brutal riptide of more economic upheaval. By Jon Markman It barely seems possible that anyone is more pessimistic about corporate earnings prospects than American shareholders right now, with the U.S. stock market down almost 15% for the year and the banking system coming unglued before our eyes. Yet if you take a moment to look around the world, you may be surprised to learn that U.S. stocks are the picture of health...

Editorial: How China's inflation wallops us 12:00 AM CDT on Thursday, August 14, 2008 As an inflation hawk, Richard Fisher, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, is a bit worried about the day the Olympic flame is extinguished. Mr. Fisher, a member of the Federal Reserve committee that influences U.S. interest rates, says China is about to face an inflation conundrum that the Olympics temporarily is holding in check. Beijing tamped down worker wages and subsidized energy to make sure the world sees China in the best possible light. But pressures from rising demand in China aren't...

A Mexican national infected with a highly contagious form of tuberculosis crossed the U.S. border 76 times and took multiple domestic flights in the last year, according to Customs and Border Protection interviews and documents obtained by The Washington Times. he Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency was warned by health officials on April 16 that the frequent traveler was infected, but it took the Homeland Security officials more than six weeks to issue a May 31 alert to warn its own border inspectors, according to Homeland Security sources who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Homeland...

On Monday morning, as fresh news of severe losses by the giant financial groups, UBS and Citigroup, revealed even more damage inflicted by this summer's credit squeeze, the reaction of stock markets was clear. They rallied. In Monday's trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, still the most widely watched index of the US stock market, managed to top the all-time peak itreached on July 19. This was broadly representative of the most important developed market indices. The US S&P 500 index and Germany's Dax index are within 1 and 2 per cent respectively of their mid-July highs. Neither the S&P...

In the July 2 issue of FORBES I posed these questions: What feeds the global liquidity surplus? On balance, is the global cash glut mainly the result of the U.S. Federal Reserve's loose money and the resulting lax loans? Or can it be explained by a new force--rapidly rising prosperity around the world? The answer mattered, I wrote. "If loose money [lax lending] is causing the liquidity surplus, then both economic growth and the bull rally are resting on thin ice." That would be bad and guarantee a hard landing. But if the 25-year Laffer-to-Google (nasdaq: GOOG) boom in innovation,...

A historic decline in home values comes down to this: Even if you never signed papers on a risky loan during the real estate frenzy, you may now be paying a price. In recent decades, it has been uncommon for US home prices to fall much, even during recessions. One government measure has never shown a year-over-year decline in its three-decade history. But the current economy is far from normal – with the housing market in a period of persistent decline at a time when many other economic indicators are positive. By one index released this week, home prices are...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 30 — President Bush, in his first response to low-income families hit by the subprime mortgage crisis, plans to announce several steps Friday aimed at helping Americans with credit difficulties to meet the rising cost of their housing loans, administration officials said Thursday.

Bill Gross, the Pimco bond guru, is like the old E.F. Hutton: When he talks, people listen. 1. Jim Cramer Portfolios of the Week 2. Jim Cramer's Best Blogs 3. Coming Week: Calm Before Storm 4. Skip Skype, Vonage: Get VoIP for Next to Nothing 5. Why Cramer is Hot for Oil Global Forex TD AMERITRADE Fisher Investments E*TRADE FINANCIAL Zecco.com Fidelity Investments The question right now is whether his words always match his reputation. Last week, Gross grabbed the headlines by warning that the housing slump could lead to devastating economic consequences. He argued that a 10% fall in...

For many, the American dream starts with homeownership. Purchasing a home is usually a family's largest financial commitment. A home is not just a personal investment. It is an investment in the community and an affirmation of our fundamental value of private property.Since we are all touched by the housing market, any turmoil in the housing sector grabs attention and emotions, as evidenced by the recent coverage of the subprime mortgage meltdown and "crisis." But should we be preparing for the next Great Depression, and do we need the federal government to save us? Unfortunately, the media have a tendency...

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Shares of Countrywide Financial Corp. dropped as much as 19 percent Wednesday on market rumors the mortgage company has been unable to raise money from the commercial paper market. Countrywide officials were not immediately available for comment. "People are buying Countrywide puts very aggressively on Wednesday off of rumors that the commercial paper market could be closed to them," said William Lefkowitz, options strategist at brokerage firm vFinance Investments. Puts are options that allow an investor to sell a stock at a preset price by a certain date. Another trader attributed the drop in the stock...

The U.S. Housing Bust Is a Big DealAmerican Enterprise Institute By Desmond Lachman Friday, August 10, 2007 As U.S. home prices at the national level begin to decline for the first time since the Great Depression, most Wall Street analysts maintain their rosy outlook for the U.S. economy by allowing hope to triumph over experience. For while they concede that any bottom to the housing market bust is slipping ever further into the distant future, they hew to the view that the U.S. housing sector is far too small to derail the overall U.S. economy. They arrive at this happy...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The Federal Reserve injected an additional $2 billion into the banking system Monday, marking the second time in as many sessions that the central bank has taken steps to help sooth jittery financial markets. On Friday, the central bank injected $38 billion into the U.S. banking system in an effort to cool Wall Street fears about a credit crunch. The New York Fed said in a statement it was ready to conduct additional operations during the day as needed. On Wall Street, stocks managed modest gains in midday trade. Foreign banks have taken similar action, with...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The outlook for the housing market looks even bleaker than it did a week ago. Last Friday we reported that foreclosures were skyrocketing, home prices falling and recovery forecasts were being scaled back. And now this week, the mortgage meltdown spread to the financial markets with ebola-like speed, sparking fears that tighter credit will have a broader impact on consumers, markets and the economy. Current Mortgage Rates Type Overall avgs 30 yr fixed mtg 6.23% 15 yr fixed mtg 5.90% 30 yr fixed jumbo mtg 6.94% 5/1 ARM 6.06% 5/1 jumbo ARM 6.45% Find personalized rates:...

The liquidation of a big hedge fund or investment-bank trading portfolio is wreaking havoc in some parts of the hedge-fund business, according to managers and investors. Black Mesa Capital, a hedge-fund firm that uses computer models to track down investment ideas, said that at least one large hedge fund or investment bank is liquidating "massive" trading portfolios, according to a letter the Santa Fe, N.M.-based firm sent to investors Wednesday. 'Clearly, something is amiss in the markets that few in our strategy, if anyone, have experienced before.' — Letter to Black Mesa investors The warning is causing disruptions and triggering...

LONDON (MarketWatch) -- The world's two biggest central banks stepped in to assuage fears of a credit-market crunch Thursday, pumping some $150 billion into volatile markets in an effort to boost liquidity. The European Central Bank loaned 49 firms a total of nearly 95 billion euros ($131 billion) -- the most it has ever provided -- after rising worries about spillover from difficulties in the U.S. subprime mortgage market left banks uneasy regarding lending to each other. Across the Atlantic, the Federal Reserve carried out a $12 billion one-day repurchase agreement, on top of an earlier $12 billion 14-day repo.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Another rough day on the subprime front. AIG, the world's largest insurer and one of the biggest mortgage lenders, said residential mortgage delinquencies and defaults are becoming more common among borrowers in the category just above subprime. France's biggest listed bank, BNP Paribas, froze $2.2 billion worth of funds, citing subprime woes. And the European Central Bank felt it had to inject $130.5 billion into euro-zone money markets to help calm jittery markets. Current Mortgage Rates Type Overall avgs 30 yr fixed mtg 6.23% 15 yr fixed mtg 5.91% 30 yr fixed jumbo mtg 6.94% 5/1...

For Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the chronically embattled companies chartered by the government to make homeownership more attainable, the recent upheaval in the mortgage market presents financial and political opportunities. After accounting scandals and allegations that Fannie Mae in particular was run largely for the enrichment of its executives, even some longtime allies in Congress have demanded the companies to do more for the public good. As mortgage funding dries up, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are calling on regulators to loosen restrictions on their business so they can fill the breach. They want the freedom to buy more...

Turmoil in the U.S. home-mortgage market is starting to pinch even buyers of high-end homes with good credit records, in the latest sign of rising anxiety among lenders and investors. This surge in rates on so-called jumbo loans is particularly notable because rates on 10-year Treasury bonds have been falling. Normally, mortgage rates move in tandem with Treasurys, but market jitters have caused investors to ditch mortgage securities. Meanwhile, American Home Mortgage Investment Corp. finally succumbed yesterday to the mortgage-sector chaos that had crippled it in recent weeks and filed for protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of U.S. bankruptcy...

"If every CDO [manager] was forced to mark to market their subprime holdings, it would be - well, I can't think of a strong enough word to describe what it would be," US policymaker quoted in ft.com June 28, 2007 Thomas Midgley Jr. is not a name well known to those in the world of finance. But Midgley shares a distinction with a name the paper boys do know well-Drexel Burnham Lambert-the US investment bank that sold billions of dollars of junk bonds to investors which turned out to be, after all, junk. Midgley's fame came from inventing leaded gasoline-which...

Mortgage Lenders Stuck As Secondary Market Hesitates to Buy Risky Home Loan Securities SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- The secondary market that supports a big part of the U.S. mortgage industry has ground to a halt in recent days, a development that dramatically could increase the cost of home loans in expensive regions, experts say. "Unlike past private secondary mortgage market disruptions, which have lasted a few weeks or so ... our industry and IndyMac have to be prudent and assume that this present disruption, which appears broader and more serious, might take longer to correct itself," said Mike Perry, chief...

Bird flu virus 'close to pandemic' Rotterdam, The Netherlands 26 May 2005 07:17 A leading scientist warned on Wednesday that the avian flu virus is on the point of mutating into a pandemic disease and says that current estimates that such a pandemic could cause 7,5-million deaths may understate the threat. His warnings come as experts writing in Thursday's edition of Nature voice concerns about the world's inability to manufacture sufficient vaccines for a pandemic and warn of the impact that the virus -- H5N1 -- could have on the global economy. In an accompanying editorial Nature argues that so...

Hedge fund jitters emerge, 7 years after big failure Wed May 11, 5:37 PM ET NEW YORK (AFP) - Jitters are growing in financial markets about the potential for failure of hedge funds, largely secretive and unregulated pools of capital, seven years after a spectacular collapse of one such fund. A number of reports and market rumors circulated in recent days about potential problems with hedge funds, although there have been no confirmed instances of difficulties at any of the funds. But because hedge funds operate largely in secret, with little or no government oversight, some analysts have been concerned...

Associated Press Writer KINSHASA, Congo -- A rare form of plague has killed at least 61 people at a diamond mine in the remote wilds of northeast Congo, and authorities fear hundreds more who fled into the forests to escape the contagion are infected and dying, the World Health Organization said Friday. Eric Bertherat, a doctor for the U.N. health agency, said the outbreak has been building since December around a mine near Zobia, 170 miles north of Kisangani, the capital of the vast Oriental province. Nearly all the 7,000 miners have abandoned the infected area and sought refuge in...

A girl wearing a surgical mask at a railway station in southern China, where panic has spread over an unidentified virus CHEMISTS and stores have been swamped by people in parts of southern China fearing a mystery lung virus. Some people were wearing surgical mask in the streets, despite doctors insisting that rumours were unnecessarily fanning public fears. About 300 people were in hospital with pneumonia caused by the virus, one-third of them doctors, nurses and other health workers, an official of the provincial Disease Prevention and Control Centre said. But doctors said that so far only five people...

Editorial 10/7/02 BY MORTIMER B. ZUCKERMAN•EDITOR-IN-CHIEF A shameful contagion Europe is sick again. The memory of 6 million murdered Jews, it seems, is no longer inoculation against the virus of antisemitism. It has taken hold, on the supposedly liberal left as well as the xenophobic right, all too long unchecked by feeble political leadership with one eye on the vengeful sentiments of millions of anti-Zionist immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East. The historic antisemitism denying individual Jews the right to live as equal members of society has horribly coalesced with a new version of antisemitism that denies the...