Free Republic

Global Food Crisis Risk Is Soaring [MAP]> Joshua BerlingerOctober 10,2012The global risk analysis firm Maplecroft has released its food security index for 2013, along with a map that highlights which the food security of individual states. Africa is clearly the most afflicted, with six of the seven states at "extreme risk." Afghanistan was the only nation outside of Africa at extreme risk. Only two countries lacked sufficient data to be analyzed. Spiking food prices could have catastrophic consequences. "Forecasts for 2013 provide a worrying picture,” Maplecroft’s Head of Maps and Indices Helen Hodge added. “Although a food crisis has not...

Oil Just Tanked Out Of Nowhere... Joe WeisenthalSeptember 17, 2012Trying to get to the bottom of this. Oil just tanked. Here's the USO (ETF), which is a decent intraday proxy, falling nearly 3% in a flash. There's some chatter it's a fat finger, and others wondering if there's some kind of Strategic Oil Petroleum related news. More to come as we figure it out.

The State Department has gone into full-blown crisis mode, organizing a round-the-clock effort to coordinate the U.S. government's response to the expanding attacks on U.S. embassies in the Middle East and North Africa. "The State Department has stood up a 24-hr monitoring team to insure appropriate coordination of information and our response. In addition, our consular team is working with missions around the world to protect American citizens and issue appropriate public warden information," a senior State Department official told reporters Friday afternoon.

President Obama has a new commercial featuring former President Bill Clinton conveniently forgetting his contributions to the financial crisis and deregulation. First, Clinton complained that Romney / Republicans want to go back to deregulation. Uhm, didn’t Clinton sign the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 which partially deregulated the banking system? Second, Clinton put a housing bubble (and crash) into place through his advocacy for fair lending and affordable housing. - Executive Order 12892 – Leadership and Coordination of Fair Housing in Federal Programs: Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, January 17, 1994 - National Homeownership Program of 1995 that partnered with...

The drought has ruined key crops. The corn harvest is expected to drop to the lowest level since 1995. In just July, prices for corn and wheat jumped about 25% each, prices for soybeans about 17%. These higher grain prices will flow through to higher food prices. For consumers in developed countries, higher food prices are a burden -- but in almost all cases, a manageable burden. Americans spend only about 10% of their after-tax incomes on food of all kinds, including restaurant meals and prepackaged foods. Surveys for Gallup find that the typical American family is spending one-third less...

I recently had a chance to sit down with my friend, survival expert Wallace Streete, to speak about what a crisis would be like. Streete has traveled the world many times over and has had an awful lot of “unpleasant experiences,” to say the least. He has been everywhere from the Congo to North Korea to not so wild and crazy places like Iowa. Well, maybe they are wild and crazy, but not in a survival type of way. Streete warned me that what could potentially happen to America is something that none of us is truly ready for. I...

The closer America gets to Election Day, the more some worry about the possibility of there not being one. Obama is smiling all the way through the polls, and it may not merely be whistling past the cemetery this time. The fear of Obama suspending elections came long before the presidential election campaign officially began. It was almost one year ago when North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue made suspended elections an idea whose time has come. “I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever...

The idea of “collapse”, social and financial, comes with an incredible array of hypothetical consequences ranging from public dissent and martial law, to the complete disintegration of infrastructure and the devolution of mankind into a swarm of mindless arm chewing cannibals. In an age of television nirvana and cinema overload, I have found that the collective unconscious of our culture has now defined what collapse is based only on the most narrow of extremes. If they aren’t being hunted down by machete wielding looters or swastika wearing jackboots, then the average American dupe figures that the country is not in...

The government on Monday passed a sweeping measure to tighten Israel's belt at a time when the world is facing another global financial crisis. With a vote of 20 to 9, the Cabinet approved a package of austerity measures designed to raise some NIS 14.15 billion within a year, and reduce the budget deficit by 1.5 percent. Voting against the package were the Independence and Shas parties, as well as Likud Social Services Minister Moshe Kahlon. The measures include raising taxes, increasing fines and cutting budgets. Tax Hikes and Fines Extending the “temporary” order issued in February 2011 to raise...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Folks, do you remember that the banks wouldn't lend to blacks and Hispanics 'cause they were racist? And then do you remember how Jimmy Carter and then Clinton and then, after that, Clinton came along and they passed something called the Community Reinvestment Act. And you remember what that did? The federal government forced banks to lend money to people who had no prayer of ever paying it back. Janet El Reno, the attorney general for Clinton, even threatened the big banks all over the country with investigations if they didn't do this. The Reverend Jackson was...

Chancellor Angela Merkel hardened her resistance to euro-area debt sharing to resolve the region’s financial crisis, setting Germany on a collision course with its allies at a summit of European leaders this week. Merkel, speaking to a conference in Berlin today as Spain announced it would formally seek aid for its banks, dismissed “euro bonds, euro bills and European deposit insurance with joint liability and much more” as “economically wrong and counterproductive,” saying that they ran against the German constitution. [Bloomberg] So it seems that the Germans are building a new Siegfried Line to protect itself from France and other...

According to a recent report out of the Congressional Budget Office, our bloated national debt is already so gargantuan that even if we do manage to avoid a Greek-style fiscal apocalypse, the sheer weight of all those trillion$ will have our once-mighty economy in a permanent state of stupor within a span of just 10 years, with flat growth and high unemployment pretty much forever. Or, until it implodes round-about 2035, when US national debt tops-out at an unsubstainable 250% of GDP (Greece fell off the cliff at a little over 170%): Hey, a national catastrophe of that magnitude would be a...

The MBA Refinance Index has shown a general increasing trend since early 2011 (pink line) and is almost reaching the peak of the 2010 refi waves. Actually this is quite disappointing given 14 Administration mortgage refinancing programs and historically low mortgage rates. Perhaps even more disappointing is the MBA Purchase Application Index. It actually fell (again) and remains in “the red zone.” That is, the red zone of little growth. It is hard to argue for a strong housing recovery fueled by cash-only and investors. Are we becoming a nation of renters? Thanks to both Fed monetary policy and Europe’s...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Spain is fast becoming the biggest threat to Europe's shared currency as the cash-strapped government struggles to contain a growing banking crisis. The depth of Spain's banking crisis was exposed late last week after the government announced a €19 billion rescue of one of the nation's top lenders, Bankia. The move raised worries that Spanish banks face larger-than-expected losses on bad loans stemming from the collapse of the nation's housing bubble. But the Spanish government does not have the money to bail out the entire banking sector, which analysts say could cost upwards of €100 billion....

Pharmacies in Greece were on strike earlier this week in protest at the government not paying them for medicines that should be free to customers. Many pharmacies now have huge debts to pharmaceutical companies for drugs they have handed out free of charge. Sky News spoke to one pharmacist who has not been paid by the state for over a year. Evaggelina Rousi, who runs a chemist in Athens, said: "The government owes us 30,000 euros but we have not been paid by them for a year and a half. Many people who rely on regular medication are at risk....

Snip: The United States is running out of helium. Yes, helium. Thanks to a 1996 law that has forced the government to sell off its helium reserves at bargain-bin prices, the country’s stockpile of the relatively rare and nonrenewable gas could soon vanish. Party supply stores are already feeling the pinch, as helium shortfalls are driving up the price of balloons........ A severe helium shortage, experts say, would cause problems for large swaths of the economy, from medical scanners to welding to the manufacturing of optical fibers and LCD screens.

Well, it seems as though we've screwed the pooch. It's a safe bet that about 99% of the American public do not realize that what is about to happen will forever change the way they live and how they interact with the higher functions of society. In other words, how they will acquire and use any product or service that they can not provide immediately for themselves and their family. Most people have heard of Black Holes - a favorite mega-disaster staple in SiFi movies and stories. Not so many are aware of the term, "Event Horizon". The event horizon...

Operational Strategic Nuclear Warheads: USA = 3,451 USSR = 497 Number of Operational ICBMs: USA = 203 USSR = 36 Number of Operational Strategic Bombers: USA = 1,306 USSR = 138

The concept here is that all Americans are “entitled” to the services these programs provide. Once considered the proper and humane thing to do, entitlements are now ripe with fraud, excess, and are now underfunded despite the continual increases in the federal budget. Even by the liberal standards of PBS, entitlements cannot be sustained - (Frontline Investigation)

Or: 'It's over, idiots' The folks who are getting the free stuff do not like the folks who are paying for the free stuff, because the folks who are paying for the free stuff can no longer afford to pay for both the free stuff and their own stuff... So the folks who are paying for the free stuff want  the much-swollen flow of free stuff to stop. But amazingly, the folks who are getting all this free stuff want even more free stuff on-top of the (undeserved) free stuff they are already getting! Now, the people who are forcing people...