Free Republic

“First, widening inequality is a very long-term trend, one that has been decades in the making. The degree of inequality we see today is primarily the result of deep structural changes in our economy that have taken place over many years, including globalization, technological progress, demographic trends, and institutional change in the labor market and elsewhere. By comparison to the influence of these long-term factors, the effects of monetary policy on inequality are almost certainly modest and transient.” That’s what Blogger Ben Bernanke (who is of course distinct from PIMCO advisor Ben and Citadel co-conspirator Ben) had to say earlier...

<p>LONDON — The European Union on Monday approved the use of military force to take on migrant smugglers in the Mediterranean, significantly escalating Europe’s response to a crisis that has left at least 1,800 people dead this year.</p> <p>The decision allows European governments to move ahead with plans for a naval operation that has been taking shape for weeks and that officials say is crucial to any attempt to confront the burgeoning tide of smuggler vessels ferrying migrants from North ­Africa to Europe.</p>

Ah: I see that there was a Twitter exchange among Brad DeLong, James Pethokoukis, and others over why Republicans don’t acknowledge that Ben Bernanke helped the economy, and claim credit. Pethokoukis — who presumably gets to talk to quite a few Republicans from his perch at AEI — offers a fairly amazing explanation: B/c many view BB as enabling Obama’s spending and artificially propping up debt-heavy economy in need of Mellon-esque liquidation Yep: that dastardly Bernanke was preventing us from having a financial crisis, curse him. Actually, there’s a lot of evidence that this was an important part of the...

The Chicago Public Schools — already facing a federal criminal investigation of its CEO and a projected $1.1 billion budget deficit next school year — now must pay a price for those problems through higher interest rates on a new $300 million bond deal. The rates lured investors to buy the bonds, which CPS says it will use to pay off recently completed construction projects. But they also mean Chicago taxpayers will pay more over the life of the borrowing deal, financial analysts said Wednesday. The main bond issue — for $280 million to be repaid over 25 years —...

It's been five years since BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and released 5 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Environmentalists are highlighting the disaster by pointing to the 800,000 birds that have died because of the spill in the five years since the disaster, but activists have been eerily silent about the fact that way more birds have been killed by wind turbines — a supposedly “eco-friendly” energy source.The liberal blog Mother Jones reports that 800,000 birds have been killed and the Pelican population in the Gulf has decreased 12 percent. While the 2010 Gulf spill was...

Saudi-led air strikes have failed to reverse the rebels' momentum Houthi militia inched closer Sunday to capturing the port city of Aden, where Saudi-backed forces loyal to Yemeni President Abdel Rabbo Mansour Hadi continue to hold out. The Shi‘ite rebels unleashed artillery barrages on residential areas in the city and targeted a pro-Hadi television station with mortar rounds, forcing it off the air, reports AFP. “There are bodies in the streets, and we can’t get close because there are Houthi snipers on the rooftops. Anything that gets near, they shoot at,” an unidentified medic told Reuters. Houthi militants continue to...

I've just about given up on America. My hope is to teach my kids so they can maintain decency in an evil world. We're educating them, teaching them about God, decency, Western culture, beauty, and truth. My fear is they'll inherit an Idiocracy at best, and a Satanic theocracy at worst. We're on the road to both. God will not be surprised by it either way. Nothing in the political process gives me any hope. Nothing. Not even Ted Cruz because he still has faith in the political system. Even when he gets bounced out of the primary by the...

Moody’s Investors Service on Friday announced it had reduced its rating on Chicago Board of Education debt to one level above junk bond status. Moody’s downgraded the rating to Baa3 from Baa1 on the board’s general obligation debt. That rating applies to a total of $6.3 billion in outstanding debt held by Chicago Public Schools. That lowered rating, according to Moody’s, “reflects CPS’s continued reliance” on its reserves to cover ongoing operating expenditures, “particularly pension contributions, which will steadily increase in the coming years.” ... the lowered CPS rating also takes into account the city’s own credit rating, which also...

In 2008, the nation entered into a financial crisis widely believed to have been caused by excesses in the residential mortgage industry. By 2010, the nation thought it had put in place a series of measures that not only would resolve the crisis but would insure that it never happened again. Yet, here we are in 2015 looking at another potential mortgage crisis. Only this time it is different. In 2008, funds flowed in waves into the mortgage industry. In 2015, it appears the funds are drying up. The solutions to the problem in 2010 and thereafter included: Suing and...

The HBO documentary Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1 picked up the Oscar for Best Short-Subject Documentary at Sunday night’s 87th annual Academy Awards. The 40-minute film follows staffers at the Department of Veterans Affairs’ 24-hour call center as they speak with veterans experiencing emotional crises.

5 years into the euro zone crisis the ECB announces a €1.1 trillion quantitative easing programme to boost economy. Bolder than expected. Draghi Commits ECB to Trillion-Euro Asset-Purchase Plan to Fight Deflation Mario Draghi led the European Central Bank into a new era, committing to a quantitative easing program worth at least 1.1 trillion euros ($1.3 trillion) to counter the threat of a deflationary spiral. The ECB president shrugged off determined opposition led by German officials with a pledge to buy 60 billion euros every month through September next year in a once-and-for-all push to put more cash into circulation...

Over the coming months, I believe we could see an economic meltdown at least six times the size of the 2007 subprime mortgage meltdown... The next financial collapse, already on our radar screen, will not come from hedge funds or home mortgages. It will come from junk bonds, especially energy-related and emerging-market corporate debt. The Financial Times recently estimated that the total amount of energy-related corporate debt issued from 2009-2014 for exploration and development is over $5 trillion. Meanwhile, the Bank for International Settlements recently estimated that the total amount of emerging-market dollar-denominated corporate debt is over $9 trillion. Energy-sector...

When it comes to student debt, it's not fair to blame students for being in over their heads. In the first of its reports (April 2014), the BCEP concluded that not only is the price tag for governmental student loan relief programs much higher than originally thought, but their existence presents an irresistible temptation for students to “engage in more risky behavior because they don’t have to bear the full cost of their actions.” As such, the center urges policymakers to eliminate the forgiveness portions of the various relief programs to “reduce the potential for over-borrowing by requiring borrowers to...

The constitutional issues involving President Barack Obama's executive orders on amnesty far transcend the issue of illegal immigration. The president’s action strikes at the very heart of our separation of powers. The Constitution reserves to Congress alone the power to enact and alter law, and charges the president with the responsibility to faithfully execute those laws. If the president can seize legislative power in this manner and then boast to an audience that he himself has changed the law, then the separation of powers becomes meaningless, and our constitutional Republic will have crossed a very bright line that separates a...

The Mexican Revolution, which began on November 20, 1910, and continued for a decade, is recognized as the first major political, social, and cultural revolution of the 20th century. The United States, Mexico’s northern neighbor, was significantly affected by the human dislocation that resulted: if someone did not want to fight, the only alternative was to leave the country—and over 890,000 Mexicans did just that by legally emigrating during the second decade of the 20th century….

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 03, 2014 The German magazine Stimme des Glaubens reported years ago that Pope John Paul II had commented on the Third Secret of Fatima during a conference in Fulda, Germany in 1980. In this report, Pope John Paul II said, "...it should be sufficient for all Christians to know this: if there is a message in which it is written that the oceans will flood whole areas of the earth, and that from one moment to the next millions of people will perish, truly the publication of such a message is no longer something to be so much...

The short-attention span generation has birthed the shiny-object election. The theme of the 2014 midterms — to whatever extent one is discernable — has been an explosion of one crisis after another, each of which demands an enormous amount of media attention before fading for the next one. From the Secret Service to ISIS, Ebola to immigration, mistreated veterans to Ferguson and race relations, candidates and the president have been forced to react to the controversy du jour. Strategists and experts say the result has been bad news for Democrats, who have had a tougher time underscoring their preferred campaign...

Nigeria has been declared officially free of Ebola after six weeks with no new cases, the World Health Organization (WHO) says. WHO representative Rui Gama Vaz, speaking in the capital Abuja, said it was a "spectacular success story". Nigeria won praise for its swift response after a Liberian diplomat brought the disease there in July. The outbreak has killed more than 4,500 people in West Africa, mostly in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. An estimated 70% of those infected have died in those countries. The WHO officially declared Senegal Ebola-free on Friday. Meanwhile, European Union foreign ministers are meeting in...

News about the spread of the Ebola virus has been an increasing focus for market participants in recent days. Despite rising media coverage, Ebola seems to have had little discernible effect on consumer sentiment to date. However, as Goldman Sachs notes, the "fear factor" associated with Ebola appears more significant than in past instances of pandemic concern. While expert opinion sees the likelihood of a significant outbreak of Ebola in the US as very low, it is likely any negative macroeconomic consequences are most likely to be transmitted through fear or risk-aversion channels.

In an open letter to Saudi ministers posted via Twitter, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al-Saud expressed his “astonishment” at comments made by Ali al-Naimi, the oil minister, who reportedly played down the impact of oil prices falling below $100 a barrel. Prices have since fallen below $88 a barrel, or a quarter since June. Prince Alwaleed, noting the kingdom’s 2014 budget was 90 per cent dependent on oil revenues, said belittling the impact of lower prices was a “catastrophe that cannot go unmentioned”.