Free Republic

He was a slave owner, hostile to the forces of abolitionism that were rising in America. He imposed a cruel policy of Indian removal, forcing the tribes of the Southeast across a brutal march to the Oklahoma territory. He was a hot-headed general, quick to violence and known to overstep his legal bounds, as when he summarily executed two Britons for aiding the Indian enemy during the First Seminole War. On some levels, it’s easy to understand the campaign to remove Andrew Jackson’s mug from the $20 bill. Pundits are rushing to endorse the idea. The leading candidate to replace...

From next Monday Zimbabweans with have their mental arithmetic simplified for them with the news some zeros are coming off the currency. Quite a lot of zeros. No less than 16, as the federal reserve attempts to end funny money by offering one new Zimbabwe dollar in exchange for 35 quadrillion old ones. However the real hyperinflation rate is in fact worse. The money being replaced was only issued in 2008, when the exchange rate was one for 10 billion. The real hyperinflation rate has 25 zeroes attached. This is now hyperinflation an elderly German would recognise, with all its...

NEW YORK – In a world of weak domestic demand in many advanced economies and emerging markets, policymakers have been tempted to boost economic growth and employment by going for export led-growth. This requires a weak currency and conventional and unconventional monetary policies to bring about the required depreciation. Since the beginning of the year, more than 20 central banks around the world have eased monetary policy, following the lead of the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan. In the eurozone, countries on the periphery needed currency weakness to reduce their external deficits and jump-start growth. But the...

Congress should not grant President Barack Obama authority to conclude another free trade agreement in Asia, because it would lower American wages and exacerbate income inequality. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would eliminate tariffs and lower other regulatory barriers to trade and investment among the United States, South Korea, Japan and nine other Pacific Rim nations. In March 2012, President Obama inaugurated a free trade pact with South Korea and in many ways, it provides a template for what we may expect from a broader TPP. Imports from South Korea are up 3.6 billion, U.S. exports are down marginally and the...

One of the most effective means the elite use today to get their way and push a particular agenda is to make it "hip, swinging, and very, very cool." Another way is to simply tell you what is obsolete and "out dated." Who wants to be "behind the times"? Certainly not someone who is looking for the next "really cool" gadget! No, this particular person wants to be on the "cutting edge" of the "next big thing"! Enter the banking cabal and their desire to have total and absolute control of your life through your banking account and your means...

Confirming conservative stereotypes, Germans have come out strongly in favor of sticking to hard cash in conducting transactions, a survey published on Thursday showed. Paying for your bus ticket with a contactless card, putting down plastic in a restaurant or shop—these may be everyday aspects of life in the Anglophone world. But not so in Germany, where remembering to go to the cash point is something many expats have to get used to. And according to a study released by YouGov on Thursday, this is just how Germans like it. Nearly three quarters (74 percent) of respondents said that they...

Venezuela's black market exchange rate weakened below a key level on Thursday, as the bolivar's decline steepened in the face of hyperinflation and a rapidly shrinking economy. Over the past couple of years the value of the currency has plummeted against the dollar to its present 300 bolivar level. In 2012, a dollar would get you 10 bolivars, according to unofficial exchange rates. By the time President Nicolas Maduro was inaugurated in April 2013, it was 24 bolivars to the dollar and by this January it was at 173. This black market rate of 300.72 on Thursday was almost 50...

The world's central banks have a problem. When economic conditions worsen, they react by reducing interest rates in order to stimulate the economy. But, as has happened across the world in recent years, there comes a point where those central banks run out of room to cut — they can bring interest rates to zero, but reducing them further below that is fraught with problems, the biggest of which is cash in the economy. In a new piece, Citi's Willem Buiter looks at this problem, which is known as the effective lower bound (ELB) on nominal interest rates. Fundamentally, the...

Americans have long complained that the dollar doesn't buy much anymore. Suddenly, the dollar's problem may be that it buys too much — a change that has huge implications across the global economy for consumers, businesses, investors and governments. The U.S. currency's value has surged over the last nine months, reaching levels against some world currencies last seen more than a decade ago. In Europe, it now costs just $1.09 to buy one euro, down from $1.37 a year ago and almost $1.50 four years ago. To put it another way, an American tourist strolling the streets of Paris this...

Vladimir Putin proposed on Friday creating a regional currency union with Belarus and Kazakhstan, Russia's partners in a political and economic union made up of former Soviet republics. Mr Putin made his proposal at a meeting with the Belarussian and Kazakh presidents which highlighted the challenges facing the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union following the fall in global oil prices and the decline of the Russian rouble. "The time has come to start thinking about forming a currency union," Mr Putin said after the talks in the Kazakh capital Astana with Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev.He gave...

Currency wars and the growing trend away from dollar dominance in international finance, particularly in emerging markets, was highlighted in an interesting CNBC article this morning entitled “Is the Dollar Losing its Clout Among EMs?” It refers to the deliberate and stated policy of “de-dollarization” around the world, the decline in the use of the dollar in international trade and as a reserve currency, and the emergence of the new BRICS bank. The article quotes best-selling author and Pentagon insider, Jim Rickards. Rickards says that the status of the dollar as a reserve currency is still solid despite its decline...

03/05/2015 Simon BlackTyler Durden It’s entirely possible that we may see interstellar space travel in our lifetime. And what a dream that would be. But in the meantime, for anyone that’s losing patience with space technology, I would recommend you visit Japan. Because for anybody that has been here, this place is as close as it gets to being on another planet.Japan is a land of irony and dichotomy. It is one of the most conservative cultures in the world, while simultaneously being one of the most perverted. Business culture here is yet another thing that seems totally alien. Creativity...

Yesterday we summarized the most recent economic, political and social situation in Ukraine as follows: "A year or so on from the last coup in Ukraine, Ukraine’s former Prime Minister Sergey Arbuzov told TASS, with growing popular discontent, "another state coup can’t be ruled out in Ukraine." As the cease-fire deal hangs torn and tattered in the Debaltseve winds, the nation is a mess, a new gas dispute looms as Gazprom demands upfront payments, capital controls have been tightened as the $17.5bn IMF loan may not be enough; and the central bank governor faces prosecution as the economy craters. All...

Sweden has cut interest rates below zero and launched quantitative easing to fight deflation, becoming the latest Scandinavian state to join Europe’s escalating currency wars. The Riksbank caught markets by surprise, reducing the benchmark lending rate to minus 0.10pc and unveiled its first asset purchases, vowing to take further action at any time to stop the country falling into a deflationary trap. The bank presented the move as precautionary step due to rising risks of a “poorer outcome abroad” and the crisis in Greece. Janet Henry from HSBC said the measures are clearly a “beggar-thy neighbour” manoeuvre to weaken the...

ISTANBUL--The world's top finance leaders on Tuesday in effect backed currency depreciation as a tool for promoting growth by signaling strong support for aggressive easy-money policies aimed at boosting the fragile global economy. The support by finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 largest economies for mass monetary easing--policies that have weakened exchange rates from Europe to Japan--is at odds with the traditional view that currency depreciation could have damaging effects on other economies. It also reflects worry that economies in much of the world could get stuck in a low-growth rut without decisive cash injections from...

Jim Willie: The Global Currency Reset is Real and in Motion JIM WILLIE INTERVIEW (PART ONE) http://www.oneradionetwork2.com/mp3/money/economy/01.26.15_willie_jim_one.mp3 JIM WILLIE INTERVIEW (PART TWO) http://www.oneradionetwork2.com/mp3/money/economy/01.26.15_willie_jim_two.mp3 -Willie says there is a strong contingent of powerful “Good Guys” ex military who are tired of the status quo; and there are extremely wealthy Chinese Elders who are sick and tired of “The Boys” andtheir destruction of the Planet. -There are three major factions who run the world….for now; who are they? -Germany is actively looking for credible ways to exit the Euro Zone, political and currency -The dollar is losing market share, as we speak,...

A columnist for Russia's Vedomosti newspaper, a joint venture between the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal, has advised readers to pull their savings out of banks and convert them into physical dollars. The ruble has tanked over the past year, falling over 50% from 33 rubles to the dollar to 67 rubles at market open Friday. The collapse in the currency's value has helped drive up prices in the country, which is heavily reliant on imports, with inflation surging to 15% in January. Now, it seems, it is affecting sentiment on the streets. Andrey Panov, a freelance columnist...

At least 40 major U.S. companies have substantial exposure to Venezuela’s deepening economic crisis, and could collectively be forced to take billions of dollars of write downs, a Reuters analysis shows. The companies, all members of the S&P 500, and including some of the biggest names in Corporate America such as autos giant General Motors (GM.N) and drug maker Merck & Co Inc (MRK.N), together carry at least $11 billion of monetary assets in the Venezuelan currency, the bolivar, on their books. The official rate is at 6.3 bolivars to the dollar and there are two other rates in the...

Human Events’ readers, in an online poll, recently voted billionaire financier George Soros “the single most destructive leftist demagogue in the country.” Here are the Top 10 Reasons George Soros Is Dangerous1. Gives billions to left-wing causes: Soros started the Open Society Institute in 1993 as a way to spread his wealth to progressive causes. Using Open Society as a conduit, Soros has given more than $7 billion to a who’s who of left-wing groups. This partial list of recipients of Soros’ money says it all: ACORN, Apollo Alliance, National Council of La Raza, Tides Foundation, Huffington Post, Southern Poverty...

My breakfast companion looked gloomy. He’d flown into Washington from Vienna the day before. When he deplaned, he found a shocking email waiting for him: a demand from his banker for immediate payment of €12,000. Although a resident of Austria, he had taken a home mortgage in Swiss francs, which carried a lower interest rate than mortgages in euros. But 48 hours before he had arrived in the United States, the Swiss franc had surged by 20 percent against the euro. That currency appreciation had wiped out his equity in the house. His frightened banker wanted a new infusion of...