Free Republic

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday voted unanimously to reduce its bond-buying stimulus program for the fourth straight meeting, to $45 billion a month from $55 billion. The central bank now thinks the economy is strong enough to do without the stimulus and the Fed aims to end the bond-buying program by late 2014, barring any sudden deterioration in growth.

Why is the Pentagon to destroy ammunition for our men and women in uniform while the Department of Homeland Security is buying up millions of rounds of ammunition? As we asked last week, why are we decimating our military while many government agencies are arming up? You really have to wonder why, according to USA Today, “The Pentagon plans to destroy more than $1 billion worth of ammunition although some of those bullets and missiles could still be used by troops, according to the Pentagon and congressional sources. It’s impossible to know what portion of the arsenal slated for destruction...

BEAVER, Pa. – A widow was given ample notice before her $280,000 house was sold at a tax auction three years ago over $6.30 in unpaid interest, a Pennsylvania judge has ruled. The decision last week turned down Eileen Battisti's request to reverse the September 2011 sale of her home outside Aliquippa in western Pennsylvania. "I paid everything, and didn't know about the $6.30," Battisti said. "For the house to be sold just because of $6.30 is crazy."

What happens when you mix something good with something bad? To be more specific, what happens when you have a big success story, like the spending cap in Switzerland that has dramatically slowed the growth of government, and then expect intelligent and coherent coverage by a government-run media outfit that presumably wants a bigger public sector? Well, the answer is that you get a very muddled story. Here’s some of what Swiss Info, which is part of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, wrote about that nation’s “debt brake.” The mind-boggling…debt racked up by governments…has turned some heads towards Switzerland’s successful track...

Ukraine’s growing gas debt may lead to the failure of the country’s transit obligations and the reduction of gas supplies to south-eastern Europe, said the Russian Energy Ministry. Officials from Russia, including Energy Minister Alexander Novak and Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller, and officials from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia and Moldova held talks in Moscow on Saturday. The meeting, also attended by officials from the Russian Ministry of Economic Development and the Finance Ministry, was held in the form of consultations on the security of gas transit through Ukraine. All sides expressed deep concern about Ukraine’s growing debt, Novak told journalists. “Currently Ukraine’s...

CODE RED: Central Banks Will Frantically Pound The Panic Button And Eventually Become Executioners To The World's Currencies John Mauldin, Thoughts From The FrontlineApr. 27, 2014, 9:21 AM (It is especially important to read the opening quotes this week. They set up the theme in the proper context.) “There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.” –...

It is now five years since the crash of 2008. Today's media and much of our academic crowd, of course, believe that the crisis has been handled, and that we can settle back to "business as usual." But such pundits are viewing only the trees, not the forest. They see correct Federal Reserve policy and legitimate fiscal policy on the part of the Federal Government. But this view comes from a false concept of economics and from a major failing of humans – their use of "euphemism" to flee from reality. For example, almost all of today's scholars and pundits...

The Great American Giveaway Politics / US Debt Apr 25, 2014 - 04:15 AM GMTBy: Andy Sutton What do the national debt and a designer Hepatitis C drug have in common? This question actually spans two areas near and dear to my heart: economics and medicine. What I’m going to be covering this week is something that I feel is going to be part of a growing trend in America over the coming decades. You see, too many – myself included for quite a while – were asking the wrong questions. Many still are. We shouldn’t be asking what we...

The federal student loan program is becoming so costly to taxpayers that even President Obama is pretending to fix it. Readers will recall Mr. Obama as the man who has spent much of his Presidency expanding this program, creating new ways for borrowers to avoid repayment, and then campaigning about these dubious achievements on campuses nationwide. Now Team Obama is acknowledging that his policies are turning out to be more expensive than he claimed. Participation in federal debt-forgiveness programs is surging. In a mere six months the number of borrowers who've signed up for such plans has increased to more...

American education is in trouble—that much seems to be a given. Our public schools and colleges are getting poor results, our young people are drowning in debt, new graduates can't find jobs, and our overall rankings in the world are pretty dismal. We are greatly in need of a transformation, but we need to think big, because the problem is huge. In 2012, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development tested 15-year-olds in 64 countries in math, science, and reading. Out of 64 countries, the U.S. Scored 23rd in science, 20th in reading, and 29th in math. Not only is...

Presented with no snark or ironic comment whatsoever...

Remember President Obama's vow that, if re-elected, he'd pursue "balanced" deficit reduction? Either he forgot, or he hopes voters have, because a new report shows his latest budget is entirely unbalanced. When Obama released his budget this March, he said it included "smart spending cuts" and closed "tax loopholes" that benefit only "the wealthiest Americans." Obama added that his budget would put "our debt on a downward path as a share of our total economy, which independent experts have set as a critical target for fiscal responsibility." As with just about everything Obama says, none of these claims turns out...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A report released Thursday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says President Barack Obama's budget request would mean significantly larger budget deficits than the White House claims. CBO says the budget plan proposed last month by Obama would produce deficits of $6.6 trillion over the next 10 years — $1.6 trillion more than the White House estimates. The main reason is that the White House has a rosier estimate of the economy's performance over the decade than CBO. That means the administration predicts higher tax revenues. The president's budget is just a proposal; it has gained little...

The rich are not the problem, the greedy are not the problem, the crooked are not the problem - the problem is the system that brings them about. If the system is ours, the system means by the people, of the people, for the people, then now it is time to take it back. Now it is time to demand that it would be changed.

(CNN) – Hoping to help close the gap between workers' skills and the needs of businesses, President Barack Obama on Wednesday will announce he's putting hundreds of millions toward job training programs that produce highly skilled workers. Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will head to a community college in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania to make the announcement. The funding will come in two parts: $500 million toward a new job training competition that pairs community colleges with businesses, and $100 million for new apprenticeship programs to train workers. The White House says the new initiatives are meant to combat a...

The federal Medicare health insurance program winds up paying the fare for many of the ambulance rides provided by the city of St. Paul. That's why the city in 2012 was one of the largest single recipients of Medicare payments among non-hospital health care providers in the state, according to data released this month by the federal government. Out of more than 19,000 health care providers during 2012 who cared for Medicare patients in Minnesota, the city's take of more than $2 million was the ninth largest individual sum. Whether they were providing ambulance rides or treating illnesses, the state's...

The Social Security Administration announced Monday it is suspending a controversial program that goes after adult children of deceased taxpayers who the government claims were recipients of overpayments more than a decade ago. Acting Social Security Commissioner Carolyn W. Colvin said she has directed an immediate halt to the three-year-old program while the agency does a review. The controversial program seized tax refunds in an effort to recoup the funds. The move to stop the program came after many of the recipients and members of Congress complained to the federal agency.

Recent weeks have led to a fairly significant drop in stock valuations, with many expert analysts struggling to figure out exactly why it’s happening. You’ll hear them cite the weather, or market overreaction, or any number of reasons for why stocks have seen their share prices reduced and why they’ll be rebounding in the near-term. What they won’t show you on mainstream financial channels is what’s really happening behind the scenes. Forget about all the minute-by-minute noise for a moment and take a look at the following chart. It gives a very simple overview of earnings growth trends for stocks...

New figures by the Congressional Budget Office released on Monday reveal that over the next 10 years the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio will double to 78%. Over the last four decades America's average debt-to-GDP ratio was 39%. At the end of 2007, federal debt was just 35% of GDP. The CBO report says gross federal debt will soar from $17.7 trillion to $27 trillion over the next ten years. CBO warned of the dire consequences the nation's debt will have if gone unchecked. "Such high and rising debt would have serious negative consequences," says the report. "Federal spending on interest payments...

People participating in the food stamp program outnumbered the women who worked full-time, year-round in the United States in 2012, according to data from the Department of Agriculture and the Census Bureau. In the average month of 2012, according to the Department of Agriculture, there were 46,609,000 people participating in the food stamp program (formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). That contrasts with the 44,059,000 women who worked full-time, year-round in 2012, according to the Census Bureau’s report on Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States. For each woman who worked full-time, year-round in 2012,...