Free Republic

The fact remains that Main Street is in trouble. The nation requires an economy in which new businesses are created and existing ones can afford to expand. That is not happening The U.S. was the world’s number one economy prior to World War II, but it took off bigtime after the war and there has not been a day of my long life in which we were not number one—until now. The International Monetary Fund recently released its calculations regarding the world’s economy and concluded that China is the number one economy, producing $17.6 trillion in terms of goods and...

The Social Security Administration, which announced in April that it would stop trying to collect debts from the children of people who were allegedly overpaid benefits decades ago, has continued to demand such payments and now defends that practice in court documents. After The Washington Post reported in April that the Treasury Department had confiscated $75 million in tax refunds due to about 400,000 Americans whose ancestors owed money to Social Security, the agency’s acting commissioner, Carolyn Colvin, said efforts to collect on those old debts would cease immediately. But although some people whose refunds were seized were reimbursed in...

When the November election was still a long way off, Sacramento-area streets were already plastered with campaign signs for a little-noticed political race: candidates are running to serve on the board of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, better known as CalPERS. While not as high-profile as the statewide and congressional races, these seats are arguably of equal importance to Golden State taxpayers. CalPERS, the largest state pension fund in the country, not only manages more than $257 billion in assets, but also loves to use its political muscle to prod corporate America into “socially responsible” (read: leftist-friendly) investing. Sacramento,...

Sorry, but this one you can’t blame on either party. Yes, President Obama has made the problem much, much worse, but the scary truth is that the national debt keeps rising inexorably no matter who or which party is in office. That’s the new law of American politics. When I first arrived in Washington in the early 1980s, the debt was roughly $2 trillion. This week, 30 years and five presidents later, the debt for the first time exceeded $18 trillion. We have been in the red in all but four of the last 40 years. That’s $18,000,000,000,000. We all...

Time is money. And the Millennial generation, which is now making headlines for its low savings rate, seems to have missed that lesson completely. Astoundingly, a new study by Moody's Analytics says most adults under age 35 have a savings rate of negative 2 percent! In fact, Millennials are taking on so much debt, and saving so little, that their net worth is actually declining as a group. It's become a lifestyle habit to spend all you earn -- and more. Just look around the fancy restaurants, the chic hotel bars, the designer clothing stores -- and you will see...

Considering that there isn’t even an actual campaign yet, how did Ready for Hillary manage to blow through $11 million? Hillary’s trips are subsidized by whoever is covering her speaking tour or campaign stop. Or by her non-profit Clinton Foundation.Ready for Hillary consists of a website, some shoddy merchandise and a really bad country song. How does that cost $11 million? The group has raised more than $11 million since its 2013 founding, picking up hundreds of big-name Democratic donors, the New York Times reported.By Thanksgiving, the group was in debt. According to the group’s FEC disclosures, the group had...

In the great fiscal scheme of things, October 22, 1981 seems like only yesterday. That’s the day the US public debt crossed the $1 trillion mark for the first time. It had taken the nation 74,984 days to get there (205 years). What prompts this reflection is that just a few days ago the national debt breached the $18 trillion mark; and the last trillion was added in hardly 365 days.

Whhether you call it a bubble or a bomb, the rapid increase in student debt has become a hot topic in the news, with media stories inevitably focusing on those who have accumulated $100,000 or more in college loans. Straight off the bat, it should be said that six-figure debt isn’t typical. “Most undergraduate students graduate with an affordable amount of debt, with less than 10% of college graduates having total student-loan debt exceeding their annual income,” concludes Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org, which provides resources on paying for college. Average debt at graduation in 2011 was about $27,000, says...

The labor force participation rate remained at a 36-year low of 62.8 percent in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The participation rate, which is the percentage of the civilian noninstitutional population who participated in the labor force by either having a job during the month or actively seeking one, was 62.8 percent in November which matches the percentage since March 1978. In November, according to BLS, the nation’s civilian noninstitutional population, consisting of all people 16 or older who were not in the military or an institution, reached 248,844,000. Of those, 156,397,000 participated in the labor force...

http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/226014-oversight-needed-on-new-va-law “The average person would expect better customer service and professionalism from the local Department of Motor Vehicles. Whether it’s incompetence or indifference, why should we tolerate such behavior in VISN 16 when we’re dealing with veterans’ life-saving medical care?” “By tolerating inappropriate denials, his organization needlessly forces thousands of Louisiana veterans into a lengthy appeals process that can last more than two years.”

Few Americans who entered polling booths for the Nov. 4 election and pulled the lever for their favorite candidate for Senate realize that for most of American history, senators were chosen by the state legislatures. It wasn’t until 1913 that the 17thAmendment was passed, granting American voters the constitutional right of directly electing their senators.While this important amendment may seem innocuous, the reality is that few other changes to our Constitution have had the same detrimental effect on our nation than this single, nearly forgotten alteration.The passage of the 17th Amendment was driven largely by the populist movement of the...

The United States recorded a Government Debt to GDP has risen dramatically and remains at peak levels since Obama took office. See chart in linked article. We have been running at roughly just over DOUBLE the GDP in debt.

The UK government will repay all of the nation's debt from the First World War, George Osborne is expected to announce. The Chancellor is also expected to say that the government will adopt a strategy to remove the other remaining undated gilts in the portfolio, where it is deemed value for money to do so. The Treasury will redeem the outstanding £1.9bn ($2.9bn, €2.4bn) of debt from 3½% War Loan on 9 March 2015.

December 2, 2014Santiago, ChileOn October 22, 1981, the government of the United States of America accumulated an astounding $1 TRILLION in debt.At that point, it had taken the country 74,984 days (more than 205 years) to accumulate its first trillion in debt.It would take less than five years to accumulate its second trillion.And as the US government just hit $18 trillion in debt on Friday afternoon, it has taken a measly 403 days to accumulate its most recent trillion.There’s so much misinformation and propaganda about this; let’s examine some of the biggest lies out there about the US debt:1)...

So here's a positively eye-watering number: America's national debt (not its deficit, which is something different entirely, so stop confusing them, please) is now a gobsmacking $18 trillion or $7 trillion higher than when President Barack Obama took office in 2008, The Washington Post reports.According to the right-leaning Powerline blog, "41 percent of the national debt of the United States, from George Washington to the present, has accrued during the Obama administration."(In case you were wondering, the 2014 budget deficit came in at a comparably smaller $483 billion, which "[represented] the smallest deficit as a percentage of GDP since the George...

Tyler Durden 12/01/2014 Last week, total US debt was a meager $17,963,753,617,957.26. Two days later, as updated today, on Black Friday, total outstanding US public debt just hit a new historic level which probably would be better associated with a red color: as of the last work day of November, total US public debt just surpassed $18 trillion for the first time, or $18,005,549,328,561.45 to be precise, of which debt held by the public rose to $12,922,681,725,432.94, an increase of $32 billion in one day.(snip)

Today, America's national debt hit the staggering total combined amount of $18 trillion. Since President Barack Hussein Obama was inaugurated into office a little less than six years ago, he, the democrats, and a few spineless republican "leaders" in congress have increased the total combined national debt by nearly $7.4 trillion: Date                 Debt Held by the Public         Intragovernmental Holdings   Total Public Debt Outstanding 01/20/2009       6,307,310,739,681.66           4,319,566,309,231.42              10,626,877,048,913.08 11/28/2014       12,922,681,725,432.94         5,082,867,603,128.51         ...

From the dawn of history, elites have always attempted to enslave humanity.  Yes, there have certainly been times when those in power have slaughtered vast numbers of people, but normally those in power find it much more beneficial to profit from the labor of those that they are able to subjugate.  If you are forced to build a pyramid, or pay a third of your crops in tribute, or hand over nearly half of your paycheck in taxes, that enriches those in power at your expense.  You become a “human resource” that is being exploited to serve the interests of...

The Daily Treasury Statement that was released Wednesday afternoon as Americans were preparing to celebrate Thanksgiving revealed that the U.S. Treasury has been forced to issue $1,040,965,000,000 in new debt since fiscal 2015 started just eight weeks ago in order to raise the money to pay off Treasury securities that were maturing and to cover new deficit spending by the government. During those eight weeks, Treasury took in $341,591,000,000 in revenues. That was a record for the period between Oct. 1 and Nov. 25. But that record $341,591,000,000 in revenues was not enough to finance ongoing government spending let alone...

(Reuters) - European Central Bank President Mario Draghi has moved closer to launching sovereign debt purchases and data this week will show just how dangerously low inflation has fallen in the $13 trillion euro zone economy. A sickly Europe has held back global economic growth for years, and now it is contributing significantly to powerful forces already dragging down inflation across the globe. A spectacular drop in crude oil prices over the past month will be the center of discussion when ministers from the world's top oil exporters meets in Vienna on Friday.