Free Republic

Hillary Clinton said she doesn't intend to run for elected office again, but vowed to remain involved in public service and to help Democrats regain control of Congress in the 2018 election. In her first postelection interview, Clinton alluded to the pain of her loss of the presidency to Donald Trump, hinting that there were times she didn't want to get out of bed.

Nobel economics laureate Joseph Stiglitz criticized Puerto Rico’s new fiscal plan on Thursday, saying that its “draconian” austerity measures are the worst he has ever seen and could plunge the U.S. territory into an even deeper depression. The former chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank spoke to a gathering of more than 1,000 people in San Juan. Stiglitz said the 10-year fiscal plan approved last month by a federal control board created by U.S. Congress is based on the wrong principles and erroneously puts creditors first. […] Puerto Rico is preparing to implement austerity measures that...

Born in the 1930s and early 1940s, we exist as a very special age cohort. We are the “LAST ONES.” We are the last, climbing out of the depression, who can remember the winds of war and the war itself with fathers and uncles going off. We are the last to remember ration books for everything from sugar to shoes to stoves. We saved tin foil and poured fat into tin cans. We saw cars up on blocks because tires weren’t available. We are the last to hear Roosevelt’s radio assurances and to see gold stars in the front windows...

Fragile types in liberal enclaves have a hard time coping with Trump's election. The nation's politically liberal coasts have seen a months-long outbreak of depression. Here in the San Francisco Bay area, among patients, neighbors, friends, and colleagues, there is palpable gloom. They cite as the reason "the news." Ever since the election, people have been unable to pull themselves away from our ongoing political soap opera. "Election depression" has turned into the more chronic "political depression." In an interview, several psychologists characterized this mood disorder as being commonly marked by nightmares, insomnia, digestive problems, and headaches, with anxiety, jitteriness,...

With the Bureau of Economic Analysis reporting on Tuesday that real Gross Domestic Product grew at an estimated 1.6 percent in 2016, President Barack Obama remains the first president since the Great Depression not to see a single year with at least 3 percent growth in real GDP. {..snip..}

Paine’s contribution to American independence 241 years ago during the first American Fourth Turning cannot be overstated. His clarion call for colonial unity against a tyrannical British monarch played a providential role in convincing farmers, shopkeepers, and tradesmen reconciliation with a hereditary monarchy was impossible, and armed separation was the only common sense option. The same common sense Paine used to argue against a tyrannical, oppressive hereditary monarchy applies today when judging our corrupt, authoritarian, co-opted government. His themes of society as a blessing, government as evil, and revolution as inevitable are as applicable today as they were 241 years...

Antipsychotics and Maryland foster children; Part 1 “It’s an evil drug.” So says Dam Le, who as a boy was prescribed Johnson & Johnson’s blockbuster drug Risperdal while in the custody of the Maryland foster care system.

The psychedelic drug in “magic mushrooms” can quickly and effectively help treat anxiety and depression in cancer patients, an effect that may last for months, two small studies show. It worked for Dinah Bazer, who endured a terrifying hallucination that rid her of the fear that her ovarian cancer would return. And for Estalyn Walcoff, who says the drug experience led her to begin a comforting spiritual journey. The work released Thursday is preliminary and experts say more definitive research must be done on the effects of the substance, called psilocybin. But the record so far shows “very impressive results,”...

It was a life from another century when family, church, citizenship, hard work, and morals mattered. It was the 20th century generation of Americans that had made America great Ina Faye’s mother was a “pack-rat” who lived through the Great Depression. A child of seven brothers and sisters, they lived in dignified poverty, glad and thankful for hand-me-downs, clothes, apples, peas, okra, and whatever their neighbors could share in those difficult years. It was a hard-scrabble life but nobody complained much. Ina Faye’s dad came from a well-off family. Even though he could give her mom whatever she wanted, mom...

You probably aren't aware because it isn't a topic that gets discussed much if at all on the outside, but increasingly even monetary policymakers are coming around to the idea that we are in a depression. What choice do they have, really, since practically any chart of any economic account in any economy shows as much. The gathering in Jackson Hole late last month was really an internal discussion in how to think about keeping current central bank frameworks alive in such a world. Earlier this week, San Francisco Fed President (and CEO) John C. Williams spoke in Nevada on...

When we initially awaken and realize life is not what we were taught, inner alarms scream for our attention. Even though we can sense a danger we didn’t previously perceive, we cannot judge how close it is. There is no scale to measure proximity, only the palpable fear of a real and present danger. Naturally, most of us will desperately grasp for answers. How can this be? What does this mean? What do I do now? And who is to blame? We need answers! Or at least we think we do. As we search for answers, we find there is...

Aug. 5, 2016 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Homosexuals who “marry” each other are almost three times more likely to commit suicide than their heterosexual counterparts, even in very gay-friendly Sweden, according to a study published in the May issue of the European Journal of Epidemiology. The authors of the study noted that social intolerance of homosexual behavior could not so easily be blamed for increased suicide risk, given that Sweden is known for its accepting attitude towards same-sex relationships. “Even in a country with a comparatively tolerant climate regarding homosexuality such as Sweden, same-sex married individuals evidence a higher risk for suicide...

Most people are convinced that the government is a drag on the economy, that it should not be allowed to spend any more money. They believe that we’ve spent far too much as it is. Therefore, they believe we must pay for our sins and spend less. It’ll be tough for a few years, they admit. But soon we’ll be back in the laissez-faire garden of Eden. That argument is dangerously wrong. It’s like someone taking a hot air balloon high up in the sky, then suddenly panicking because he’s too high. So he decides to turn off the hot...

The Federal Reserve's monetary policies have manufactured a "super bubble" that " … may give us the worst economic downturn including the Great Depression," economist Peter Schiff declared during an interview with Accuracy in Media. He explained that low interest rates prop up the government’s feckless fiscal policies and generate " … really systemic structural problems in the economy … " that “manifest themselves in bubbles that then burst." " … the Fed’s policy does not work and has not solved our problems, it has simply exacerbated our problems, and … we're gonna have a currency crisis, we're gonna have...

Berkeley economist has stumbled on a trend an increasing number of Americans experience annually: We’ve had a pretend economy in the United States for at least 16 years. "Bottom 99% incomes grew by 3.9% from 2014 to 2015, the best annual growth rate since 1999," Emmanuel Saez wrote in a paper on June 30, 2016. A trio of researchers from the International Monetary Fund was much less oblique in a paper that they wrote last month on "the rise of income polarization — what some have referred to as the 'hollowing out' of the income distribution — in the United...

This economist thinks China is headed for a 1929-style depression î ƒin World Economy News î …04/07/2016 Andy Xie isnÂ’t known for tepid opinions. The provocative Xie, who was a top economist at the World Bank and Morgan Stanley, found notoriety a decade ago when he left the Wall Street bank after a controversial internal report went public. Today, he is among the loudest voices warning of an inevitable implosion in China, the worldÂ’s second-largest economy. Xie, now working independently and based in Shanghai, says the coming collapse wonÂ’t be like the Asian currency crisis of 1997 or the U.S. financial meltdown...

Jun 21, 2016 Harry_Dent We all know the situation in the markets is dire. Like, really, everyone knows. There’s an old phrase from Margaret Thatcher’s day (and mine, I suppose) that has recently come back into use: There is no alternative. There’s even an acronym: TINA. There is no alternative example of a campaign advertising material of the CDU for the 1994 election for the Landtag of Thuringia. That’s quaint, and all, but this meatily numbered piece shows the heart of what that phrase means. There is no alternative, the markets will correct. They have to, regardless of how hard...

Like a crazed serial killer, the liberal green groups are celebrating their “victory” of putting America’s major coal producers out of business — to say nothing of the tens of thousands of miners placed in unemployment lines. Several thousand more mining jobs were lost last month. Now to get their next homicidal high, the leftists have turned their ambitions on the oil and natural gas industries. Here is how the Sierra Club spokeswoman, Lena Moffit, explains the grand, green vision: “We have moved to a very clear and firm and vehement position of opposing gas. We oppose any new gas-fired...

On the afternoon of March 12, 2014, Jennifer Collins checked her phone and found a message from her husband, Dave Collins, a retired Navy SEAL. He’d texted to say that she should pick up their son from kindergarten, and then this: “So sorry baby. I love you all.” Hours later, two police officers showed up at their house in Virginia Beach with news that Dave, 45, had shot himself in his truck a few miles away. Although Jennifer had held out hope for any other explanation, she also knew the moment she read it what the text meant. For months,...

... Bank of America (BAC) on Thursday announced it set aside $997 million to protect from loan losses, mainly in the bank's $22 billion energy portfolio. Wells Fargo (WFC) warned of "significant stress" and "deterioration" in the oil and gas space. The problems there forced Wells Fargo to add $200 million in loan-loss reserves, its first increase to this rainy-day fund since 2009. And JPMorgan Chase increased its provisions for credit losses by 88%, mostly due to the oil, natural gas and pipeline business. It was enough to cause JPMorgan's (JPM) first drop in profits since late 2014. ...