Free Republic

Essay: Are we witnessing the U.S. empire head into its final decline? Obama is drifting. Republican candidates inspire little confidence. But viewed from Europe, which is more skeptical than ever, it’s worth taking a closer look at a nation with the Peter Pan gift of never growing up. ******** BERLIN -- When it’s not busy with its own problems, Europe looks across the Atlantic and shakes its head. America would appear to be on an unstoppable downward spiral. While neo-conservative dreams of the “unipolar moment” disperse, troops are withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan, the ups and the downs of the...

Financial Panic Sweeps Europe As The Head Of The IMF Warns Of A “1930s Depression”December 17, 2011 Are we on the verge of another Great Depression? Christian Lagarde, the head of the IMF, said this week that if dramatic action is not taken immediately we could actually see conditions "reminiscent of the 1930s depression" and that no country on earth "will be immune to the crisis". Right now, financial panic is sweeping across Europe, but most Americans are not too concerned about it because they simply don't understand how important the EU is. The truth is that the EU has...

More Upside For Gold As Government Spending Continues Unabated By Bill Bonner 12/16/11 Baltimore, Maryland – Have yourself a merry little depression. Dow up 45 points. Gold down $9. We’re still waiting for a major correction in the gold market. Each time one begins, it seems to run out of steam before doing any real damage. At yesterday’s closing price, $1,577, gold is still solidly ahead for the year. So, where’s the soft spot? Where’s the test? Where will it come from? When? Don’t worry, dear reader, Mr. Market will test us. He’ll throw his curve ball. We have to...

International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Christine Lagarde has warned the Great Depression of the 1930s may repeat itself unless the EU pulls together and gets foreign help. Fresh unemployment statistics added to the gloom by highlighting the social cost of austerity. “If the international community does not work together, the risk from an economic point of view is that of retraction, rising protectionism, isolation. This is exactly the description of what happened in the Thirties and what followed is not something we are looking forward to," Lagarde said in a speech delivered to the US State Department on Thursday (15...

Are We At The Beginning Of A 25-Year Recession?The world economy faced a similar slump in the 19th Century. And it wasn't pretty posted on December 15, 2011, at 10:39 AM Our currency economic crisis has some troubling historic parallels with the "Long Depression" that began afflicting America in the 1870s. The current economic slump won't end any time soon, says Matthew Lynn in MarketWatch. The current crisis eerily resembles one that brought the financial world to its knees in the 1870s. A new industrial power — back then it was Germany, now it's China — had rocketed to the...

WASHINGTON - Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income. The latest census data depict a middle class that's shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government's safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families.

Unpopular Cures For Unemployment And Economic Depression By Bill Bonner 12/14/11 Baltimore, Maryland – So far, so good. Things keep happening, more or less as they should. That is, the US and European economies keep falling apart. And the fixers keep failing to put them back together again. Just as we expected. Trying to fix a depression it is not only expensive…. The US government spends $1.60 for every $1 it receives in taxes. This is a recipe for a disaster, not for a recovery. Worse. It actually prevents a real recovery from happening, by blocking the market’s natural self-healing...

(Kitco News) - Comex February gold futures prices careened lower and hit a fresh nearly three-month low on follow-through selling pressure from the strong losses posted in afternoon trading Tuesday. It was a “risk-off” trading day in the market place Wednesday, and that was very bearish for the precious metals. A stronger U.S. dollar and sharply lower crude oil prices were also major bearish factors for gold Wednesday. Fresh, serious near-term technical damage has been inflicted in gold this week. February gold last traded down $76.80 at $1,586.60 an ounce. Spot gold last traded down $47.00 an ounce at $1,584.50....

President Barack Obama said Tuesday he wishes he knew the full extent of the economic crisis when he took office, if only so he could have let Americans know just how tough the coming years would be. "I think we understood that it was bad, but we didn’t know how bad it was,” Obama said in an interview with KIRO in Seattle. "I think I could have prepared the American people for how bad this was going to be, had we had a sense of that." Obama’s comments came as he sat down with a string of local TV reporters...

What Happens When World’s Economic Growth Engine Goes Kaput The Daily Reckoning Dec. 9, 2011, 2:53 PM Europe is the world’s biggest economy. It is menaced by bank and government debt defaults. It is growing old and has far more social spending obligations than it can afford. It is paralyzed by competing national governments and decentralized financial institutions. It can say ‘drop dead’ in 17 different languages. And if Europe goes into a deep or prolonged economic slump, the rest of the world follows. Because Europe is a big customer, not only for Asia, but for America too. The only...

First, the report from Commerce on durable-goods orders offers a wan outlook on manufacturing: New orders for manufactured goods in October, down two consecutive months, decreased $1.6 billion or 0.4 percent to $450.0 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today. This followed a 0.1 percent September decrease. Excluding transportation, new orders increased 0.2 percent. Shipments, up five consecutive months, increased $2.6 billion or 0.6 percent to $455.4 billion. This followed a 0.3 percent September increase. Unfilled orders, up eighteen of the last nineteen months, increased $1.8 billion or 0.2 percent to $885.9 billion. This followed a 0.6 percent September increase....

STEVE KEEN: The Best We Can Hope For Is Japanese Style Stagnation Gus Lubin Dec. 3, 2011, 6:45 AM If you haven't heard of him, think of Steve Keen as the Nouriel Roubini of Australia: a vocal economist who pissed people off for predicting the recession before it happened, and is still pissing people off predicting further economic crisis. In fact Keen says the world in another Great Depression, where developed countries would be lucky to come out as easily as Japan. Here's an excerpt from his interview with BBC's HardTalk: HT: Do you really think we’re headed for another...

I warned last week that a recession and higher unemployment were about to hit the U.S. economy. On Tuesday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis cut their estimate of growth in the third quarter ending September from 2.5% to 2%. Then on Wednesday, the Federal Reserve rocked financial markets by forcing America’s 31 largest U.S. banks to “stress test” balance sheets to determine their capability to withstand an 8% drop in the economy; which would cause home prices to plunge by 21%, and unemployment rate to jump to 13%.

Bix Weir of RoadtoRoota.com joins us today to talk about gold and silver manipulation and the impending collapse of the world fiat money system. Bix has been studying economic history and the markets for a long time and has arrived at the conclusion that once the collapse occurs, it will be the largest debtors who fare the best. And of all the debtor nations, the United States stands head and shoulders above the rest. According to Bix gold and silver are still screaming bargains who's time will soon come. He believes that eventually the gold to silver ratio will go...

TroubleNovember 25, 2011 The global economy is heading for a massive amount of trouble in the months ahead. Right now we are seeing the beginning of a credit crunch that is shaping up to be very reminiscent of what we saw back in 2008. Investors and big corporations are pulling huge amounts of money out of European banks and nobody wants to lend to those banks right now. We could potentially see dozens of "Lehman Brothers moments" in Europe in 2012. Meanwhile, bond yields on sovereign debt are jumping through the roof all over Europe. That means that European nations...

Stocks closed in negative territory in thin, shortened trading Friday as investors were reluctant to go long ahead of the weekend and amid ongoing worries over the euro zone. The Dow and S&P posted their worst Thanksgiving week since the Great Depression on a percentage basis. The Dow Jones Industrial Average erased their gains to finish lower, led by H-P [HPQ 25.39 -0.39 (-1.51%) ] and Chevron [CVX 92.29 -1.46 (-1.56%)]. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq also ended lower, logging a seventh consecutive decline. Some traders are watching for 1,150 on the S&P as the next key level. The...

This Is What People Ate When They Had No Money During The Depression Vivian Giang Nov. 18, 2011, 12:25 PM Image: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection If you've ever visited anyone's house for dinner and a big, sloppy "secret family recipe" dish is flopped down in front of you, chances are high that the messy goodness could have originated from the Depression era. Families were taught to creatively stretch out their food budgets and toast, potatoes and flour seem to be the popular, inexpensive ingredients. Expensive meat was typically eaten only once a week. Some foods...

The Mother Of All Dreads, Global Economy On The Brink Interest-Rates / Global Debt Crisis Nov 18, 2011 - 11:22 AM By: Ramy Saadeh Ramy Saadeh writes: The World is on the brink of a cataclysmic spiral that could make the Greek crisis look like a walk in the park. Interestingly, markets still seem very hushed about the emerging risks ahead; the final bell hasn’t rung yet, can this be it?The trigger of the dreadful events could come as soon as the 23rd of November 2011, as the “Super Committee”, who is expected to set forth a long awaited plan...

More than one in four American women took at least one drug for conditions like anxiety and depression last year, according to an analysis of prescription data. The report, by pharmacy benefits manager Medco Health Solutions Inc, found the use of drugs for psychiatric and behavioral disorders in all adults rose 22per cent from 2001. The medications are most often prescribed to women aged 45 and older, but their use among men and in younger adults climbed sharply. In total, more than 20per cent of American adults were found to be on at least one drug for mental health disorders....

Older women who got more exercise and less television time were the least likely to be diagnosed with depression, according to a U.S. study of thousands of women -- with physical activity having the biggest impact. According to findings published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, researchers found that women who reported exercising the most in recent years were about 20 percent less likely to get depression than those who rarely exercised. On the other hand, the more hours they spent watching TV each week, the more their risk of depression crept up. "Higher levels of physical activity were associated...