Free Republic

Probably almost everyone is familiar with the hyperinflationary episode that engulfed Germany after the First World War. That nation’s economy was crippled by monetary problems that resulted in dreadful personal hardships, even though up to that time Germany had achieved one of the highest living standards in the world. The newly formed German government, named for the city where their constitution was drafted after the Kaiser’s abdication in 1918, kept pumping up the money supply. The process started relatively slowly, but quickly the pace of money creation accelerated. The Weimar government was paying its bills on credit – just like...

Microsoft on Thursday revealed its plans for an advertising network built into its Zune media players, offering advertisers a direct line to consumers through the device. Yahoo writes that the company demonstrated the concept using a phony Doritos mockup. In the example, a user could befriend a musician through the Zune social page on a Doritos’ sponsored concert to view news and updates on the artist’s profile. Once added to the friends list, users could also email the profile to friends, as well as downloading selected tracks from the website for playback on the Zune. When the recipient receives the...

GameStop to stop selling Zunes Microsoft is in for more bad news regarding its Zune personal music players, as GameStop on Thursday announced it decided to stop selling the flash-memory digital music player in its stores. The video-game retailer said lack of consumer demand and the device's ill fit with its existing offerings prompted the decision, which was made about a month ago. The retail chain is made up of hundreds of stores across the US, and will not order new stock, clearing out existing inventory exclusively on its web store.

Amazon doomed by too much clean air Last Updated: 12:01am BST 07/05/2008 The lungs of the planet - the Amazon - could be wiped out within half a century as a result of too much clean air, writes Roger Highfield. The vast rainforest, so crucial to the Earth's climate, is coming under threat from attempts to curb the pollution that causes acid rain, warn UK and Brazilian climate scientists. The Amazon rainforest is threatened by drought Their new study in Nature reports a link between reducing sulphur dioxide emissions from burning coal and increasing sea surface temperatures in the tropical...

By Andrea Thompson updated 12:20 p.m. MT, Tues., March. 25, 2008 A vast ice shelf hanging on by a thin strip looks to be the next chunk to break off from the Antarctic Peninsula, the latest sign of global warming’s impact on Earth's southernmost continent. Scientists are shocked by the rapid change of events. Glaciologist Ted Scambos of the University of Colorado was monitoring satellite images of the Wilkins Ice Shelf and spotted a huge iceberg measuring 25 miles by 1.5 miles that appeared to have broken away from the shelf.

A fond farewell to 209 once-common things that are either obsolete or well on the way In his 1970 book, Future Shock, futurist Alvin Toffler warned that the last few decades of the 20th century would bring a widespread physical and psychological overload. "When we lived in an agrarian world as peasants, life was set by the seasons, and things were slow. Terribly slow," says Toffler. "You still had the same plot of land your whole life. Your son's life wasn't going to be that different than your father's." A drastically accelerating world, he predicted, was more than humans would...

Hope dims that Earth will survive Sun's death19:09 22 February 2008 NewScientist.com news service Jason Palmer The future looks bright for the Earth – but not in the way we’d hoped. The slim chance our planet will survive when the Sun begins its death throes has been ruled out. In a few billion years, the Sun will fuse the last of its hydrogen into helium, turn into a red giant and expand to 250 times its current size. At first, the Sun’s loss of mass will loosen its gravitational pull on Earth, which will allow the planet to migrate to...

Citigroup has barred investors in one of its hedge funds from withdrawing their money, and a new leveraged fund lost 52 percent in its first three months, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday. Citigroup Headquarters The largest U.S. bank suspended redemptions in CSO Partners, a fund specializing in corporate debt, after investors tried to pull more than 30 percent of its roughly $500 million of assets, the newspaper said. Citigroup injected $100 million to stabilize the fund, which lost 10.9 percent last year, the newspaper said. The fund's manager, John Pickett, left following a dispute with Citigroup executives and complaints...

I wonder if the doomsday clock will go nuclear now that it's McCain/Hillary in 2008. That gives either one of them 4 years to really mess up in the final war which is upon us. Perhaps 2012 is "more real" than we think.

If you think turning 40 is bad, just wait until you turn 44. Researchers say that’s the age when people feel most depressed. Using data on two million people from 80 countries, researchers found an extraordinarily consistent pattern in depression and happiness levels that leaves us most miserable in middle age. Using a sample of one million people from the U.K., researchers discovered that for both men and women the probability of depression peaks around 44 years of age. The only country which recorded a significant gender difference was in the U.S., where unhappiness reached a peak at around 40...

Seven years ago, there was mass preparation for Y2K, alleged by some to be the end of the world. Believers scurried to save water and canned foods just in case the new millennium brought the immense devastation theories speculated. Again, we are faced with the timeless question of whether our world will endor not. The highly intelligent Ancient Mayan civilization developed an intricate calendar which anticipated the end of their Great Cycle of the Long Count-better known as the apocalypse-on Dec. 21, 2012.

The last Santa suit manufacturer in the country was Halco, a Belle Vernon-based company that specialized in Santa's suits, dresses for Mrs. Claus and outfits for elves. This year the last locally produced Santa suit was finished in May and the workers were laid off. Santa suits were one of the last sectors of the apparel industry to be left in the United States. Shoes that had been made in New England were made overseas decades ago, though there are a handful of manufacturers still left in the States. Textiles, which early in the last century were made in both...

A REPORT by Australian scientists has warned that the world is warming faster than predicted by the United Nations' top climate change body.

<p>The last days on Earth of Abu Osama al-Tunisi apparently were filled with anxiety: “We are desperate for your help,” he said in a letter to al Qaeda chieftains.</p>

Fortune Magazine) -- Here I go. I am about to walk into one of the biggest sucker's games in the whole world of economics: declaring that the U.S. consumer is tapped out, so desperately in hock and troubled about the future that he finally just can't spend like it's 1999 anymore. And to be clear, that is what I'm declaring. Unless I can talk myself out of it by the end of the column. I must be nuts. One of the most reliable ways to look like a business dope over the past several years has been to announce that...

Source: SETI Institute Date: October 15, 2007 Long-lost, Dangerous Asteroid Is Found Again Science Daily — Echoing the re-discovery of America by the Spanish long after an earlier Viking reconnaissance, astronomers have learned that a recently observed asteroid - one that could potentially hit the Earth - was actually first observed nearly a half-century ago. Researchers at the Minor Planet Center of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, MA have confirmed work by SETI Institute astronomer Peter Jenniskens that the recently discovered asteroid 2007 RR9 is in fact the long-lost object 6344 P-L. So far, this object has not yet...

Record Exports Help Push Trade Deficit to Lowest Level in 7 Months WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. trade deficit fell to the lowest level in seven months, helped by record-high sales of American products. The deficit with China declined as imports edged down slightly following a string of high-profile recalls. The Commerce Department reported Thursday that the deficit declined to $57.6 billion in August, down 2.4 percent from the July imbalance. It was lowest gap between exports and imports since January and a much better showing than had been expected. The improvement reflected a 0.4 percent rise in exports, which...

European, Asian and Canadian companies are taking advantage of the weaker dollar to buy their U.S. counterparts at a record pace, increasing investment in the United States but also raising fears about a potential loss of jobs and autonomy. "We could be looking at the world's largest tag sale if we continue to see declines in the dollar," said Donald Klepper-Smith, chief economist at DataCore Partners. In the latest large deal aided by a weak dollar, Commerce Bancorp, which is based in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, agreed Tuesday to be acquired by Toronto-Dominion Bank of Canada in a cash-and-shares deal...

IRAN VOWS TO TAKE CHARGE IN IRAQ nothing follows yet

1.) Tragically, horrifyingly, but quite predictably, it’s going to happen. The only question being which American city or cities? In a recent conversation with a former high level intelligence operative of our government, I raised the possibility of terrorists successfully detonating a nuclear weapon within the United States. His response was sobering in its hopelessness. First, he stressed how grateful he was that he did not work in Washington, DC, and that his family lived far enough out to survive the coming nuclear blast. When I pressed him as to why he was so sure that Islamic terrorists – with...