Free Republic

Barack Obama has raised the deficit by more than 7 trillion in six years. Let me repeat: Barack Obama has accrued a 7 trillion dollar deficit in only six years of office! And the man still has two years remaining! It’s nearly beyond comprehension and more than the first 42 Presidents combined; nearly twice as much George W. Bush who presided over the economic fallout from 9/11, a war on two fronts, the credit collapse and subsequently was besieged by Democrats as “unpatriotic” and “incompetent” for wasting taxpayer money. So why isn’t anyone being held accountable for such reckless incompetence?...

The Hill reported last week that President Obama wants to “pivot to his economic legacy.” Specifically, “the White House hopes to ride the wave of an economic recovery to improve Obama’s approval numbers over the final two years of his presidency, setting up a possible Democratic successor at the White House.” If The Hill’s Amie Parnes and Peter Schroeder had submitted their writeup to The Onion, they would have gladly run it.Unfortunately for the president, one good quarter — assuming it even survives subsequent revisions, and especially following a quarter of contraction which was originally reported as positive before...

If the various Muslim Militant Groups such as ISIS, Hamas, al Shira, al Quada, Taliban, the GITMO FIVE, etc, etc, etc. were to Militarily conquer the Nation of Israel, would Russia then be in control of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, including effective Naval and Air control of the Suez Canal? Russia would then have control of the most cost-effective of Saudi and Iranian Oil straight through to Crimea Ports to Russian oil pipelines running through Ukraine to Europe. The lack of Left Wing Media curiosity on this potential Russian power grab of a major portion of the World's Oil Market,...

When he’s in trouble, President Obama changes the subject to the economy. And in speech after speech, he utters some version of this line: “We know from our history, our economy does not grow from the top down, it grows from the middle up.” This is a puzzling statement. I don’t know what it means, much less whether it’s true. I asked a number of economists and they were no help. “I have no idea what it means,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the former director of the Congressional Budget Office, says. “I am unaware of any literature supporting the proposition,” Kevin Hassett,...

U.S. stocks slid on Tuesday, with the Dow industrials posting their fourth loss in five sessions. Traders said the selling was kicked off by remarks from a Polish official warning about the potential for Russia to invade Ukraine. But traders said the scope of the declines reflected low volumes and a lack of other news. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 139.81 points, or 0.84%, to 16429.47. The S&P 500 lost 18.78 points, or 0.97%, to 1920.21 and the Nasdaq Composite Index fell 31.05 points, or 0.71%, to 4352.84. "This hit the tape, and all of a sudden the market...

The government of Zimbabwe’s core business appears to have been reduced to paying civil servants’ salaries, abandoning other responsibilities, as the economy becomes President Robert Mugabe’s biggest undoing, one year after sweeping to power in 2013. Last week Zanu PF celebrated its victory anniversary notwithstanding the attendant economic collapse since Mugabe retained the keys to State House in a controversial election. Zanu PF promised when campaigning that it would create over two million jobs by 2018. Of that figure, 222 800 were supposed to have been created in the first year. The glaring fact on the ground however is that...

What better way to help out the less fortunate than to raise the minimum standard of wage that an employee is paid? The idea is simple and the public supports it. However, the poor are the ones most negatively affected by minimum wage laws through multiple channels such as employment and consumer prices of everyday goods. As Nobel laureate and economics titan Milton Friedman observed, "The real tragedy of minimum wage laws is that they are supported by well-meaning groups who want to reduce poverty. But the people who are hurt most by higher minimums are the most poverty stricken."...

“If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you.” – Calvin Coolidge A recent report in the New York Post revealed that since his 2012 re-election, President Obama has attended 75 fundraisers, and played golf 81 times. Conservative media have predictably made a lot of noise about the doings of our alleged “duffer” and “fundraiser-in-chief,” suggesting that Obama dithers as the domestic and global situation deteriorates. More realistically, true conservatives should rejoice our golf and fundraising obsessed President, all the while hoping that future presidents...

Ed Yardeni, Dr. Ed's BlogAugust 4, 2014 Yardeni chart Aug 4, Dr. Ed's Blog The US economy appears on my worry list only indirectly and only because it is performing well, showing no signs of a recession. That’s bearish only if the Fed’s response of starting to raise interest rates in baby steps triggers an unanticipated financial crisis simply because interest rates have been too close to zero for too long. A rush out of corporate bond funds could be one of the consequences with recessionary consequences, or maybe not. It’s something to watch. For now, let the good times...

Inflation, inflation, inflation! Obama and his merry band of propagandists can keep trying to smear lipstick on this historically, pathetic economy but the endless, reckless pumping by the Fed has resulted in a worthless dollar and mass inflation across the board. $6 for a pound of ground beef? A gallon of milk for $3.50! $4 gas for almost four years now? Oh yes, all is most definitely well! If the truth be known, the cost of owning and operating a business has nearly doubled since 2008. Energy costs are passed on to consumers, as is the fallout from a glut...

President Obama says he has been “friendly” to business, but understands why they are “frustrated” with many of his regulations in a new interview published in The Economist. “They always complain about regulation,” Obama says of business leaders. “That's their job. “I would take the complaints of the corporate community with a grain of salt,” he adds. “If you look at what our policies have been, they have generally been friendly towards business.” Speaking of the Dodd-Frank financial reforms, Obama says his regulations helped hold the global economy together at a time of crisis. Obama explained that there are “core”...

Yo!   What we got this past week is the economy's officially in terrific shape and both stocks and metals are tanking.  Now, while it's never good to be too convinced about what we think is going to happen next in the future, I personally am having a hard time trying to decide what I think is happening right now.  Somehow the more I know about what's going on the less I know about what's going on.Oh yeah, IBD says stocks are still in an 'up-trend'.   This is the thread where folks swap ideas on savings and investment --here's a...

A short gig doing security for the True Blood television show. A stint driving for a rental car company. A week as a customer service representative at a retail store. This is how Delvontaie Antwine, 34, makes do in California's economic recovery — earning a few scattered paychecks a month from odd temp jobs while living with relatives in Silver Lake. Each week, he goes to a career center, where recently he was looking into positions transporting patients for Kaiser Permanente. "I just need something consistent; otherwise, I'm like a puppy chasing its tail," he said. "I'm at the bottom...

President Barack Obama made a statement on the economy from the White House on Friday afternoon where he argued the latest jobs number show the economy is continuing to recover from the financial crisis. "The good news is the economy clearly is getting stronger things are getting better," said Obama. Obama highlighted the fact the country has seen a "six month streak with at least 200,000 new jobs each month." "That's the first time that's happened since 1997," he said. Obama described this as part of "the longest streak of private sector job creation in our history."

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama has been saying that Americans are doing a lot better than they were before he was sworn into office in 2009. It's a claim he's been repeating everywhere he goes, at party fundraising events and in nearly every interview he's had in recent months. "There's almost no economic measure by which we are not better off now than we were when I took office," he told Democrats earlier this month at a campaign fundraiser in Dallas. "We are indisputably better than when I was elected," he says. It's a fundamentally specious, slippery and exaggerated claim that...

The job market is still not the greatest, but we just got one hopeful sign that it might be improving a bit. The economy added 209,000 jobs in July, and the unemployment rate ticked up to 6.2 percent from 6.1 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday. Believe it or not, both of those numbers are encouraging. The reason the first number is encouraging is because, duh, jobs. The encouraging part of the second number, the unemployment rate, is less obvious. Normally, higher unemployment is bad news, and people seeing HIGHER UNEMPLOYMENT on the evening news tonight will naturally...

The pro-life movement often talks of the science behind life in the womb, the fact that abortion leaves emotional, psychological and physical scars on women and the inherent beauty of every life. What we don’t often talk about, though, is money.After all, doesn’t it seem somewhat crass to couch pro-life arguments in terms of economic benefit? The reality, though, is that abortion hasn’t impacted our society only in emotional, social, and cultural ways. It’s also impacted our society economically. And one political scientist is now claiming this very thing.Mark A. Olson, a former liberal community organizer turned pro-life consultant, has...

The City of San Marcos is downsizing. It's reducing the size of its trash carts by 30 gallons to cut back on the amount of garbage being dumped at landfills... San Marcos customers will be put to the test October 1.That's when the older trash carts will be replaced by the new smaller ones. Customers who want to keep the bigger carts will have to pay at least $3 more a month.

Only two things are certain in life: death and taxes. Well, not exactly. I'm always dumbfounded when the Tea Party – basically the old conservative wing of the Republican Party – is routinely and viscously slandered as racists, extremists, and blamed for every misfortune or injustice to befall America. What is conveniently concealed or transposed by puppets of propaganda, premeditated with extreme prejudice I might add, is that our members are nothing more than staunch Reaganites: loyal to a man who is largely considered one of the greatest Presidents in American history by Republicans, Independents and moderate Democrats alike. Yet,...

Sam Ro July 31, 2014The stock market is experiencing its worst one-day sell-off in months. There's no shortage of things to be worried about. Argentina just defaulted, Iraq's a mess, and Russia could soon retaliate for the latest round of economic sanctions. But traders agree that Thursday's sell-off is probably due to one stat: the 0.7% jump in the employment cost index (ECI) in the second quarter. This number, which crossed at 8:30 a.m. ET, was a bit higher than the 0.5% expected by economists. And it represents a year-over-year growth rate of over 2%. It's a big deal, because...