Free Republic

Why did the stock market plummet more than 330 points?I could give you any one of several answers but they won’t actually help you. Because this is the wrong question.The right question is to ask why it went up an almost equivalent amount yesterday. And the answer to that is people are out of their f***ing minds.They’re nostalgic for the sentiment-driven, Fed-fueled, multiple expansion market of 2013 and they haven’t yet accepted the fact it was a once (maybe twice) in a lifetime thing. The conditions that were in place to set up what happened in 2013 were the following:1....

Are you stealing cars without knowing it? 10/08/14 - Here's another reason to protect your identity -- car thieves are stealing personal information to buy new vehicles directly from dealerships, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB). The bureau says crooks have been frustrated by late-model cars with advanced safeguards that make hot-wiring difficult. But resourceful thieves are now using stolen IDs and fake driver's licenses to purchase or lease vehicles, which they then sell after changing vehicle identification numbers (VINs). "It's comparable to a hacker stealing IDs," explains Joe Wehrle, the NICB president and CEO, in a written...

Eurozone in danger of repeating Japanese stagnation, IMF chief warns By Benjamin Fox BRUSSELS - International Monetary Fund boss Christine Lagarde has warned that the eurozone risks following Japan and falling into a prolonged cycle of recession and stagnation. Speaking on Thursday (9 October) ahead of the IMF's annual meeting in Washington DC, Lagarde said: “We have also alerted to the risk of recession in the eurozone", putting the likelihood of a drop in output at "between 35-40%, which is not insignificant". “We are not saying that the eurozone is heading towards recession, but we are saying that there is...

Fears of the Ebola contagion breaking out stateside have fueled a curious boom in industrial-grade protective gear.Since the first case of the Ebola virus was confirmed in Dallas, Rick Pedley noticed an unusual blip in sales at his online store, PK Safety. His regular customers, most of whom work in hazardous environments like construction sites or claustrophobic drainage pipes, bought protective gear at a rate of about 150 orders per day. That gear included gloves, hard hats and the occasional hazmat suit. Now there are plenty of newcomers, shoppers who evidently fear their communities might become hazardous. Orders have doubled....

President Barack Obama is all in with his economic pitch. The American public is not. Over the next 27 days, either the public or the president is going to get the message. In a midterm campaign strategy fraught with risk, the White House is betting that Obama’s tight embrace of the economic recovery and populist proposals for gender pay equity and a higher minimum wage will galvanize his core supporters and persuade fence-sitting independents to help Democrats retain narrow control of the Senate in November. Addressing young entrepreneurs Thursday at a startup center in California, Obama highlighted his economic record...

Most people ask for a raise in the privacy of their boss's office. But one gutsy Wells Fargo employee emailed the CEO directly — and copied some 200,000 other Wells Fargo workers on the note. On Tuesday, the Charlotte Observer reported that Tyrel Oates, who it says works in an Oregon office of Wells Fargo processing requests from customers trying to stop debt-collection calls, sent such an email to CEO John Stumpf. His plea was not just to get a raise for himself. His proposal to Stumpf? Use the company's profits to give every employee a raise of $10,000. According...

U.S. stocks sank on Thursday, erasing all and more of the previous day's rally, as investors bypassed U.S. corporate earnings and economic reports to focus on global concerns, including Europe's softening economy. "We've added global growth concerns on top of other headline risks, (such as) air strikes, Ebola," said Sean McCarthy, regional chief investment officer for Wells Fargo Private Bank. Ahead of Wall Street's start, data showed a 5.8 percent drop in German exports in August, adding to downbeat numbers that had German industrial orders and output falling as well. "Europe's growth is weak, and close to going into recessionary...

Conservative stars appeal to voters in radically different ways. The most attention-grabbing conservatives in the emerging 2016 Republican presidential nomination race are two freshmen U.S. senators who had never held elective office before. Though nearly equal in their fanfare, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas are romancing Republican and independent voters in radically different ways. The outcome of their fierce competition could influence the direction of their party. Win or lose, both men have an opportunity to influence a new generation of conservatives in tactics, policy and coalition-building while readjusting the movement’s planks of fiscal restraint, free...

In a new working paper from the Mercatus Center, University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan projects that the Affordable Care Act will reduce weekly employment per person by 3 percent, or roughly 4 million full-time-equivalent workers. These new estimates are significantly higher than the 2.5 million reduction in labor supply estimated by the Congressional Budget Office earlier this year. To be clear, a reduction in labor supply differs from a reduction in labor demand—a distinction many failed to recognize when the CBO first released estimates. It is not the case that the ACA will necessarily forces employees out; rather, the...

Myles UdlandOctober 9, 2014Uber-bear Albert Edwards, a strategist at Societe Generale, is out with a new note to clients about market tops and expensive baskets. Edwards highlights the following comment from this weekend's Financial Times that said the following: Sir: The next financial apocalypse is imminent. I know this to be true because the (FT Weekend) House and Home section is now assuming the epic proportions last seen before the great crash. Twenty four pages chock full of adverts for mansions and wicker tea trays for $1,000. You’re all mad. Sell everything and run for your lives.(snip)

Six years after offering hope and change, polls show the American public has fallen out of love with their president – so where did it all go wrong? Barack Obama romped to the presidency of the United States in 2008 on a tidal wave of ‘hope and change’. Back then, the financial crisis was raging and US troops were still engaged in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, but a fresh-faced Mr Obama brimmed with confidence. He predicted that future generations would look back on his election and see the moment “when the rise of the oceans began to slow and...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Just how healthy is the U.S. job market? Despite steady hiring and falling unemployment, the question has provoked sharp debate and considerable uncertainty on the eve of the September jobs report. Will millions without jobs who aren't looking for one eventually start looking? Why aren't companies filling more of their openings? Why can many people find only part-time work? Much of the uncertainty flows from a big question: Does today's 6.1 percent unemployment rate, far below the 10 percent it hit in 2009, mean the job market is near full health? Or does the unemployment rate overstate...

Last updated: October 7, 2014 8:10 pm China swoops in on Italy’s power grids and luxury brands By Rachel Sanderson in Milan EU debt crisis opened up periphery countries to Chinese investors Italy’s business elite – senior executives from blue-chip companies such as Telecom Italia and Vodafone plus high-ranking government officials – filled a renaissance palazzo across from Milan’s gothic cathedral this summer to court one of the country’s biggest foreign investors. Huawei, the Chinese telecoms equipment maker, opened its only microwave research and development centre outside China in Milan in 2008. The company, whose name means “splendid achievement” in...

The Chinese economy just surpassed the U.S. economy to become the world’s largest in terms of purchasing power, according to the International Monetary Fund.The IMF measures economic strength by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in both market exchange rates and average purchasing power, the latter being where China has overtaken the U.S. with a GDP of $17.6 trillion by the end of 2014 — 16.4 percent of the world’s purchasing power. The U.S. will close out the year with a purchasing-power adjusted GDP of $17.4 trillion, or 16.2 percent of the world’s total.Financial Times predicted the change in April and illustrated...

Myles UdlandOctober 8, 2014 Stocks rallied in a big way after the Minutes from the latest Federal Reserve monetary policy meeting showed that the Fed remains particularly cautious about raising interest rates in the face of a strengthening US dollar and a slowing global economy. First, the scoreboard: •Dow: 16,989.69, +270.3, (+1.6%) •S&P 500: 1,968.86, +33.8, (+1.7%) •Nasdaq: 4,469.60, +84.3, (1.9%) And now, the top stories Wednesday: 1. The biggest story on Wednesday was the release of the Minutes from the Federal Reserve's September monetary policy meeting. The minutes were interpreted as "dovish," by the market, essentially meaning that the...

Everyday Low Benefits Wal-Mart dumps 30,000 part-timers onto the ObamaCare exchanges. Oct. 7, 2014 7:25 p.m. ET Wal-Mart endorsed ObamaCare in 2009 and helped drag the bill through Congress, and so far it hasn’t recanted. By holding back economic growth and incomes, perhaps the law is expanding the retailer’s customer base. Another plus—at least for management—is that Wal-Mart can jettison its employees into the ObamaCare insurance exchanges. The Associated Press reported Tuesday that the largest U.S. private employer is dropping health benefits for some 30,000 workers, or about 5% of its part-time workforce. Earlier health-plan eligibility triage in 2011 had...

Mike BirdOctober 7,2014 Sorry, America. China just overtook the US to become the world's largest economy, according to the International Monetary Fund. Chris Giles at the Financial Times flagged up the change. He also alerted us back in April this year that it was all about to happen. Basically, the method used by the IMF adjusts for purchasing power parity, explained here. The simple logic is that prices aren't the same in each country: A shirt will cost you less in Shanghai than San Francisco, so it's not entirely reasonable to compare countries without taking this into account. Though a...

A homeowner who tried for months to sell a beat-up, two-story house in Detroit has offered to sell it to anyone who gives him an iPhone 6. He’s also willing to sell it for a 32GB iPad.

A sell-off on Wall Street Tuesday extended losses into a second straight session. All the major markets lost more than 1.5% as investors worried about how the slowdown in Europe will play out for earnings. The Dow dropped 272 points.

We are destroying our economy in order to satisfy the environmental lobby, while other countries like China and India are polluting away As the global warming alarmists tell us that “the science is settled, there is no debate, and government bureaucrats are going full-speed ahead with taxation plans that will further weaken our already suffering economy, honest and wise politicians like Delegate Scott Lingamfelter of Virginia ask, “let’s see the physical science, not the political science before we strap Americans with huge taxes as the Obama Administration wants to do.” We should not formulate public policy such as carbon tax...