Free Republic

The latest eye-opener comes from the U.S. Treasury, a department tasked with managing the country’s debt as well as the banking system as a whole. According to a new report the Treasury Department has ordered over $200,000 Survival Kits for as many as 3,814 employees who oversee the federal banking system. It’s not clear why the federal government has ordered the kits, but perhaps they are expecting some sort of disturbance to take place and they want their employees to be prepared for it. According to Zero Hedge, the kits will be delivered to every major bank in the United...

I don't know too much about Jim Rickards, just found this to be an interesting video about the overall economy and some tidbits about what our government agencies are up to. The video is a 45 minutes long interview of sorts and discussion. Just posting in the event other are interested.

The technologies of the past, by replacing human muscle, increased the value of human effort – and in the process drove rapid economic progress. Those of the future, by substituting for man’s senses and brain, will accelerate that process – but at the risk of creating millions of citizens who are simply unable to contribute economically, and with greater damage to an already declining middle class.

San Jose's new minimum wage took effect on March 13, 2013, although employers had the previous three months to prepare for the increase. That year, the unemployment rate for young adults in the San Jose metro area jumped sharply by six percentage points -- from 14 percent in 2012 to 20 percent in 2013... Meanwhile, the overall unemployment rate in the same area fell by nearly two percentage points, suggesting that young adults suffered while others did quite well. ... an EPI survey of 163 restaurants in San Jose, 45 percent of which cut employee hours and 42 percent of...

MOSCOW — As the falling ruble and depressed oil prices push Russia’s once-booming economy into the red, ordinary Russians are doing everything they can to lighten the mood – with black humor. Dark humor is as much a Russian specialty as fine caviar, perfected during the more difficult years of the Soviet Union and over centuries of bleak, sunless winters. Russians routinely reach their peak joking creativity when times are their worst – and the current ruble-and-oil-and-sanctions-driven economic crisis is proving the ideal muse to inspire such irreverent expression. “What do Russian President Vladimir Putin, the price of oil, and...

Despite the best efforts of Jennifer Lawrence, two big family films, some horrible bosses, and The Mighty Christopher Nolan, according to Deadline, the weekend's box office collapsed to a 16-year-low. Box Office Mojo reports the weekend earned just $70.4 million, which Deadline says is the worst post-Thanksgiving weekend, going all the way back to 1998. Mojo adds that this weekend was the second-worst of the year and somewhere around a 20% drop over this same weekend last year.

AbstractThe FCC has proposed new regulations for Internet service providers, so-called net neutrality rules; the specific practices such rules would ban are unclear. While much will depend on the how the final rules are written, regulation advocates have given some indication of the types of practices they would target. Most of the practices identified by regulation supporters as activities that should be prohibited are in fact beneficial to consumers, or are conducted by challengers to the dominant firms in the marketplace. These cases—identified as examples of neutrality violations by regulation supporters themselves—show that efforts to further regulate the open...

Could rapidly falling oil prices trigger a nightmare scenario for the commodity derivatives market? The big Wall Street banks did not expect plunging home prices to cause a mortgage-backed securities implosion back in 2008, and their models did not anticipate a decline in the price of oil by more than 40 dollars in less than six months this time either. If the price of oil stays at this level or goes down even more, someone out there is going to have to absorb some absolutely massive losses. In some cases, the losses will be absorbed by oil producers, but many...

There’s much worrywarting over the new figures from the IMF IMF telling us the fact that China is now the world’s number one economy in terms of size. The truth is though that, other than for collectors of statistical trivia, this really isn’t important. Perhaps on a par with wondering how Lady Gaga is going to dress next but no more than that. Because the whole idea of “an economy” as defined by the borders of a nation state is pretty arbitrary anyway and further, it matters a great deal more how many people that economy is spread over than...

China's trade surplus climbed to a record in November after an unexpected decline in imports (CNFRIMPY) on lower crude oil and other commodity prices. (please see link for full article)

A left-wing party with communist roots now controls the levers of government in the German state of Thuringia, marking the first time a political party closely linked to East Germany’s communist leadership has gained power since German reunification in 1990. The party is, appropriately enough, the Left Party, reports The Telegraph. This week, the state parliament in Thuringia narrowly voted to authorize a new coalition with the Left Party at the helm. The three-way coalition also includes the Green Party. The Left Party is viewed as the successor to the Socialist Unity Party which controlled East Germany when it was...

Submitted by Neil Howe - author of The Fourth Turning, originally posted at Forbes.com,At the close of last week’s G20 Summit, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron warned that we’re on the verge of another global recession, citing problems like looming deflation, falling prices, and rising protectionist sentiment. This list evokes a sense of déjà vu: not about the Great Recession, but the Great Depression. That was the last time we ever seriously worried about disinflation, along with every practically other aspect of economic performance raising alarm bells today: low interest rates, weak investment, slow productivity growth, and chronic labor force...

AirBnB.Com, Uber.Com: If you own a house or car, should you be free to do what you want with it? If your plans for your personal property include making money, then you may find out the hard way that, no, you can’t do as you wish. That’s the harsh lesson being learned by many Americans as they participate in the new, burgeoning freelance services industries. Consider Raleigh, North Carolina resident Gregg Stebben. He and his wife Jodi are registered as service providers with AirBnB.Com, the new online venture that matches travelers in search of lodging with private homes, extra bedrooms...

Soap box time. Even as we speak the hired help in Washington are working out how to deal with the fact that the current budget continuing resolution expires this Thursday.  We got rumors galore on what they're coming up with but let's face it--  this is just not their strong point.  We're in a situation where the hired help is going to need our intensive supervision.  I know it's a lot of work to keep 'em in line but it's what we do.We can google here to find your congress contact info and I found this site good for senators...

'Buckwheat panic' Grips Russians As Economic Sanctions Bite World | Agence France-Presse | Updated: December 07, 2014 10:31 IST Moscow: With its warm, fluffy brown grains, buckwheat is the ultimate comfort food for Russians and as sanctions hit home, it is flying off the shelves in a shopping frenzy dubbed the "buckwheat panic". Hard-hit by falling oil prices and Western economic sanctions imposed over the Kremlin's role in the Ukrainian crisis, Russia is seeing a catastrophic depreciation of the ruble and steep inflation. But while Russians grumble about the rising price of chicken, cheese or sausage, it was only when...

At its recent annual conference the Illinois Municipal League, a century old adviser and advocate for local government, took the unprecedented step of sponsoring an in-depth session on a volatile topic: hometown bankruptcies. The Sept. 18 session, entitled “Finance: Lessons from Detroit and Pension Cases,” couldn’t have been timelier. Many of Illinois’ municipal leaders are warily eyeing Motown’s bankruptcy proceeding while questioning whether their financially desperate and cash-crunched cities, suburbs and villages could face the same fate, a Rescuing Illinois investigation finds. At the very least, these leaders are now, more than ever before, openly questioning if bankruptcy is a...

If you’re like most Americans, you haven’t been questioning the welcome drop in gasoline prices. You just fill ’er up and feel grateful that you’re spending less.But why has this remarkable drop come about? And what can we do to help keep prices lower?Some of it, unfortunately, is beyond our control. Worldwide demand for oil is down now. That always causes the cost of gasoline to drop.But the other side of the equation -- the part that is under our control -- has gone largely unheralded in many media accounts: the boom in U.S. energy production. Simply put, we’re producing...

For the first time in decades, the U.S. is no longer the largest economy in the world, and China has become number one, the International Monetary Fund says. The IMF recently released the latest numbers for the world economy, stating that China will produce $17.6 trillion in terms of goods and services-- compared with $17.4 trillion for the U.S. Just 14 years ago, the U.S. produced nearly three times as much as the Chinese, Dow Jones’ MarketWatch reported. But each country reports its data in its own currency, according to the IMF website. In order to compare data, each country's...

Comedian reveals what it means to be rich today -- and how little the average American really understands about it. I’ve already written a bit about Chris Rock’s must-read interview with Frank Rich and, as much as I enjoy the comedian’s work, I didn’t expect to be returning to it quite so soon. But although Rock’s comments on racism initially drew the most attention, a recent study from Gregory Clark, a researcher at University of California, Davis, has got me thinking that the comedian’s most insightful (and potentially radical) statement came earlier in the interview, during a brief digression about...

According to figures published by the International Monetary Fund, China has surpassed the US in economic output of real goods and services - a measure widely accepted as a gauge of total economic activity. It's an esoteric measurement, but important because it ignores exchange rates: These calculations are based on a well-established and widely used economic measure known as purchasing-power parity (or PPP), which measures the actual output as opposed to fluctuations in exchange rates. So a Starbucks venti Frappucino served in Beijing counts the same as a venti Frappucino served in Minneapolis, regardless of what happens to be...