Free Republic

For investors around the world looking at Greece, there was but one question Sunday: What is going to happen when the markets open? On Sunday night, the prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, said in a televised address that Greece’s banks and stock market would be closed on Monday, as Athens tries to avert a financial collapse. But the question of what happens when the markets do open is particularly acute for the hedge fund investors — including luminaries like David Einhorn and John Paulson — who have collectively poured more than 10 billion euros, or $11 billion, into Greek government bonds,...

The hedge fund founded and, until recently, run by billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer was involved in a deal to sell a stake in a Russian oil company to a Russian oligarch who is the target of U.S. sanctions. Farallon Capital Management sold a part of its stake in Russian firm Geotech Oil Services to the Volga Group, a Luxembourg-based investment firm owned by Russian billionaire Gennady Timchenko, in 2010. Four years later, in April 2014, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that it would target Timchenko, Volga, and a number of companies associated with them, in a round of sanctions aimed...

A former U.S. senator in Colorado sees parallels between billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer’s meddling in current Senate elections in the state and his hedge fund’s efforts to drain a small Colorado town’s water supply and sell it to the highest bidder. Former Sen. Wayne Allard (R., Colo.) ... In 1995 Tom Steyer descended on Colorado, standing to make millions by exporting the water under the San Luis Valley and selling it to the highest bidder. Draining this particular aquifer would have had disastrous consequences for farms, wetlands and the Great Sand Dunes National Park. Impact from Steyer’s plan would have...

It is almost fitting that the state which is home to the entertainment industry be governed by people who seem to be content with creating illusion rather than dealing with reality. California is on the verge of a monumental financial collapse and Sacramento is filled with blissfully unaware legislators whose only coherent response seems to be crossing their fingers and hoping the bailout fairy comes swooping in for a magical Hollywood ending. One of the many progressive policies signed into law by faux Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger was AB 32, a law known better by the story book name "The Global...

<p>HONOLULU — An injunction to halt bombing and other military training on a tiny Pacific island could hinder America’s ability to defend itself and to prepare for war, a Navy spokesman said. The Navy ceased using Farallon de Medinilla in the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands on Tuesday after U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington issued a 30-day injunction immediately halting all U.S. military activities.</p>

A federal judge's ruling that live-fire military training at Farallon de Medinella a tiny speck of coral and scrub near Saipan in the Pacific Ocean violates the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act potentially could halt future bombing or shelling there. This development potentially has serious implications not just for U.S. Pacific Fleet gunners and aviators who use the island to hone their combat skills, but for any other military-training site that hosts migratory birds. Finding on behalf of the plaintiffs the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, representing the Center for Biological Diversity ? U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ruled...