Free Republic

For three decades, the U.S. middle class enjoyed a rare financial advantage over the wealthy: lower mortgage rates. Now, even that perk is fading away. Most ordinary homebuyers are paying the same or higher rates than the fortunate few who can afford much more. Rates for a conventional 30-year fixed mortgage are averaging 4.48 percent, according to Bankrate. For “jumbo” mortgages—those above $417,000 in much of the country—the average is 4.47 percent. …

WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama is getting a number of critical report cards on his foreign and domestic policies lately. Here at home, Janet Yellen, in her first monetary policy address as the head of the Federal Reserve Board, said the labor markets were still weak, and that it will likely take two years or more before the U.S. fully recovers from its recession. Ouch. If Yellen's forecast proves right, this means it will have taken Obama's administration nearly eight years to lift our economy out of its long and painful lethargy.

As if the Obama administration’s purchase of more than 2 billion rounds of ammunition, and nearly 3,000 urban tanks, along with their unprecedented (and highly illegal) domestic spying program was not enough to convince you that the federal government is about to suspend the Constitution once and for all, the man who once vowed to run “the most transparent administration in history” has just rather inexplicably, ordered the U.S. Army to seize every Apache attack helicopter currently in use by the National Guard. In all, the Defense Department will confiscate 192 Apaches from National Guard units around the country and...

We have all been watching a long mystery with no ending: What the Federal Reserve governors are trying to do, how they intend to do it and why they imagine their efforts will work. The key questions boil down to two: (1) What target should the Fed aim at, and (2) what policy instruments should it use to hit that target? The Fed's only explicit target — an unemployment rate of 6.5% — was shrewdly discarded as "outdated" as that target grew near. Actually, the idea of focusing on unemployment is outdated, since it presumes that high unemployment guarantees low...

We're better than those damned Russians and their Putin; we have democracy! Well, maybe not. Quote: Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism. Lots of big words in that paragraph. Let's distill it down -- the argument presented is that America is really no different than...

The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times (FT) have recently reported frightening food-price inflation. Prices for staples like coffee, oats, milk, meat, vegetables and fruits have increased so far in 2014 by rates as high as 70%. The FT noted that a breakfast now costs at least 25% more than it did in 2013. As expected, media attributed the food-price inflation to droughts and to fast-growing demand in Southeast Asia. For fish, for which prices tripled in recent years, the drought factor does not apply, leaving us with high demand. This explanation fits best with what the US Federal...

As a former Klan leader is charged with killing three in Kansas, the frayed white supremacy group is trying to attract new members. The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates the number of hate groups in the U.S. has risen from 602 in 2000 to 939 in 2013 The Ku Klux Klan was once a major force in America, with a membership of nearly 4 million that regularly included mayors, chiefs of police and other grandees of segregated regions, especially in the South and Midwest. It’s been decades since the Klan held that sort of mainstream sway, but Sunday’s deadly rampage...

The Federal Reserve may be about to turn more aggressive in its regulation of the financial system. Fed Chair Janet Yellen suggested Tuesday that current regulatory rules might not be enough to prevent the kind of risk-taking that triggered the 2008 financial crisis and nearly toppled the entire banking system. She said the largest U.S. banks may need to hold additional capital to withstand periods of financial stress. Non-banks with deep reaches into the financial system might also need to meet tougher rules, she said. Such firms range from money market mutual funds to private equity and hedge funds. …

When the Ukrainian people overthrew the duly elected President in late February, the office of Prime Minister was quickly filled by a technocrat, and member of the European banking establishment. Thus it is not surprising when on March 20, the interim Ukrainian government is going ahead with plans that follow the path of Cyprus, and are instituting a tax on bank depositors and account holders, and are bringing the program of bail-ins to the Eastern European country. ... It is not coincidence that the 'Ukrainian Winter' uprising occurred after the government chose to bypass the IMF and the EU, and...

Anti-Israel Leftist Cited by Anti-Semitic Killer Mocked Idea that American Jews are At Risk - FrontPage Magazine - http://www.frontpagemag.com - Anti-Israel Leftist Cited by Anti-Semitic Killer Mocked Idea that American Jews are At RiskPosted By Daniel Greenfield On April 14, 2014 @ 12:27 pm In The Point | 4 Comments Leftist Anti-Israel journalist Max Blumenthal, who is affiliated with The Nation, ridiculed the idea that American Jews are an at risk population.Blumenthal, whose attacks on Israel and Jews were described as anti-Semitic even by many on the left, and whose work was allegedly cited by the Kansas City killer and...

In a 2010 interview, Alan Colmes talked with a KKK Grand Dragon, who would later become the Jewish Center shooter, as he was running for Senate in Missouri as a Republican–and the glimpse into the mind of this madman that the interview offers is simply horrifying. On Sunday, Frazier Glenn Miller, or Frazier Glenn Cross, murdered three people at two different Jewish centers in Overland Park, Kansas–including a man, woman, and child. He shot at two others, but they were uninjured. As he was arrested, the founder of the White Patriot Party screamed “Heil Hitler!” Frazier/Cross told Colmes, a Jewish...

Posted on Wednesday, April 9th, 2014 at 12:19 am. by: Santo Lippo KUALA LUMPUR (INTELLIHUB) — In a strange twist of events Sara Bajc, the girlfriend of missing flight 370 passenger Phillip Wood, told CNN how the Malaysian military and even the U.S. are likely involved in a massive cover-up surrounding the aircrafts disappearance on the morning of Mar. 8. Astonishingly Bajc told CNN, “The jet [flight 370] had actually been accompanied by fighter planes, there is some witness to that.”. “I think we need to have a better view into where that plane went and who has got it...

INDIAN OCEAN (INTELLIHUB) — According to freelance journalist Jim Stone, one of the American passengers, Phillip Wood, a technical storage executive at IBM, who was aboard the now missing Malaysian Airlines flight, keystered his iPhone 5 in his anus after the Boeing 777 carrying 239 people was hijacked by military personnel while on route to China. Amazingly, Stone claims that metadata within the photo yields evidence confirming “100 percent” that Phillip Wood sent the photo, along with a brief voice activated text, from GPS coordinates which put Wood only a few miles away from the U.S. controlled Diego Garcia military...

Financial stress related to Ponzi financing and other bad debts in China is readily visible in numerous places. One result is China’s Big Banks Double Bad-Loan Write-Offs. China’s biggest banks more than doubled the level of bad loans they wrote off last year, in a sign that financial strains are mounting as growth in the world’s second-largest economy slows. The five biggest Chinese banks, which account for more than half of all loans in the country, removed Rmb59bn ($9.5bn) from their books in debts that could not be collected, according to their 2013 results. That was up 127 per cent...

Increasing public debt is bad for a number of reasons. Journalist Matthew Yglesias, speaking on vox.com, gives voice to a very different, more Pollyannish perspective: “Debt is just not a problem right now,” he says. Why? “The U.S. can never run out of dollars.” After all, the Fed can just print more. That’s not an uncommon view where I live, near the center of privilege, Washington, D.C. Indeed, it’s what liberals and progressives say every time a Tea Partier protests federal overspending and multi-billion-buck budget deficits. In other words, the idea is as common as dirt. So why General Electric...

Beatrice17 wrote: First of all, the USPS is NOT a government organization, but a private business. (sigh). Second, the USPS does NOT photograph every piece of mail. (sigh) It does run it thru multiple scanners. One is a bio scanner - developed since the "white powder" scare - that can locate poisons, etc. Another is a zip code scanner, to electronically put zip codes on the mail so that it can be electronically sorted. This saves time and money... except when your Grammy writes so illegibly that her letter has to be kicked out and a real live human has...

<p>With Bernanke gone, the remaining Fed members knowing full well they will be crucified, metaphorically of course (if not literally) when it all inevitably comes crashing down, are finally at liberty with their words... and the truth is bleeding out courtesy of the president of the Dallas Fed, via Bloomberg.</p>

WASHINGTON - Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen briefed the country Wednesday on the Fed's plans for the economy's problem-plagued recovery, sending Wall Street into a swoon. It was her first news conference as the new head of the nation's central bank, and though she was cautious in her remarks, she suggested that economic data has improved more than many people, and other economists, think. But it was the Fed's plans to start raising interest rates earlier than expected that came as an ice cold shower for the still- sluggish economy and for the stock market. Yellen's remarks, following a report...

More than five years after the financial crisis struck, the biggest U.S. banks are better able to withstand a severe recession than at any time since the meltdown, the Federal Reserve has determined. Results of the Fed’s annual “stress tests” showed Thursday that all but one of 30 top banks passed muster with sufficient capital buffers to keep them lending through an economic crisis. Only Zions Bancorp fell short. The results showed continued improvement in banks’ financial positions since the 2008 crisis, the Fed said. That built on positive results from last year’s tests. “The industry is stronger and more...

It was as inevitable as the sun rising in the east. The far east, in this case, over the Land of the Rising Sun. The Mt. Gox currency exchange in Tokyo, where buyers and sellers dealt in the unofficial currency Bitcoin, collapsed recently. As it disappeared, so did some $400 million. That money may have been lost, or stolen. Nobody’s sure. What many are sure of is that this collapse shows the need for more regulation. “The clear ends of Bitcoin for either transacting in illegal goods and services or speculative gambling make me wary of its use,” Sen. Joe...