Free Republic

Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs has been fined £20m ($31m) by the UK City regulator, the Financial Services Authority, the BBC has learned. The fine is for failing to tell the FSA it was under investigation for fraud by the US financial watchdog this summer. In July, Goldman settled the fraud charge with the Securities and Exchange Committee by paying $550m (£356m). The £20m is one of the heaviest fines ever imposed by the FSA, said the BBC's business editor Robert Peston. Goldman agreed to pay the US fine to settle civil fraud charges of misleading investors. The charges concerned...

would I be better off renewing my max $4000 FSA for 2010 or not, thereby raising my taxible income for 2010? I'm assuming the FSA can/will disappear via Obummercare(should it pass.) I'm thinking the money would best be spent on paying off a credit card?

Bigotry assumes many forms, hides behind many facades, but always it is the same; the social demonization of entire groups, classes or races of people in an effort to make them appear inferior and detrimental by their very existence. In the wake of a nasty multiple shooting at a Pittsburgh, PA-area fitness club by a not-so-clearly psychotic man identified as George Sodini, America’s gun prohibitionists – led by the Violence Policy Center and Freedom States Alliance – are clamoring for restrictions or repeal of concealed carry statutes. In the case against legally-armed citizens, the VPC has even manufactured an innuendo-riddled...

Many companies these days offer what are commonly called either health care or dependent care flexible spending accounts (FSA). Surprisingly, very few employees take advantage of this fantastic benefit. According to a survey published by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans in 2008, less than 40% of eligible employees who had the option available to them used a health care FSA, and less than 10% of eligible employees utilized a dependent care FSA if it was available.

9/11 Families for a Secure America Seeks Additional Plaintiffs for Maryland Lawsuit to Stop the Issuance of Drivers’ Licenses to Illegal Aliens and the Unknown Terrorists Among Them. The 19 terrorists of 9/11 had at least 35 authentic US drivers’ licenses. The 9/11 Commission stated that these I.D.s were critical in aiding the terrorists to carry out their mass murder. Despite this, Maryland and a dozen other states continue to issue licenses to illegal aliens. Because an illegal is a person whose true identity has never been verified by federal officials with the resources to do so, any illegal may...

We banned a berry – and it took Brussels to stop us being so silly By Boris Johnson (Filed: 23/12/2004) And while we are on the subject of demented British regulation, and this Government's lust to interfere in every aspect of our daily lives, let us not forget the breakfast habits of Mr Ron Jones, of Chinnor, in the beautiful county of Oxfordshire, and the insane, costly and ultimately abortive attempts to stop him eating a particular type of berry. You may not have heard of a saskatoon, and nor, frankly, had I. But Mr Jones is widely travelled, and...

Maybe health care would be cheaper if the customer actually paid for it. "Starting this year, millions of Americans will be able to save money tax-free for their medical expenses, in a health savings account," declared President George Bush in his State of the Union speech. He clearly knows that health care will be the top domestic issue in the 2004 presidential campaign. Why? Because health spending in the United States soared by 9.3 percent in 2002, the largest increase in 11 years, according to a report from U.S. Health and Human Services officials in the journal Health Affairs. (The...