Free Republic

World economic leaders are being urged to rally around a plan to let government do what it does best - spend money - in an effort to buoy a global economy that remains slack and slowing. The effort comes as six years of crisis fighting have lapsed with little guarantee the world economy is on a stable footing. Germany is in danger of slipping into recession, China has slowed, and U.S. policymakers are concerned a fresh bout of global weakness will stymie the U.S. recovery as well. International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde issued a blunt call on Thursday...

We don’t like to concede that a primary cause of the financial crisis was a Wall Street compensation system that rewarded executives, bankers and traders for taking big risks with other people’s money without holding them the least bit accountable. And because we don’t like to discuss such things in polite company, it is certainly unsurprising that six years later, not a single fundamental aspect of how Wall Street pays its top people has changed. The incentive system that handed out millions of dollars in bonuses to bankers and traders who packaged shoddy mortgages into securities and sold them as...

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...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has downgraded its global growth forecast for both this year and next, as a divergence emerges between those economies that are recovering—and those that are not. The organization, which represents 188 countries, now expects world growth to come in at 3.3 percent in 2014, down 0.1 percent from its forecast in July. While in 2015, it expects growth of 3.8 percent, down 0.2 percent from earlier expectations.

President Barack Obama would seek to overthrow the regime of Bashar al-Assad if American planes were attacked upon entering Syrian air space, Peter Baker of The New York Times reports. If Assad's troops fired at American planes entering Syrian airspace, "Obama said he would order American forces to wipe out Syria’s air defense system," Baker reports. "He went on to say that such an action by Mr. Assad would lead to his overthrow, according to one account."

The United States and European Union plan to stop billions of dollars in oil exploration in Russia by the world's largest energy companies including Exxon Mobil Corp and BP Plc, U.S. government sources said. The planned sanctions over Russia's aggression toward Ukraine would ban U.S. and European companies from cooperating with Russia on searching its Arctic territory, deep seas or shale formations for crude, said two U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the measures have not been made public. The measures, which one of the sources said represented "preliminary thinking," would expand sanctions the Obama administration announced...

Christine Lagarde, the chief of the International Monetary Fund, was placed under official investigation for negligence in a French corruption probe that dates back to her days as France’s finance minister. In a statement Wednesday after a fourth round of questioning before magistrates, Lagarde said she would return to her work in Washington later in the day and said the decision was “without basis.” She is the third IMF managing director in a decade to face legal troubles. …

Johan and Alejandra are the kind of Swedes the IMF has been warning about - piling up debt to keep up with an ever-rising property market and fund a lifestyle of travel, maids and nights out. The couple plan to buy a flat in Stockholm for 5 to 6 million Swedish crowns ($724,000 to $869,000), initially with an interest-only bank loan, among other spending plans. "I may travel, I may want to invest in a new business," said Alejandra, who runs a cafe in the city centre. Less than a month away from a general election, there are no votes...

As Vladimir Putin’s tanks begin to roll forth from Russia like Sauron’s legions from Mordor, a pair of American villains is working hard to undermine our resolve against the greatest threat from Europe to American values and power, and indeed to world peace, since Adolf Hitler.Evgeny Feldman, a photographer for the maverick Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, recently visited a book store in Moscow and tweeted [1] a photograph from amongst its shelves. Among volumes on one topical shelf such as The Crimes of the U.S.A. and The Third World War and Forward to Victory, in which authors offered bloodthirsty...

That seems like an awfully strong word, but it is the term that distinguished law professor Glenn Reynolds, no hysteric, uses to describe the Obama administrationÂ’s oft-reported plan to issue executive amnesty to five or six million illegal immigrants in violation of federal law. GlennÂ’s characterization is a fair one. When a tyrant asserts the right to rule by decree in a state that has formerly been subject to the rule of law, he is commonly described as carrying out a coup dÂ’etat. That is just what the Obama administration has done, and reportedly will continue to do. When Obama...

The International Monetary Fund has urged Ukraine's fragile government to honor its bailout obligations, a sign the fund is concerned a breakdown in the country's coalition could jeopardize its emergency financing package. Ukraine's ruling coalition broke up on Thursday, with Prime Minister Arseniy Yansunyuk submitting his resignation, jeopardizing passage of a supplementary budget that may be needed for the IMF's executive board to approve the next tranche of financing in late August. The fund said IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde discussed the implications of the political developments with President Petro Poroshenko and Mr. Yatsenyuk by telephone on Friday. (SNIP) The...

VLADIMIR PUTIN has responded to the international outrage over the destruction of a Malaysian airliner by his proxies in eastern Ukraine by escalating his aggression. According to U.S. officials, tanks, artillery and other heavy weapons have continued to cross from Russia to Ukraine since the passenger jet was shot down. On Wednesday, two more Ukrainian military jets were hit by anti-aircraft missiles, which Ukrainian officials said had been fired from Russia. The State Department also said Thursday that Russian artillery was firing at Ukrainian positions from across the border. The Russian president is clearly not impressed by Western responses to...

One of President Barack Obama's top advisers says the White House takes seriously the possibility that House Republicans could pursue impeachment of the president. Senior White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer told reporters Friday that the GOP has already "opened the door for impeachment" by contemplating suing the president over his use of executive authority. He says that any further executive action Obama may sign this year on immigration will "up the likelihood" of Republicans pursuing that path.

The most important thing for European ministers to remember during this crisis is how little they actually have to fear from Mr Putin – for Russia needs the West far more than the West needs Russia. Indeed, there is every possibility that denying Moscow access to the global capital markets, which is the strategy at the heart of Washington’s latest sanctions initiative, could ultimately result in Mr Putin’s downfall. For a start, thanks to the mismanagement and corruption that have dogged Russia’s economy since Mr Putin came to power, the country has nothing much else to offer other than its...

This is what happens when a priced to perfection global economy (and well beyond perfection based on the S&P 500) runs into the utterly and completely unpredictable and unforseeable "harsh winter weather."First, the IMF just cut (again) its forecast for US GDP, this time from 2.0% to the consensus-estimate 1.7%. The IMF cited the 1Q contraction, which from a +3% original estimate ended up being that, just with a minus sign. It also says second-half growth to accelerate... because it must! Some other brilliant points from the IMF:IMF staff: U.S. to reach full employment “only by end-2017”“The economy is...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)The British newspapers, like the British government, are pinning the blame for the Malaysian Airlines disaster on Putin. Most Americans, whether Democrats or Republicans, would see things the way these UK headlines do: "Putin is a pariah – he must be treated as such" "Britain and America implicate Russia in Flight MH17 missile attack" "Two British families killed by 'Putin the terrorist'" And over a column written by Prime Minister David Cameron, this headline: "This is an outrage made in Moscow" However, some well-informed conservatives in Britain are pointing the finger for the war in Ukraine not at Putin, but...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that the U.S. and Europe should work together to develop tougher sanctions on Russia while she backed President Barack Obama's calls for a thorough investigation into the passenger jet that was shot down last week over Ukraine. Clinton said in a Facebook chat from the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, that tougher sanctions would make clear to Russian President Vladimir Putin "that there is a price to pay for this kind of behavior." The former secretary of state said she agreed with Obama's comments earlier Monday urging "immediate and full access"...

Just one day after the horrific tragedy that left 298 people dead, Russia's Channel One ran a package telling its audience that the entire incident was orchestrated by the United States, specifically by the CIA. A document was broadcast purportedly showing that the U.S. was planning to do the same thing during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Viewers learned that the "U.S. orchestrated this because Ukrainian government is not sophisticated enough to orchestrate this," according to the broadcast, which was translated from the original Russian by CNBC. According to Channel One, Russia's swift economic growth has inspired the United States...

Former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul claimed Sunday that the U.S. and European Union may share responsibility for the downing of a Malaysia Airlines plane over Ukraine last week. “While western media outlets rush to repeat government propaganda on the event, there are a few things they will not report,” Paul, a former Republican congressman from Texas, wrote on his website. “They will not report that the crisis in Ukraine started late last year, when the EU and U.S. overthrew the elected Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych. Without U.S.-sponsored ‘regime change,’ it is unlikely that hundreds would have been killed in...

In early July 1944, delegates from 44 countries gathered at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. A three-week summit took place, at which a new system was agreed to regulate the international monetary and financial order after the Second World War. The US was already the world’s commercial powerhouse, having eclipsed the British Empire several decades earlier. America was also on course to be among the victors of “Europe’s conflict”, even though its economy was largely unscathed by war. As such, Bretton Woods was US-dominated and produced a settlement largely on US terms. Seventy years ago this...