Free Republic

The title says it all, when you get down to it. Our Constitution ensconces a fundamental principle that pre-exists any form of government: By virtue of being human you have rights. No government has the authority to take them from you, as to be able to choose how to allocate something you must first have rightful possession of it. ...

Oh, you're a woke-poke employer eh? You think hiding behind OSHA -- or the threat to issue a mandate by the government -- in some way prevents you from being liable for injuries and/or deaths related to the vaccines?

[H/T Cathi]Likely explanation, beyond them being sick of your bull**** with mandates: They're DEAD.But first, our usual report.Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 194,000 in September, and the unemployment rate fell by 0.4 percentage point to 4.8 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Notable job gains occurred in leisure and hospitality, in professional and business services, in retail trade, and in transportation and warehousing. Employment in public education declined over the month.This was a wild miss after ADP reported in on Wednesday. I predicted that and it doesn't surprise me one bit.Remember that this report captures during...

That's Google's "doodle" for today. Do you have any idea who that is? That's Yuri Kochiyama, a Japanese-American. It's apparently her 95th birthday. Ok. By the way, she's a black separatist -- even though she's not black. That's right, she stands for blatant, in-you-face discrimination by black people against everyone who isn't black. She has been influenced by (and met) Malcolm X. Yes, that Malcolm X. Oh, and she engaged in taking over the Statute of Liberty to demand the release of four extremists who opened fire in the US House of Representatives. (Incidentally, Carter later pardoned them; you see,...

Let me remind you that Medicare and Medicaid are the entire problem space within our federal budget, and that same issue -- retiree health care costs -- are the entire issue with state and local budgets, along with private pensions. There is only one candidate from either major political party that has put forward any sort of cogent plan of any kind of deal with the Medicare and Medicaid mess -- along with the mess of health care in private industry. This, as I've written about pretty-much since The Market Ticker began publication, is the intermediate and longer-term issue that...

And? CNN said Tuesday it is amending the criteria for candidates to qualify for its Republican presidential debate later this month, possibly clearing the way for contender Carly Fiorina to be part of the main-stage debate. Fiorina has battled for weeks to be included in the Sept. 16 main event, arguing that CNN was relying too heavily on old polling to determine which candidates would make the top-10 cut. Frankly, I don't get it. What does Fiorina bring to the party? She was a disaster at HP; not only did she get fired by the board the company lost half...

Folks, if you have read me recently you know that I've said that you are the problem and that the reason this is true is that you won't go on strike, you won't picket DC and refuse to leave until the government stops stealing from you and debasing the currency, you won't reduce your spending and income to only that which provides necessities, and most of you go on to justify your behavior with "my kids (and/or family) deserve what I can provide."You're fools and I'm going to prove it.  Further, I'm going to prove -- by arithmetic -- that if...

Read carefully folks, get up, go look in the mirror, and then punish yourself as you see fit for putting people in the street in this fashion, because it is your fault and you are responsible for it: Freeland lived with family for a time, she said, and four months ago moved into transitional housing funded by the city government in Washington, D.C., while searching for work that pays more than her $8.25-an-hour retail job. Having lost her oldest son in a 2000 homicide, Freeland said she insists on looking for housing in a safe neighborhood for her surviving one, now...

The Market Ticker is offline from October 11th-13th as a deliberate act to reduce to zero my economic activity, and thus taxable income, for those three days. On 9/11/2013 I went dark to protest the NSA's unconstitutional and outrageous acts of spying against American Citizens -- acts they claimed at the time were "catching terrorists" but which they were later forced to admit had interdicted not dozens of plots but perhaps "one or two." Despite this forced admission our Congress has refused, thus far, to force the dismantling of these outrageous, unconstitutional, ridiculously expensive and abusive programs. But the NSA...

If you get reamed don't say you weren't warned. In 2008 there were repeated instances where the futures gapped ~20 handles overnight, clearing out the stack and gapping over your stop, filling you on the other side for hideous losses. Stop orders are worthless when this happens -- all they do is lock in a loss as you fill on the other side (which usually is the extreme print) and then the market reverses some of the move, costing you twice.

I'm going to write today about a very somber subject. It will be, as it usually is here in one form or another, about math. First, some background. If you believe that we have "escaped" from the mess that gripped this nation in 2008 and 2009, or that said mess "suddenly appeared" and "nobody saw it coming", stop reading now and have your Thorazine dosage checked. It's way off. Assuming you accept the truth - that this mess was 20 year or more in the making, that it involved creating credit (that is, debt) which the debtor could never pay,...

I'm going to write today about a very somber subject. It will be, as it usually is here in one form or another, about math. First, some background. If you believe that we have "escaped" from the mess that gripped this nation in 2008 and 2009, or that said mess "suddenly appeared" and "nobody saw it coming", stop reading now and have your Thorazine dosage checked. It's way off. Assuming you accept the truth - that this mess was 20 year or more in the making, that it involved creating credit (that is, debt) which the debtor could never pay,...

There's no other way to describe this: Bad. Actually, let's go worse than bad and call it what it is - by any definition this is just one step off from "Failed." Yield was way over where it was trading at the time, as you can see here: The more-worrying factor here is that we've got this "mystery" direct buyers out here again taking nearly 25% of the offered amount (who is bidding for that undisclosed?) and another 11% taken down by The Fed for the SOMA account.

I'm not sure I believe what I'm hearing on CNBC coming out of The President's mouth. Is he really listening to Paul Volcker? Finally? Here's what I heard that I liked - a lot. 1. Limit the Scope - The President and his economic team will work with Congress to ensure that no bank or financial institution that contains a bank will own, invest in or sponsor a hedge fund or a private equity fund, or proprietary trading operations unrelated to serving customers for its own profit. 2. Limit the Size - The President also announced a new proposal to...

Saturday, January 16. 2010 Posted by Karl Denninger in Causes at 14:57 Hope And Change's Backlash My only comment: Youtube appears to have taken this down several times, but it keeps reappearing. I found several incantations along with people hosting the raw FLV file. This appears to be created by some rather angry Democrats, and is one of the things I expected to start to see this year. You better start listening to the people Washington. Youtube is today's version of handbills nailed to trees in the dark of night - in 1775. Ripping down the handbills does not make...

Well well well... Tim Jones, parish priest of St Lawrence and St Hilda, told his congregation in York, northern England: "My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift." Jones, who according to the church Web site previously worked in Corinth, Mississippi, made his comments about what he regarded as acceptable behavior by those in need when they were desperate. In a transcript of his sermon published in the local newspaper, "The Press," Jones said: "I do not offer such advice because I think that stealing is a good thing, or because I think it is harmless, for it is...

<p>Aug. 14 (Bloomberg) -- More than 150 publicly traded U.S. lenders own nonperforming loans that equal 5 percent or more of their holdings, a level that former regulators say can wipe out a bank’s equity and threaten its survival.</p> <p>Ok. Now how about this one?</p>

Just so you have a short list of what's at stake if Washington DC doesn't change policy here and now (which means before the collapse in equities comes, which could start as soon as today, if the indicators I watch have any validity at all. For what its worth, those indicators are painting a picture of the Apocalypse that I simply can't believe, and they're showing it as an imminent event - like perhaps today imminent.) All pension funds, private and public, are done. If you are receiving one, you won't be. If you think you will in the future,...

That has gone "just below" 1.0. What is this? I could go through the derivation of how money supply works in a fractional reserve monetary system (any), but won't, because most readers would have their eyes glaze over. The important part of this graph is what it denotes. Bernanke has lost control of "N" (or velocity), which is the actual knob that he is trying to diddle when borrowing rates are changed (and in fact its the market that sets that, despite his protests.) In fact the most useful tool in The Fed's box in terms of influencing monetary...