Free Republic

Nothing Inside The Federal Reserve is an independent, non partisan documentary film that examines America's central bank in a critical, yet balanced way. Narrated by the acclaimed actor Liev Schreiber, and featuring interviews with Paul Volcker, Janet Yellen, Jeremy Grantham and many of the world's best financial minds, Money For Nothing is the first film ever to take viewers inside the world's most powerful financial institution.

Jeb Bush’s money juggernaut is far eclipsing the efforts of his would-be rivals for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, putting his two political committees on pace to amass an unprecedented sum of tens of millions of dollars by early spring. The former Florida governor’s overwhelming dominance in the race to line up financial backers has come at a speed that has impressed longtime Republican money players, who say wealthy party backers have rapidly migrated to Bush since 2012 nominee Mitt Romney decided against another White House run two weeks ago.

Somalis living in the Twin Cities are begging Minnesota’s elected officials to help find a way to safely wire money back to families living in the Horn of Africa after a California bank abruptly ceased wiring cash to the troubled country over the weekend. The decision by Merchants Bank to stop that part of its operations last Friday caught Somalis, who use money service businesses to wire money abroad, off-guard in communities across the United States. Of the more than 30,000 Somali immigrants living in the Twin Cities, 80 percent of them use money service businesses to send money abroad,...

A newly released map from the Tax Foundation shows the relative value of $100 varies, depending on the state in which you’re looking to spend money

Former state Sen. Leland Yee pleaded not guilty Thursday to an expanded indictment in his corruption case that included two new charges of money-laundering. The San Francisco Democrat was first charged in April, along with more than two dozen other defendants, of accepting $62,000 in bribes from FBI agents posing as contributors in exchange for legislative favors, and for illegally importing firearms from the Philippines.

The Federal Reserve is lashing out at Sen. Rand Paul’s plan to give Congress more oversight over the central bank, a proposal that could gain traction in the new Republican-led Congress. The Kentucky Republican reintroduced his “Audit the Fed” legislation last month with 30 co-sponsors, including other potential 2016 GOP hopefuls, Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Marco Rubio (Fla.). [snip] On Wednesday, Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester criticized the legislation as “misguided” during public remarks in Columbus, Ohio. “They really are about allowing political considerations to influence monetary policy decisions,” Mester said in her speech. “This would be a tremendous...

....Bush operatives who joined the former Florida governor at the afternoon event announced that 60 events in cities across the country have been scheduled to raise money for his federal leadership political action committee, which can accept money only in limited amounts, and his super PAC, which can accept checks in unlimited amounts.

Denunciations of the art market are a dime a dozen, the bogeymen equally manifold: speculative collectors, corrupt dealers, artists enlisted to mint an alternative currency for global circulation. But when one of the world’s most high-profile economists calls for the art market’s regulation, as Nouriel Roubini did last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, people tend to listen. Speaking at a lunch event hosted by the weekend edition of the Financial Times, Roubini denounced the use of art “for tax avoidance and evasion.” “While art looks as if it is all about beauty, as a business it...

Human Events’ readers, in an online poll, recently voted billionaire financier George Soros “the single most destructive leftist demagogue in the country.” Here are the Top 10 Reasons George Soros Is Dangerous1. Gives billions to left-wing causes: Soros started the Open Society Institute in 1993 as a way to spread his wealth to progressive causes. Using Open Society as a conduit, Soros has given more than $7 billion to a who’s who of left-wing groups. This partial list of recipients of Soros’ money says it all: ACORN, Apollo Alliance, National Council of La Raza, Tides Foundation, Huffington Post, Southern Poverty...

The Church of Scientology has aired a Super Bowl ad in light of ongoing controversy over a Sundance documentary centered on the religion. The ad features voiceover accompanied by quick clips of footage including a person hiking, a DNA strand and a close-up of an eye. [READ MORE Scientology Creates Twitter Account to Discredit New Movie] "We live in an age of searching: to find solutions, to find ourselves, to find the truth," the announcer says in the ad. "Now imagine an age in which the predictability of science and the wisdom of religion combined. Welcome to the age of...

VIRGIN Australia has become the first airline to react to months of declining jet fuel prices, announcing it will restructure its US airfares to reflect the savings. Although it will not do away with the fuel surcharge altogether, the airline will incorporate fuel costs into fares the same as other operating expenses. Flights from Brisbane and Sydney to Los Angeles, are the only routes Virgin Australia operates which attract a fuel surcharge of $680.

The GOP accepts the notion of climate change - but not the way Democrats wanted them to.Senate Republicans head-faked Democrats on climate change Wednesday, agreeing in a floor vote that the planet’s climate was changing, but blocking language that would have blamed human activity. In a complicated maneuver that was the first politically perilous test for Senate Republicans, the new majority party split up the votes that Democrats had hoped would force the GOP into an awkward roll call on whether they believed in the science behind climate change — just hours after President Barack Obama slammed Republicans in his...

European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi announced the launch of an open-ended, expanded monthly 60 billion euro ($70 billion) private and public bond-buying program on Thursday. The long-anticipated introduction of euro zone government bond purchases will bring the ECB's buying program into line with the U.S. Federal Reserve's quantitative easing (QE). The program will be open-ended, lasting until at least 2016, Draghi told reporters at his regular media conference on Thursday, and will start in March this year. The hope is that it will boost the region's painfully low inflation rate, which came in at an annual minus 0.2...

Obama: Many of you have told me that this isn’t what you signed up for—arguing past each other on cable shows, the constant fundraising, always looking over your shoulder at how the base will react to every decision. Imagine if we broke out of these tired old patterns. Imagine if we did something different.Well, that “different” he mentioned didn’t last long. Less than an hour after the speech, a fundraising e-mail from the Democratic Party went out, signed by the president. One frustrated tweeter wrote—quote—“You can’t be serious. After taking a dig at constant fundraising, Obama sends out a fundraising...

Florida's Cell phone and TV tax is a heavy burden on Florida's families......

While few Americans were fortunate enough to see a holiday bonus this year, there is one gift that American motorists have been enjoying of late; lower gas prices. Currently sitting at more than a dollar below the average price last year, U.S. drivers are projected to save somewhere between $380 and $750 dollars during 2015 if the prices hold. While wages have remained stubbornly flat for most workers, gas prices have provided a rare glimmer of hope for American workers, who have been struggling with an anemic job market, labor participation rates not seen since the 1970s, and median family...

Are the NYT's and James Risen at fault here? Investigators of the failed car bombing in Times Square are looking for a money courier they say helped funnel cash from overseas to finance a Pakistani-American's preparations to blow up the crude gasoline-and-propane bomb in the heart of New York, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. Investigators have the name of the courier they believe helped Faisal Shahzad pay for the used SUV and other materials to rig up a car bomb that would have caused a huge fireball in Times Square if it had gone off, the official...

"....While he ended 2012 a scorned member of the Republican family, he has spent the past year a virtual kingmaker. His endorsement carried weight in the 2014-midterm primaries and he was a sought-after surrogate on the campaign stump. This “failed” nominee was so important to the GOP that his “ideas” summit,held last summer in Utah, drew the whole field of party luminaries and presidential contenders, from former running mate Rep. Paul Ryan to Sen. Rand Paul, Gov. Chris Christie, Sen. Rob Portman, and former Gov. Mike Huckabee.[SNIP]With all of that said, however, I’m not sure if Romney is actually running...

Why are you and I enjoying the bounty of the richest country in the history of the world instead of grubbing around in the forest for roots and berries the way our ancestors did?It turns out people appear to have two very different answers to that question. And it’s not just ordinary people who disagree. Even the experts – economists and historians – disagree. That’s the view of Johnathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business. (HT: Tyler Cowan)Haidt says problems that are “tame problems” can be solved by experts. These are problems like: How can...