Free Republic

China's Real Estate Market Crashing... Real Estate is the single biggest domestic lending segment in China. Combined with deflation in Iron Ore, Steel, Copper, and other industrial metals China's collateral quality is looking very very shaky compared to loan volume... SNIP While the world's attention is glued to events in Greece, the real action continues to evolve quietly thousands of kilometers east, in China, where the near record surge in new loans remains unable to offset the dramatic slowdown in shadow banking issuance. And while China's bubble-chasing, animal spirits have recently reoriented themselves from real estate to the stock market,...

At about $50 a barrel, crude oil prices are down by more than half from their June 2014 peak of $107. They may fall more, perhaps even as low as $10 to $20. Here’s why.

A team of former Navy Seals and CIA operatives splash beer on their faces as they prepare to play the part of American sex tourists. They’ll have to maintain laser-sharp focus as they engage in negotiations with some of the world’s dirtiest criminals. One suspicious move or remark could put their whole team at risk and prevent the rescue of dozens of innocent children. This team, known as Operation Underground Railroad, works to prosecute child sex traffickers and to rescue the victims. Heading the team is Tim Ballard — a husband, a father of six children and a BYU alumnus....

Susan Rice pushed back on critics of President Obama's foreign policy Friday as she unveiled the White House’s new national security strategy. Rice, the White House's national security adviser, said in a speech at the Brookings Institution that the nation is “stronger than we have been in a very long time” despite the bitter debates raging in Washington. “Too often, what's missing here in Washington is a sense of perspective. Yes, there is a lot going on. Still, while the dangers we face may be more numerous and varied, they are not of the existential nature we confronted during World...

Well, the only other prime suspects are the Iranians, so you figure it out: Alberto Nisman, the prosecutor whose mysterious death has gripped Argentina, had drafted a warrant for the arrest of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, accusing her of trying to shield Iranian officials from responsibility in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center here, the lead investigator into his death said on Tuesday.The 26-page document, which was found in the garbage at Mr. Nisman’s apartment, also requested the arrest of Héctor Timerman, Argentina’s foreign minister. Both Mrs. Kirchner and Mr. Timerman have repeatedly denied Mr. Nisman’s accusation that...

...The new revelation that Nisman had drafted arrest warrants for the president and the foreign minister further illustrates the heightened tensions between him and the government before he was found dead Jan. 18 at his apartment with a gunshot wound to his head. He had been scheduled the next day to provide details before Congress about his accusations against Kirchner.... He acknowledged that previous legal cases had shaken Argentina’s political establishment, but he emphasized that this case involved a request to arrest a sitting president. “It would have been a scandal on a level previously unseen,” Berensztein said. Kirchner, who...

Slain Argentine Prosecutor Reportedly Considered Arresting President Feb.3, 2015 By ANDRES D'ALESSANDRO AND CHRIS KRAUL Special prosecutor Alberto Nisman was apparently considering an arrest warrant for Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner before his death Jan. 18, according a published report. Nisman was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment from a gunshot wound to the head days after publicly accusing the president, Foreign Minister Hector Timerman and other officials of involvement in a coverup tied to the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in which 85 people died. Argentine prosecutor probing 1994 bombing shot in head, autopsy shows...

A day after Argentina’s cabinet chief tore up a newspaper article, ridiculing the story that said deceased prosecutor Alberto Nisman had considered the arrest of the president, the investigator into his death confirmed the report. A draft document calling for the detention of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and members of her government was found in Nisman’s apartment after his body was discovered with a bullet to the head on Jan. 18, prosecutor Viviana Fein said.

LONDON — The United States pressed Argentina to end its investigation of Iranian complicity in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in which nearly 100 people were killed. Western diplomatic sources said the administration of President Barack Obama urged Argentina on several occasions to either stop or limit the investigation into the bombing of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association in Buenos Aires. The sources said the U.S. appeals marked one of the demands by Iran for a reconciliation with Washington. “Argentina had hard evidence against at least one Iranian leader, which prevented him from traveling abroad,” a source said.

A reporter who broke the story that an Argentine prosecutor was found dead shortly before he was about to make explosive allegations about President Cristina Kirchner fled Argentina on Sunday after threats. -excerpt- A citizen of Argentina and Israel, he worked for the English-language Buenos Aires Herald. Pachter fled Argentina after receiving threats, and being followed, he told colleagues in other media. The reporter, who also worked with Israel's Haaretz, told colleagues his phones had been tapped in Argentina.

Years ago, Henry Kissinger dismissed Argentina (or sometimes Chile, depending on the version) as "a dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica." In 2015, things are a bit different. It's not that this country has anything to teach us about economics, other than what not to do. But a lot of vital news is emanating from that country — from the new Argentine pope to, perhaps even more pointedly, the aftermath of the shocking death of Argentine special prosecutor Alberto Nisman, which has special relevance to our war on terror and confrontation with Iran.

When Alberto Nisman’s body was found inside his Buenos Aires apartment with a bullet lodged in his head, questions immediately arose about the circumstances surrounding his death and the investigation he had been conducting into a 1994 car-bomb attack on an Argentinian Jewish center by Iranian terrorists that killed 85 people. "The Argentinian economy is in really dire straits, and they’re shut out of almost every foreign market, and their economic lifelines are drying up," Jason Marczak, deputy director of the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center at the Atlantic Council, told Fox News Latino. "The Argentinians were forced to look...

More doubts emerge about the supposed suicide. Sunday night Argentinian prosecutor Alberto Nisman was found shot to death in his apartment. Nisman had been scheduled the following day to present his criminal complaint against Argentinian President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner before a closed session of Argentina’s congress. The initial claim (one made by Kirchner herself on her Facebook page) that Nisman committed suicide hardly seemed credible at the time. How many people would kill themselves before the high point of their careers? Nisman had spent ten years investigating the 1994 AMIA Jewish center bombing in Buenos Aires and now he...

Argentina President Cristina Kirchner reversed her government's position on the death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman, saying now that his death was not a suicide. The reversal comes as evidence gathered by Nisman proving that the government covered up Iranian involvement in the 1994 suicide bombing of a Jewish community center was released.on Thursday. Kirchner is saying that Nisman was killed to discredit her government and that the prosecutor was "misled" by people posing as intelligence agents who fed him wrong information. Jewish Business News: Kirchner, after flip-flopping on the suicide theory, is now trying to convince the public that...

Intercepted conversations between representatives of the Iranian and Argentine governments point to a long pattern of secret negotiations to reach a deal in which Argentina would receive oil in exchange for shielding Iranian officials from charges that they orchestrated the bombing of a Jewish community center in 1994. The transcripts were made public by an Argentine judge on Tuesday night, as part of a 289-page criminal complaint written by Alberto Nisman, the special prosecutor investigating the attack. Mr. Nisman was found dead in his luxury apartment on Sunday, the night before he was to present his findings to Congress. In...

Israel Hits Pay Dirt with Strike on Iran & HezbollahPosted By Ari Lieberman On January 22, 2015 @ 12:44 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 4 Comments Gen. Mohammad Ali Allahdadi As Congress gets set to impose new sanctions on Iran and the mysterious death of Alberto Nisman, Argentina’s indefatigable prosecutor, once again sheds the unwanted spotlight on the Islamic Republic’s overseas terror activities, the mullahs have been hit with yet more bad news. On January 18, Israeli helicopters fired missiles at a convoy of military vehicles traveling on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights with devastating effect.The missile strike...

Death of a ProsecutorPosted By Kenneth R. Timmerman On January 21, 2015 @ 12:35 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 2 Comments Alberto Nisman, the Argentinean prosecutor who indicted top Iranian regime officials for the July 1994 AMIA Jewish Center bombing in Buenos Aires, was found dead by gunshot in his apartment on Sunday night, in what initially was called a suicide.Nisman was scheduled to address members of parliament the next day to reveal new information about alleged efforts by Argentinean President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and her foreign minister, Hector Timerman, to cover up the responsibility of the Iranian regime...

The government says Nisman's allegations and his death were linked to a power struggle at Argentina's intelligence agency and agents who had recently been fired. One of those fired in a December shake-up was Antonio Stiusso, a senior spy who had helped Nisman with his investigation of the 1994 bombing that killed 85. The government has said Stiusso misled Nisman. Citing sources close to the investigation into Nisman's death, Argentine news agency DyN said that Stiusso had been called to testify at 11 a.m. (1400 GMT) in Buenos Aires. The lead investigator into the case, Viviana Fein, called upon him...

PUNTA BRITO, Nicaragua — One of the largest engineering projects in history would start here, on this desolate and pristine crescent of dark-sand Pacific beach. From in front of the hammock-swinging shrimpers on the porches of their tin-and-wood shanties, the trench would run east in sinuous curves up through the mangroves and banana fields until it reaches the shores of Central America’s largest freshwater lake, then cut across the Caribbean highlands and through indigenous territory, ending its journey 172 miles away on the beaches of the Atlantic. They call it the Grand Inter-Oceanic Canal: an audacious $50 billion plan by an...

A few weeks ago, Puerto Rican Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla made a surprise announcement that soon he would submit legislation that would give undocumented immigrants and other non-citizens the right to vote in island-wide elections. The move has been commended by immigrants’ rights groups, but is viewed by many on the island as a cheap move by an unpopular governor to try and fix the next election. It’s also left many people on the island asking: can the governor legally do it? The answer, it turns out, seems to be “yes.” Federal law doesn’t stop states or cities from allowing...