Free Republic

The Federal Reserve decided Wednesday to hold monetary policy steady, saying that conditions remained too weak to pull back from its bond-buying program. By a vote of 9 to 1, the Fed decided to maintain the pace of its monthly asset purchases at $85 billion-a-month.

A friend sent me an article in Reuters today that claims Little evidence yet that Obamacare costing full-time jobs. One in five businesses in the service sector think President Barack Obama's signature healthcare reform has hurt employment at their firms over the last three months, a National Association of Business Economics survey showed on Monday. But there is little discernible impact in the employment figures released in recent months, including the September numbers out on Tuesday. The number of people with part-time jobs who want full-time work, for example, was essentially flat in September at 7.9 million. The number of...

From an Extreme Radical Independent Centrist- By: Larry Walker II -In his 1943 study entitled, The New Philosophy of Public Debt, U.S. economist, founder and 1st president of Brookings Institution (1927-1952), Harold G. Moulton expounded on the two conflicting debt philosophies of that era. First was the traditional view, that “a continuously unbalanced budget and rapidly rising public debt imperil the financial stability of the nation.” And, second, the new conception of the day, that “a huge public debt is a national asset rather than a liability and continuous deficit spending is essential to economic prosperity of the nation.”At...

The government spent approximately $1.03 trillion on 83 means-tested federal welfare programs in fiscal year 2011 alone — a price tag that makes welfare that year the government’s largest expenditure, according to new data released by the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee. The total sum taxpayers spent on federal welfare programs was derived from a new Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on federal welfare spending — which topped out at $745.84 billion for fiscal year 2011 — combined with an analysis from the Republican Senate Budget Committee staff of state spending on federal welfare programs (based on “The...

Our "Solman Scale" measures the "U-7," adding to the officially unemployed part-timers looking for full-time work and "discouraged" workers -- everyone who didn't look for a job in the past week but says they want one. Not yeah! Not feh! But, as has been the usual response to most monthly jobs reports since the recovery began four years ago, more like meh. I'm collecting non-inspiring adjectives if anyone has others. Soft, tepid, meh. Others? RT @djheakin: This is an extremely flat report— Neil Irwin (@Neil_Irwin) October 22, 2013 That's one way to express the sentiment most frequently heard today about...

"We have just concluded the 5th fiscal year since President Obama took office. During those five years, the federal government has spent a total $3.7 trillion on approximately 80 different means-tested poverty and welfare programs. The common feature of means-tested assistance programs is that they are graduated based on a person’s income and, in contrast to programs like Social Security or Medicare, they are a free benefit and not paid into by the recipient," says the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee. "The enormous sum spent on means-tested assistance is nearly five times greater than the combined amount spent...

A Chinese ratings agency downgraded its US sovereign credit rating Thursday despite Washington's resolution of the debt ceiling deadlock, warning that fundamentals for a potential default remained "unchanged". Dagong lowered its ratings for US local and foreign currency credit from A to A-, maintaining a negative outlook, the agency said in a statement.

Take immediate steps to protect your wealth . . . NOW! That’s exactly what many well-respected economists, billionaires, and noted authors are telling you to do — experts such as Marc Faber, Peter Schiff, Donald Trump, and Robert Wiedemer. According to them, we are on the verge of another recession, and this one will be far worse than what we experienced during the last financial crisis. Marc Faber, the noted Swiss economist and investor, has voiced his concerns for the U.S. economy numerous times during recent media appearances, stating, “I think somewhere down the line we will have a massive...

Political Director of ABC News, Rick Klein pleaded with investors today to tank the stock market in order to “shake things loose” in the GOP ranks. In his ABC’s The Note piece today, Klein seriously proposed a stock sell-off designed for the express purpose of breaking the will of Republicans. When does Wall Street cast its vote? Bipartisan meetings are nice, and new plans that depend on the other side budging certainly can’t hurt at this stage of a standoff. But there may be only one way to jolt the system: SELL. Klein’s rationale: recent talks with beltway strategists suggest the GOP is...

What Government Shutdown? These Facts Prove That Almost Everything Is Still Running! Michael Snyder writes: All of this whining and crying about a “government shutdown” is a total joke. You see, there really is very little reason why this “government shutdown” cannot continue indefinitely because almost everything is still running. 63 percent of all federal workers are still working, and 85 percent of all government activities are still being funded during this “shutdown”. Yes, the Obama administration has been making a big show of taking down government websites and blocking off the World War II Memorial, but overall business in...

After Obama’s election in 2009 a small grocery store/convenience store in Florida changed its name to the Obama Express. Several other stores across the country did the same thing. One of those was a location in Baltimore, Maryland. Now, in 2013, the Maryland outlet is under investigation, accused of illegally trafficking in food stamps. On September 17, WBAL reported that nine retailers in Baltimore County had been arrested for illegally redeeming food stamps for cash and kicking back a portion to food stamp recipients. The retailers did not sell them any merchandise or food.

The same day that the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee announced last week that the Fed would continue to buy $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and $45 billion in U.S. Treasury securities per month, the Fed also released its latest weekly accounting sheet indicating that it had already accumulated more Treasuries and MBS than the total value of the publicly held U.S. government debt amassed by all U.S. presidents from George Washington though Bill Clinton. Since the beginning of September 2008, in fact, the Fed’s ownership of Treasury securities and MBS has increased sevenfold. As of the close...

College graduates are tending bar and driving taxis, pushing people without degrees out of those jobs.

President Barack Obama challenged the U.S. Congress on Friday to approve an increase in the U.S. debt ceiling or else the United States will be unable to pay its bills and then, "We're deadbeats." Obama scolded Republicans for trying to gut funding for his signature healthcare law in exchange for a debt limit increase.

Taxpayer-backed green energy company ECOtality filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Monday following weeks of turmoil in which the company laid off employees and ceased filling orders for its electric vehicle charging stations. The Department of Energy (DOE), which awarded the company about $115 million in stimulus funds to produce those chargers, suspended payments last month. DOE has already paid $96 million of its $115 million commitment to the company. ECOtality announced the bankruptcy in a Monday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The bankruptcy proceedings will take place in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District...

As the White House and Congress careen toward another fiscal showdown, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office warned on Tuesday that President Obama and lawmakers have been cutting the wrong kind of federal spending as they try to avoid unsustainable levels of debt in coming decades. ...While federal revenues are projected to grow — to 19.5 percent of the G.D.P., compared with the 40-year average of 17.5 percent — that is not enough to offset the rising spending for federal benefit programs. “Unless substantial changes are made to the major health care programs and Social Security,” the report said, “those programs...

Remarks by the President at the Five-Year Anniversary of the Financial Crisis South Court12:31 P.M. EDTTHE PRESIDENT:  Good afternoon, everybody.  Please have a seat.  Before I begin, let me say a few words about the tragedy that's unfolding not far away from here at the Washington Navy Yard.  That's part of why our event today was delayed.I’ve been briefed by my team on the situation.  We still don’t know all the facts, but we do know that several people have been shot, and some have been killed.  So we are confronting yet another mass shooting -- and today, it happened...

This is the first consecutive monthly drop in 14 months and the largest miss vs expectations on record. Printing at 76.8 (against an expectation of 82.0), this is the lowest in 5 months and points to the picture we have been painting of a consumer increasingly affected by rising rates and soaring gas prices amid stagnant incomes. As Citi notes below, this is the exact same pattern we have seen play out in the last 2 cycles and suggest significant downside risk to US equities. The economic outlook sub-index collapsed to its lowest since January. Biggest miss on the headline...

President Barack Obama said on Thursday he is shifting his focus to domestic priorities from a tense period during which he sought congressional approval to use military force against Syria for its suspected use of chemical weapons. "Even as we have been spending a lot of time on the Syria issue and making sure that international attention is focused on the horrible tragedy that occurred there, it is still important to recognize that we've got a lot more stuff to do here in this government," the president said before a meeting with his Cabinet at the White House. The president...

With US equity markets on a 7-day roll and excited TV anchors proclaiming the worst over and new all-time highs must signal recovery as they 'celebrate' five years on from Lehman, the following two charts of the state of real America should open a few eyes to just how blinded American has become to the truth (unless you live it). A stunning 20.0% of Americans were found to have struggled to afford food in the last year - surging in recent months to its highest since the peak of the crisis in 2008 - as American's ability to consistently afford...