Free Republic

Few if any candidates for federal office will tell you that as a consequence of current federal law, young Americans are being screwed in two life-changing ways. First, under current law, every Social Security beneficiary under the age of 48 will have their promised benefits cut by a third. And second, every young person who works is contributing between $10,000 and $20,000 to the health care and retirement of those lucky Americans who are already drawing benefits under federal law. In some ways the second screwing is worse than the first. Young workers do not have the defined benefit retirement...

Berkshire Hathaway Inc has been sued by a New York bicycle courier company over an alleged illegal scheme to cheat employers buying workers' compensation policies. The complaint, filed late Friday by Breakaway Courier Systems, came as Berkshire's Applied Underwriters unit faces scrutiny over its workers' compensation policies, including some that have been banned by California, Vermont and Wisconsin. Breakaway, with about 300 employees, accused Berkshire and Applied of "siphoning" premiums through a web of illegal shell companies, with diverted premiums going to unlicensed out-of-state insurers. The plan amounted to a "reverse Ponzi scheme" where unsuspecting employers expecting to buy affordable...

How online auctioneer EnergyNet helps bring liquidity, and recovery, to America’s busted oil patch. In the first 18 months of the oil bust, 70 companies have gone bankrupt, defaulting on $40 billion in debt. A trillion dollars of oil company equity has been wiped out. Layoffs top 200,000. With oil holding at around $45 a barrel, more liquidations are on the way. Already the old guys swear this bust is worse than in 1986, when oil dropped below $25 in today’s dollars. At least one thing is better now: Thanks to the magic of the Internet, it’s easier for cash-strapped...

Computer automated hedge fund strategies weren't the only winners amid recent volatility. Hedge funds also appear to have timed oil’s recent slump and rebound. That's according to Bloomberg's Moming Zhou, who reports  that hedge fund significantly curbed their bearish positions in crude oil just after it fell to a 12-year low last week -- and then rebounded in its biggest jump since 2008. While oil had a brutal start to 2016 after a disappointing 2015 showing, many are coming around to the idea of a recovery in prices, as Citi argued it could be the trade of the year, some...

Executives of a Pennsylvania green energy company singled out for praise by Bill Clinton were arrested on fraud charges on Thursday in connection with an alleged Ponzi scheme. The individuals are facing charges of wire fraud, securities fraud, and conspiracy over their roles in running a green energy company that authorities say was an elaborate $54 million Ponzi scheme, the Associated Press reported. Prosecutors said the trio lied to investors that their “biochar” technology and “carbon-negative” housing in Tennessee made millions, but they had almost no earnings and used the money to repay earlier investors and for themselves. The scam...

The Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program commonly known as Social Security, which celebrated its 80th birthday on August 14, is projected to run an $84 billion deficit this year, according to the 2015 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees. […] During 2014, $646.2 billion in payroll taxes was collected from 166 million working Americans. But that was not enough to cover the $859 billion in Social Security benefits that were collected by 59 million people, including 42 million retired workers and their dependents, six million survivors of deceased workers, and 11 million disabled workers and their dependents....

Medicare at 50--Still Flawed, After All These Years ST. PAUL, Minn.—This Thursday, Medicare will mark a milestone—50 years since it was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 30, 1965. Designed as part of LBJ’s “Great Society” initiative, Medicare was intended to provide low-cost hospitalization and medical insurance for the nation’s elderly. But the program has been in crisis for years and needs an escape plan, not a rescue plan, says Twila Brase, president and co-founder of Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom (CCHF, www.cchfreedom.org), a national organization dedicated to preserving patient-centered health care and protecting patient and...

Greece emptied an IMF holding account to repay 750 million euros ($840 million) due to the fund, a Greek central bank official said, avoiding default but underscoring the dire state of the country's finances. With Athens close to running out of cash and a deal with its international creditors still elusive, there had been doubts about whether the leftist-led government would pay the IMF or opt to save cash to pay salaries and pensions later this month. Greece, like all other International Monetary Fund members, holds reserves from the IMF that are denominated in Special Drawing Rights (SDR), a basket...

Summary Apple has been paying a dividend since Q3 2012. The current dividend has fallen a percentage of earnings. Calculations are made to estimate what the new dividend will be. . . . Summary While Apple's dividend has remained constant over the last four quarters, it value as a percent of earnings has fallen significantly. If Apple wants to keep the earlier ratios, then it will need to raise the dividends. My estimate is that Apple is likely to raise the per share dividend to between 62 and 65 cents per share from the current 47 cents. On the other...

The truth… Democrat/liberals/”progressives” HATE the middle class! Think a moment… their alleged “beloved” middle class, especially the blue collar whites and independent small business… are where most of the GOP vote resides these days. (I wish the RINOs would learn this). Obama's “economic policies” overwhelmingly favor the 1% (Fed prints money, sends it to Wall Street… stock market soaring, middle class pooring)! Observe ('cept the hated Koch Brothers)… nearly ALL the richest 1% (Hollywood, BIG media, Gates, Buffet, Steyer) are loyal Democrats and Obama’s golf pals (having purchased their Obamacare exemptions)! Obamacare, with its fines, and the growing regulatory state...

Hong Kong-based bitcoin exchange MyCoin has allegedly shut its doors and stolen HKD 3 billion ($386.9 million) in the process. The South China Morning Post reported Monday that 30 MyCoin clients approached a local lawmaker with complaints that the company had fled with funds from up to 3,000 investors. The reports coming out of Hong Kong would seem to indicate that there may have been a Ponzi scheme at play. "No one seems to know who is behind this," a woman surnamed Lau, who said she lost HKD 1.3 million, told the paper. "Everyone says they, too, are victims ......

Today I want to consider the outlook for bitcoin. 2014 was its worst year on record. It fell by 67%, from $800 to $320 a coin. In doing so, it beat the likes of the Russian rouble and the Ukrainian hryvnia, to the dubious honour of being the world’s worst-performing currency. You know what the world’s best-performing currency was by the way? Nope, not the US dollar, but the Somali shilling. Yup. It surprised me too. Anyway, back to bitcoin… The bursting of the bitcoin bubble So far, 2015 has not been any better than 2014 for bitcoin. At one...

The Daily Treasury Statement that was released Wednesday afternoon as Americans were preparing to celebrate Thanksgiving revealed that the U.S. Treasury has been forced to issue $1,040,965,000,000 in new debt since fiscal 2015 started just eight weeks ago in order to raise the money to pay off Treasury securities that were maturing and to cover new deficit spending by the government. During those eight weeks, Treasury took in $341,591,000,000 in revenues. That was a record for the period between Oct. 1 and Nov. 25. But that record $341,591,000,000 in revenues was not enough to finance ongoing government spending let alone...

Former Gov. Charlie Crist was apparently a little closer to Scott Rothstein than we knew. Or maybe not. They blew out the candles on Crist's birthday cake a couple of years ago after giving the governor $52,000 (a grand for each candle).

Back in mid-March, there was a brief scare after the start of the Ukraine conflict, when Fed custody holdings plunged by a record $104.5 billion (if promptly bouncing back the following week), leading many to believe that Russia may have dumped its Treasurys, or at least change its bond custodian. We noted that we wouldn't have a definitive answer until the May TIC number came out to know for sure how much Russia had sold, or if indeed, anything. Moments ago the May TIC numbers did come out, and as expected, Russia indeed dumped a record $26 billion, or some...

Cutting right to the chase: we don't think going short is a good idea yet. Just when you would think the situation with Mt. Gox couldn't get any stranger, it has. Apparently, the exchange "found" almost BTC 200,000 in one of its old wallets this month. The coins would be currently worth approximately $115 million. A statement published yesterday on the exchanges website reads: MtGox Co., Ltd. had certain old-format wallets which were used in the past and which, MtGox thought, no longer held any bitcoins. Following the application for commencement of a civil rehabilitation proceeding, these wallets were rescanned...

Shares of Australian investment firm Macro Energy gained 42% yesterday, after news emerged that it plans to enter the bitcoin space and raise A$9.1m ($8.2m) in funding.

Future generations of Bitcoin billionaires may someday look back on 2014 with knowing smiles. Here was a year when thefts spread, exchanges collapsed, rates gyrated like a teenager’s moods. And yet the buying of bitcoins showed no signs of abating. The past week was particularly extreme. The apparent suicide of an American business executive in Singapore was investigated for possible ties to her Bitcoin investments. A California man fingered as the currency’s mysterious inventor reacted to his sudden fame by asking that journalists buy him lunch. After finishing his meal at a sushi restaurant, he went on to deny any...

Just before the bankruptcy of the Mt. Gox bitcoin digital-money (or virtual-currency) exchange, Japanese finance minister Taro Aso predicted the inevitable failure. “No one recognizes them as a real currency,” he told reporters. “I expected such a thing to collapse.” I totally agree with Mr. Aso. For weeks and weeks I have been tweeting and broadcasting that bitcoin is not real money. It is not a reliable medium of exchange, nor is it a reliable store of value. It has no central-bank regulation, network operations, or even centralized issuance. And because of its wild price fluctuations, bitcoin can never...