Free Republic

President Barack Obama’s budget will propose an ambitious six-year, $478 billion public works program of highway, bridge and transit upgrades, half of it financed with a one-time mandatory tax on profits that U.S. companies have amassed overseas, White House officials said. The proposal, one of the main components of the $4 trillion spending plan for the 2016 budget year that Obama will send to Congress on Monday, attempts to tap into bipartisan support for spending on badly needed infrastructure repairs and construction. The tax on accumulated foreign profits would be set at 14 percent and due immediately. Under current law,...

The eurozone experienced negative inflation for the second month in a row, according to a flash estimate published today (30 January) by Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical office. Inflation is expected to be at −0.6%, with consumer prices falling further than economists had forecast. The fall represents the biggest decline in prices in the history of the euro. […] The drop was driven by the fall in energy prices (−8.9%, compared with −6.3% in December). […] The deflationary spiral comes as Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank (ECB), is trying to tackle deflation with a policy of...

Declaring an end to “mindless austerity,” President Barack Obama called for a surge in government spending Thursday, and asked Congress to throw out the sweeping budget cuts both parties agreed to four years ago when deficits were spiraling out of control. Obama’s proposed $74 billion in added spending—about 7 percent—would be split about evenly between defense programs and the domestic side of the budget. Although he’s sought before to reverse the “sequester” spending cuts, Obama’s pitch in this year’s budget comes with the added oomph of an improving economy and big recent declines in federal deficits. Taking a defiant tone,...

ast year boasted the strongest job numbers since 1999, and as a result, many commentators have concluded that left-wing critics of austerity were wrong all along. The basic case — advanced by Jeff Sachs, Scott Sumner, and others — is that the surge in growth and jobs proves that austerity is not the poison its detractors claimed it would be. These commentators make some good points. But they are wrong about austerity. A close examination of the counterfactuals shows that austerity almost certainly held back the recovery — and without it, we might have had 2014's strong numbers in 2011....

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) - The global economic outlook just got brighter after this week's big stimulus from the European Central Bank, leading policymakers from around the world said Saturday. In a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, they said a perkier Europe, coupled with a prolonged period of low oil prices, could help shore up the global economy following a period of underperformance that has prompted many forecasters to reduce their growth forecasts. "Lower oil prices and the big decision by ECB could further improve world economic outlook," said Haruhiko Kuroda, governor of the Bank of Japan.

The European Central Bank will plough €1.1 trillion into the eurozone economy in a last-ditch attempt to breathe life into the European economy. At its monthly governing council on Thursday (January 22), the bank’s governing council agreed to start buying up to €60 billion of government bonds from March in an unprecedented quantitative easing program. The program is open-ended, and will run until September 2016 at the earliest. Speaking at a press conference following the governing council meeting, ECB president Mario Draghi said that the bond-buying program would remain in place “until we see a sustained adjustment in the path...

It sounds at first like a crazy thought experiment: One morning, every resident of the eurozone comes home to find a check in their mailbox worth over €500 ($597) and possibly as much as €3,000. A gift, just like that, sent by the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt. The scenario is less absurd than it may sound. Indeed, many serious academics and financial experts are demanding exactly that. They want ECB chief Mario Draghi to fire up the printing presses and hand out money directly to the people. The logic behind the idea is that recipients of the money...

Almost six years after the passage of the stimulus package, taxpayer dollars have finally found their way into a shovel ready project: $60,000 to haul horse manure. Sold as an opportunity to bring America into the “21st century,” the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, commonly known as the stimulus, is now being used to remove wild horse manure off of public lands.

ECB ready to pump €1 trillion into euro zone economy Central bank ramps up efforts to rescue single currency bloc from deflation risk The European Central Bank is ready to inject up to €1 trillion of new liquidity into the euro zone economy as it ramps up efforts to rescue the single currency bloc from the risk of Japanese-style deflation, Mario Draghi confirmed yesterday. The ECB president also said the central bank’s governing council was unanimous in its commitment to use further unconventional tools, including quantitative easing, should economic conditions deteriorate. He added that the central bank had stepped up...

For about 20 minutes just after midnight on Sunday morning, The Charlotte Observer published a story detailing the apparent conflict of interest which could represent a violation of ethics by embattled Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC). The story revealed the details of an investigation into Hagan’s family, which received hundreds of thousands of dollars in stimulus grants – grants which Hagan voted for as a member of the U.S. Senate. The story was the first time that the state’s largest paper, The Observer, had informed their readers of the nascent controversy, but Tar Heel residents had to read it fast. The...

Sherlock Holmes famously solved a mystery by noticing the dog that didn't bark in the night. Dogs that are not barking at night -- nor in prime time -- provide some useful clues to understanding the significance of this year's election. Contrary to the disparagement of some liberal pundits, this election is not about nothing. But is not about certain, specific things they might like to hear. President Obama recently said that Democrats in serious Senate and House contests this year back "every one" of his programs. But you hear very little about those programs in their ads. The stimulus...

NEW YORK — Soaring inflation. A collapsing dollar. Bubbles in financial markets that would soon pop. One presidential candidate even suggested that the Federal Reserve chairman should be roughed up. Over the past five years, as the Fed has pumped ever-more money into the financial system, critics have warned that it would lead to all kinds of disasters. Yet the central bank kept extending its bond-buying program, known by the wonky name of quantitative easing, or QE. It was an unprecedented effort aimed at lowering borrowing costs, encouraging spending and reviving a dormant economy before it could slip back into...

Even though earlier this week, the official Obama Regime spokesman, Josh Earnest, announced to the nation that there was no need for an “Ebola Czar,” Obama announced his new “Ebola Czar” on Friday, a Democrat Party operative with no experience in the health care or medical industries. Ron Klain, a lawyer who oversaw the implementation of the failed Obama 2009 Stimulus “Porkulus” plan, also served as chief of staff to buffoonish Democrat Vice President Joe Biden and global warming huckster and fraud, former vice president, Al Gore. Think Solyndra.

A company owned by the husband of Democratic senator Kay Hagan of North Carolina received taxpayer money for a green energy project through the federal stimulus of 2009, later revising down the project's estimated cost and keeping the difference. Don Carrington at the Carolina Journal, a publication of the conservative John Locke Foundation, has the scoop on how JDC Manufacturing, co-owned by Chip Hagan kept savings from a stimulus grant instead of returning the money to taxpayers: The company’s original application stated the total project would cost $438,627, and said JDC would contribute “leveraged funds” amounting to $187,983, or 43...

Remember 2009? The Obama regime promised a miracle economic recovery if only Congress would pass their mammoth economic stimulus bill. Shovel-ready jobs. Green, renewable energy. Smart Policies. Yada, yada, yada. This occurred to me as I saw some of the new Democrat ads blaming the GOP for Ebola. “Cuts Kill,” or something. Some $80 BILLION in the stimulus package was devoted to green energy, much of which was directed to campaign donors and other friends of the regime. In short order, many of those same companies began to fail. As Ashe Schow notes: So far, 34 companies that were offered...

--snip-- Texas Health contracts with Epic Systems for its electronic-medical-records (EMR) system. Epic was founded by billionaire Judy Faulkner, a top Obama donor---the dominant EMR player in the US health-care market. The firm’s Top 10 PAC recipients are all Dem/lefty outfits: DCCC got nearly $230,000; DNC Services Corp. nearly $175,000.......Obama campaign-finance bundler, Faulkner, served as an adviser to WH health-information-tech guru David Blumenthal--in charge of dispensing EMR subsidies. Faulkner also served on the same committee Blumenthal chaired. Epic and other large firms lobbied aggressively for nearly $30 billion in 2009 stimulus subsidies. Epic has been the subject of rising industry...

Ms. Faulkner is worth two billion dollars. More than 40% of the U.S. population will have its medical information stored in an Epic digital medical record by 2013. Clients include many of the country’s top hospitals, including the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, and Cedars-Sinai. Faulkner largely shuns the press and leads a modest lifestyle.” From Real Clear Politics: Who is Judy Faulkner? Chances are, you don’t know her — but her politically connected, taxpayer-subsidized electronic medical records company may very well know you. Top Obama donor and billionaire Faulkner is founder and CEO of Epic Systems, which will soon store...

Politico’s scoop on Kay Hagen is a couple of days old, but it’s worth mentioning in a tight Senate race in North Carolina, and not just for the scoop itself. Hagan’s vote on the 2009 stimulus package has come under fire after Politico discovered that $390,000 in ARRA grants went to a firm owned in part by her husband Chip: When Kay Hagan voted for President Barack Obama’s 2009 economic stimulus package, the Democratic senator hailed it as “the best way forward for working families across North Carolina.”One of the families that later benefited is her own.JDC Manufacturing, a...

When Barack Obama and the Democrats on Capitol Hill forced the $800 billion stimulus bill into law, they insisted that waste, fraud, and abuse would not be tolerated. They put “Sheriff” Joe Biden on the case in March 2009, with Obama warning stimulus recipients that “around the White House, we call him the Sheriff — because if you’re misusing taxpayer money, you’ll have to answer to him.” The Department of Transportation employees gathered for the speech laughed at that statement, according to the White House transcript — and well they should have. An in-depth report from McClatchy and ProPublica...

<p>The largest government infusion of cash into the U.S. economy in generations – the 2009 stimulus – was riddled with a massive labor scheme that harmed workers and cheated unsuspecting American taxpayers.</p> <p>At the time, government regulators watched as money slipped out the door and into the hands of companies that rob state and federal treasuries of billions of dollars each year on stimulus projects and other construction jobs across the country, a yearlong McClatchy investigation found.</p>