Free Republic

Fresh after Congress and the White House scored the largest transportation spending package in a decade, both presidential candidates this year are proposing billions in funding to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure. While both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump—and the parties they represent—agree the nation’s roads, bridges, airports, rail system, and ports are in need of repair, the new proposals invite familiar questions over how the spending would be paid for, and whether the federal government is the best provider to pay for it. Those questions, and the lack of a must-pass infrastructure initiative requiring Congress’ attention in 2017, mean that...

It seems that the strong start to the year was another false dawn for the eurozone economy and that the European Central Bank will have more to do in the months ahead to shore up growth. New figures released Friday confirmed that the eurozone, which is made up of 19 countries from Ireland to the west to Cyprus in the east, suffered a sizable slowdown in the second quarter of the year despite a number of stimulus measures that the European Central Bank has thrown at it. In its first estimate for the April to June period, Eurostat, the EU’s...

Bernie's Truth Deficit: So much for Sanders' "Honesty" by Daniel Clark All those conservatives who credit Bernie Sanders with being honest must have been more than a little perplexed by his speech in which he announced his endorsement of Hillary Clinton. The socialist senator hopped aboard the bandwagon of the quintessential "Wall Street candidate," and if that wasn't enough of a sellout of his alleged principles, he even pretended to care about runaway deficits. During the same speech in which he charged that Donald Trump "would increase our national debt by trillions of dollars," he absolved the sitting president for...

When is SOMEONE in the National News Media going to ask Hillary! or Obama about infrastructure spending in the 2009 stimulus?? Every time I hear a Dem talk about 'investing in the infrastructure' I want to puke. I believe Hillary! used that phrase with Bret yesterday. I was screaming at the TV, 'ask her why didn't the infrastructure get fixed with the Stimulus money'??

While traveling across the country with your kids this summer, be sure to buckle-up and do your best to overlook all the potholes and crumbling bridges out there. Even if funding was available, things will probably remain in disrepair until your kids are grown, thanks to big government regulations and red tape. Former Obama administration's U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray Lahood told CNN's Rene Marsh during a recent four-part investigative report that America is "like a Third World country" when it comes to infrastructure and said, "The reason we have 57,000 deficient bridges is because we have not made the...

Just because the so-called “conservative” and “liberal” punditry and politicos refuse to answer this question, doesn’t mean we should stop asking it. In 2009 President Obama along with congress passed the roughly $900 billion stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The “non-shovel ready” spending took place within fiscal year 2010/2011. The amount is significant because the injected stimulus was 30% more than the entire federal budget for the same year.

U.S. solar energy company SunEdison Inc, whose aggressive acquisition strategy has saddled it with almost $12 billion of debt, is at "substantial risk" of bankruptcy, one of its two publicly listed units warned on Tuesday. A bankruptcy would rank among the largest involving a non-financial company in the past 10 years, according to bankruptcydata.com. SunEdison declined to comment. SunEdison's shares - already reeling from a Wall Street Journal report on Monday that the company was being investigated for overstating its cash position - fell as much as 60 percent to a record low of 50 cents.

President Barack Obama is heading to Florida to tout the benefits of the massive economic stimulus bill he signed shortly after taking office seven years ago. Obama pumped more than $760 billion into a then-slumping economy beginning in early 2009 in a frantic effort to halt the worst economic downturn in generations. It was an unsettling period for many Americans as hundreds of thousands of jobs disappeared, unemployment climbed into double digits and home values plummeted. Obama will argue during a stop in Jacksonville on Friday that the country is on a more solid footing because of this and other...

The Bank of Japan is stepping up its efforts to kick-start the country's struggling economy by taking interest rates into negative territory. The central bank announced Friday that it will introduce an interest rate of minus 0.1% and will go even lower if needed. In theory, negative rates encourage consumers to save less and spend more. They can also weaken a country's currency, helping exporters. ...

Navy jet takes off from U.S.S. Ronald Reagan. (U.S. Navy photo) (CNSNews.com) – The Obama administration’s deal to buy 450,000 gallons of biofuel for Navy jets comes at a cost of up to nine times higher than regular fuel, a spokesman for Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said, coming at a time when the U.S. military is already facing deep budget cuts. Inhofe, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and former chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has supported biofuel projects in the past, but has problems with a program the U.S. Department of Agriculture...

There has been a big question mark about the sincerity of Donald Trump's views, given that he has spent 99% of his adult life supporting liberal positions, including amnesty for illegal aliens,and saying at one point that Hillary Clinton was a really good secretary of state.But he was said to be changed when he ran for president earlier this year. He spoke rousingly against illegal aliens and against Muslim immigration.But all of a sudden he has taken a leftward tack,perhaps figuring, erroneously,that this is the best way to outflank Ted Cruz. Trump has actually criticized Ted Cruz for failing to...

The European Union on Thursday predicted the region's economy will grow at "a modest pace" next year thanks to cheap energy and central bank stimulus, but remains hampered by low investment and high debt. In an official forecast, European Commissioner Pierre Moscovici warned of uneven improvements across the 28 member states but said that for 2016, the EU economies will "see growth rising and unemployment and fiscal deficits falling." ...

The European Central Bank is ready to give the eurozone economy a bigger dose of stimulus if turmoil in China and weaker global growth hurt its modest recovery, President Mario Draghi said Thursday. Market volatility, concern over the effects of a looming interest rate increase in the U.S. and a drop oil prices have spawned uncertainty over the global economy, leading the ECB to cut its inflation and growth forecasts for the eurozone. Draghi said the ECB can add to its €1.1 trillion ($1.2 trillion) program if needed to raise inflation or support growth. […] The stimulus is intended to...

At least Campbell Brown of CNN (http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/campbell.brown/) has mentioned it today. A.I.G. Reveals Biggest Beneficiaries of Its Rescue March 15, 2009, 5:16 pm E-mail This Update | 8:49 p.m. The American International Group on Sunday released the names of financial institutions that benefited last fall when the Federal Reserve saved it from collapse with an $85 billion rescue loan and then three subsequent bailouts. The disclosure included counterparties to both its credit default swap operations and its securities lending businesses, both of which contributed heavily to A.I.G.’s troubles, as well as to muncipalities who participated in certain investment programs. All...

A four-year investigation has concluded that officials of the solar company Solyndra misrepresented facts and omitted key information in their efforts to get a $535 million loan guarantee from the federal government. The company's collapse soon after getting federal backing provided ammunition to lawmakers and other critics who portrayed President Barack Obama's economic stimulus program as wasteful government spending. The company's failure likely will cost taxpayers more than $500 million. "In our view, the investigative record suggests that the actions of certain Solyndra officials were, at best, reckless and irresponsible or, at worst, an orchestrated effort to knowingly and intentionally...

On Tuesday, President Obama signed an agreement that equates to a $1,300 impact on every family in America — one of the largest stimulus packages in history. The only problem is that this money is not going to help put food on the table of struggling Americans. In fact, quite the opposite. This money is the $150 billion signing bonus that the Obama administration is giving Iran as part of the nuclear deal. And what is worse, National Security Adviser Susan Rice said on Wednesday’s Situation Room on CNN, “We should expect” that some of the money Iran gets as...

The federal government has been throwing taxpayer money at Baltimore for more than 60 years — ever since Nancy Pelosi’s father, Thomas D’Alesandro, Jr., was mayor of that troubled city (1947-59) — and what have been the results of that multi-billion-dollar federal investment in “Charm City?” You know the results as well as I do: widespread poverty and rampant violence. There were nine murders and more than 30 shootings in Baltimore over the Memorial Day weekend, bringing the city’s homicide toll to its highest point in more than 15 years. Baltimore had 41 murders in May, the most in a...

Towards the end of April, we discussed how QE has led to a global deflationary supply glut. This is a theme we’ve been building on for a while now and, as noted on Monday, it is perhaps nowhere more evident than among US oil producers. SNIP---- Sure enough, the semi-official helicopter cash drop call is here via Bloomberg View’s Clive Crook. Abandon all sound money faith ye who read on: But QE isn't unconventional any longer. It mostly worked, the evidence suggests. The world avoided another Great Depression. Yet even in the U.S., this is a seriously sub-par recovery; growth...

Last Tuesday, President Obama blamed the GOP-controlled Congress for its failure to fund the “massive investment in urban communities” that could “make a difference.” Well, how does $1.8 billion for the 622,000 people of Baltimore sound? Pretty massive – actually, just about $2900 for every man, woman, child, and baby of the entire City of Baltimore. But that’s the total amount of Obama Stimulus money sent to Charm City, according to an analysis by The Free Beacon:

Last Tuesday, President Obama blamed the GOP-controlled Congress for its failure to fund the “massive investment in urban communities” that could “make a difference.” Well, how does $1.8 billion for the 622,000 people of Baltimore sound? Pretty massive, actually just about $290 for every man, woman, child, and baby of the entire City of Baltimore. But that’s the total amount of Obama Stimulus money sent to Charm City, according to an analysis by The Free Beacon:  The city of Baltimore received over $1.8 billion from President Barack Obama’s stimulus law, including $467.1 million to invest in education and $26.5...