Free Republic

The Turkish central bank has baffled traditional economists over the past year with its unconventional approach to monetary policy in the wake of capital outflows, currency depreciation and raging global inflation. While the standard playbook now being deployed by most Asian nations recommends raising interest rates to deter consumption and investment in such circumstances, the Turkish central bank has been doing the exact opposite. While most Asian central banks view raising the supply of money in their economies as inflationary, their Turkish counterpart sees this as a way to raise output and employment levels. Until recently, Turkey was playing by...

Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank are reportedly on the verge of collapse. They have 2.7 trillion in assets under management between them. It’s three times the assets of Lehman at the time of the collapse. On 15 September 2008, Lehman Brothers, a bank considered ‘too big to fail,’ filed for insolvency. It was the single largest bankruptcy filing in the history of the US. At the time, the bank had $639 billion in assets and $619 billion in debt. Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank are too big to fail. Some say Deutsche Bank will be okay, but Credit Suisse is...

This year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo for his discoveries on human evolution. Thomas Perlmann, secretary of the Nobel Committee, announced the winner Monday at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. Pääbo has spearheaded research comparing the genome of modern humans and our closest extinct relatives, the Neanderthals and Denisovans, showing that there was mixing between the species. The prizes carry a cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (over $1.2 million Cdn) and will be handed out to the winners on Dec. 10. The money comes from a bequest left by...

As Gabriella Martenson prepared for the birth of her first child, she came to a decision. She wouldn’t tell her child if they’d been born a girl or a boy, and would largely avoid discussing their birth sex with people outside her family and friendship group. “I wanted them to be who they want to be. I don't want to decide that for them,” says Martenson, who was 30 and living in her home city, Stockholm, when she had her first child. “[It’s] just as I don't want to decide what they grow up to do, or who they decide...

Vice President Kamala Harris was seen ignoring what appears to be a rogue reporter at a gala over the weekend after he asked her to clarify her comments on "equity" affecting the Biden administration's distribution of Hurricane Ian relief. The video, released Saturday evening by the Republican National Committee's research arm, appears to have been taken on Saturday evening, as Harris was exiting the 51st annual Phoenix Awards, a dinner hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. Both she and President Joe Biden spoke at the event, where they touted their administration's achievements for Black Americans and repeatedly referenced "equity"...

It must be Halloween season. How else to explain the ramping of up the curse of leftism? Kamala cackles at Korea's DMZ. Braindead Biden speaks to ghosts. Wicked Witch Hillary curses America with lies. Halloween season must be here. Except the evil that Democrats do lasts all year long. Filled with racists, butchers, killers, liars, misanthropes, thieves, and snobs, the commie coalition of leftists in America pursues nothing but harm. Feasting on children, spreading fear and hate, they are the carnival horror show no sane person would dare permit through the gates. Wherever their power grows, Dems bring darkness (thanks,...

On September 27, 2022, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives issued an open letter to all Federal Firearms Licensees. The letter is available online. The letter is seven pages long and includes several images. The purpose of the letter is explained in the first paragraph. From the atf.gov:The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is issuing this open letter to further assist the firearms industry and the public in understanding whether a “partially complete, disassembled, or nonfunctional” receiver of an AR-15/M-16 variant weapon has reached a stage of manufacture such that it “may readily be completed,...

VLADIMIR Putin has deployed the world's biggest submarine which can be armed with a terrifying nuclear "apocalypse drone", NATO has reportedly warned. As the tyrant edges the world into the most dangerous moment since his shambolic Ukraine invasion, there are fears Russia's giant nuclear-capable torpedo is now on the warpath.

Credit Suisse shares fell nearly 8% on Monday as investors worried about the bank suffering a Lehman Brothers-style collapse. Swiss-listed shares dropped 7.8% to 3.67 francs ($3.71) in European trading hours, having fallen over 12% earlier in the session. Investors are fretting about the bank's overall health as it finalizes a restructuring plan due to be announced on October 27. On Friday there was a sharp rise in spreads on the bank's credit default swaps (CDS), which protect investors if it defaults on its debts.

Pray For The Peace of JerusalemMatthew 6 Prayer 5 “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be...

There was breaking news from the NFL that nobody will tie to the Covid-19 vaccines because that’s just not allowed. Arizona Cardinals All-World defensive end JJ Watt said his heart went into “A-Fib,” or atrial fibrillation, on Wednesday and had to be shocked back into rhythm. Here’s his Tweet: I was just told somebody leaked some personal information about me and it’s going to be reported on today. I went into A-Fib on Wednesday, had my heart shocked back into rhythm on Thursday and I’m playing today. That’s it. A study posted on the NIH website last year listed atrial...

For all the hubbub about the Hunter Biden laptop, there has been little talk about the laptop owned by DNC data analyst Seth Rich. In the way of brief summary, the 27-year-old Rich was beaten and then shot by unknown assailants on a Washington, D.C. street in the early morning hours of July 10, 2016. His attackers appear to have taken nothing—not his wallet, not his phone, not his watch. Rich’s laptop was in his apartment not far from the scene of his murder. For six years, its fate has remained a mystery. In less than two weeks, however, thanks...

For eight years, NATO has supported puppet rulers in Ukraine, funded attacks in the Donbass, repeatedly violated the Minsk agreements, supported the ban on speaking Russian in the Luhansk and Donetsk republics, and helped to destroy the democratic opposition and free media in Ukraine. The result was a one-party government, essentially owned and funded by the United States, and run by American operatives. And no halftones and subtleties. Yet, somehow, the United States managed to convince the population of its country and other Western countries that Russia is a “bad boy”, that it is out of control and must be...

A mild flutter ensued after Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar’s recent meeting with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) session in New York on September 21 when it came to be known that Cyprus figured in their discussion. Jaishankar highlighted it in a tweet. The Indian media instinctively related this to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan making a one-line reference to the Kashmir issue earlier that day in his address to the UNGA. But Jaishankar, being a scholar-diplomat, would know that the Cyprus issue is in the news cycle and the...

Essentially the entire developed part of the world is currently embarked on a crash program to eliminate fossil fuels from the energy system of the economy. The program has two main parts: first the suppression of the production and distribution of fossil fuels; and second the construction of large numbers of wind and solar generation facilities to replace them. Both parts of the program are currently underway simultaneously in all advanced countries, as a matter of what we are told is the highest moral urgency. But will the coming fossil-fuel-free system actually work to provide the energy we need to...

Chinese tech giant Huawei’s attempt to make semiconductors without American equipment has generated global headlines as the US-China tech war takes yet another turn. It is one more strong hint – if any were needed – that the US government is in the process of creating a competitor that it won’t be able to control while forcing American companies to abandon a massive market that until now has supported their sales, profits, economies of scale and stock prices. Geopolitics have overridden America’s past devotion to open markets and the situation is not likely to change anytime soon as long as...

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Weekend gun violence left 31 people shot, five fatally over the weekend, Chicago police said. Several children were among the victims, including a three-year-old boy killed on Friday and a seven-year-old boy shot on his way to church. Police said the family of the seven-year-old boy was driving to church when they noticed a man breaking into one of their other cars that was parked. They confronted the suspect, who police said pulled out a rifle and fired shots in the family's direction, striking the boy in the leg. That suspect was caught by police and the...

Ukrainian forces broke through Russian lines and made new advances in the southern Kherson region, even as they continued developing their rapid offensive in the eastern part of the country. Pushing south, the new Ukrainian advance secured a corner of the only Russian foothold on the western bank of the Dnipro River, which bisects the country. Ukraine has in recent months destroyed all the bridges to that enclave, which includes regional capital, Kherson, making it increasingly difficult for the large Russian military contingent there to be resupplied with fuel, ammunition and food. In a video address, President Volodymyr Zelensky said...

Secret talks between Russia and Germany to resolve their Nord Stream 1 and 2 issues had to be averted at any cost. The War of Economic Corridors has entered incandescent, uncharted territory: Pipeline Terror. A sophisticated military operation – that required exhaustive planning, possibly involving several actors – blew up four separate sections of the Nord Stream (NS) and Nord Stream 2 (NS2) gas pipelines this week in the shallow waters of the Danish straits, in the Baltic Sea, near the island of Bornholm. Swedish seismologists estimated that the power of the explosions may have reached the equivalent of up...

Ukrainian forces have made some breakthroughs in the southern Kherson region and taken control of some settlements, a Russian-installed official said on Monday. "It's tense, let's put it that way," Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-installed head of Ukraine's Kherson region, said on state television. "Where the Kakhovka (reservoir) is, there is a settlement called Dudchany ... it is in this area that there is a breakthrough and there are settlements taken by Ukrainian troops," he said.