Free Republic

On Wednesday, Silicon Valley Bank was a well-capitalized institution seeking to raise some funds.Within 48 hours, a panic induced by the very venture capital community that SVB had served and nurtured ended the bank's 40-year-run.Regulators shuttered SVB Friday and seized its deposits in the largest U.S. banking failure since the 2008 financial crisis and the second-largest ever. The company's downward spiral began late Wednesday, when it surprised investors with news that it needed to raise $2.25 billion to shore up its balance sheet. What followed was the rapid collapse of a highly-respected bank that had grown alongside its technology clients.Even...

Joe Biden could have been a good president. All he had to do was leave things alone. Instead, he blundered into the office and wrecked the country. He is like the guy on a Boeing 747 high over the Atlantic Ocean who breaks into the cockpit and says, “I can fly this thing.” “You don’t have to, Joe,” the pilot says, “It’s on autopilot. It flies itself. You know, computers.” Undeterred, Joe presses buttons and flips switches. The plane goes into a nosedive. Which is where we are today. You don’t put a guy like this in control. He is...

The last execution in Ukraine apparently took place on this date in 1997 — and bizarrely, nobody even seems sure of exactly who enjoyed this unwelcome distinction. This was post-Soviet Ukraine under Leonid Kuchma, a man in no way renowned for his excessive regard for human dignity. But Kuchma was keen on integrating with Europe, and that meant appeasing western Europe’s human rights sensibilities. Ukraine joined the Council of Europe in 1995, a move that required it to abolish the death penalty. But executions — by means of the old Soviet method, a single gunshot to the back of the...

Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) got caught in Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen’s bear trap, the trap set when Bernanke/Yellen kept interest rates 25 basis points for too long (from December 2008 through December 2015) and then raising rates only once during Obama’s Presidency, only to raise rates 8 times after Trump was elected President. Then Covid struck in early 2020 and Powell dropped rates to 25 basis points again until inflation struck and Powell started raising rates at the fast pace in history. Crucially, the Federal Reserve pinned interest rates at unprecedented lows. And, in a radical shakeup of its...

Archrivals Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed Friday to restore diplomatic relations, a dramatic breakthrough brokered by China after years of soaring tensions between the Middle Eastern powerhouses. The deal, which will see the two leading oil producers reopen embassies in each other’s capitals, was sealed during a meeting in Beijing — a boost to China's efforts to rival the United States as a broker on the global stage. The agreement could put a damper on Israel's ongoing work to normalize relations with its Arab neighbors, and complicate U.S. and other Western powers' bid to contain Iran's nuclear ambitions. The Saudi-Iran...

When it comes to the subject of UFOs observed over Washington, DC, most aficionados of the topic will knowingly nod and assume you’re talking about the July 1952 event that has been the subject of numerous books and documentaries. If you bring up the “Tic Tac” UFO, everyone immediately thinks of the 2004 encounter involving fighter pilots with the USS Nimitz. But what far fewer people are aware of is that there was a UFO event in the shadows of America’s capital earlier than both of those events, and it may have also featured a bizarre craft resembling a Tic...

Corporations that remain neutral on social and political issues outperform companies that lean left. Capitalists invest money, and manage companies, to do well financially. Proponents of so-called woke capitalism claim that companies can do “well” financially by doing “good” politically. The idea is that advancing a political agenda will also enhance profits and shareholder returns. Whether this does good is a matter of opinion, but whether it does well can be measured. Woke capitalism makes its way into financial markets through an ill-defined concept known as environmental, social and governance investing. Huge investment managers use their ownership of shares to...

No sooner had we forgiven Jane Fonda for her sins of many years ago than she gives fresh reason to condemn her. Today on The View–my God, does someone actually watch that show?–she suggested that pro-lifers should be murdered:(embedded video)One of the View’s hosts hurried to assure the audience that Fonda was kidding, but Jane herself remained mute. Subsequently, she beat a retreat:“While women’s reproductive rights are a very serious issue and extremely important to me, my comment on The View was obviously made in jest,” Fonda told Fox News Digital in a statement. “My body language and tone made...

I couldn’t stomach a ‘cooking’ magazine that is more devoted to promoting LGBT awareness than teaching readers about delicious food.I am fortunate to be part of a vibrant Google group (that has since spun off into an excellent Substack), where weekly conversations can run the gamut from intense national security discussions to analyzing Taylor Swift’s latest album. Several years ago, someone in the group asked for recommendations for a solid cooking magazine, and many folks (myself included) chimed in with a vote for Bon Appetit.You can tell the BA writers really love to cook, and they want you to...

(NEXSTAR) – You can get it by the glass, the can, the growler or the keg. But for some reason, you can’t guzzle it from a plastic two-liter. Beer — at least in the United States — is rarely sold in plastic bottles. The most common mediums are glass bottles and aluminum cans, with the exception of the occasional “drinkable ornament” around the holidays. (We’re looking at you, Miller Lite.) Plastic bottles, meanwhile, are rarely ever seen in the beer aisle, despite being widely embraced by the juice and soft-drink industries. Why is that? Well, as it turns out, beer...

"All Republican Governors should immediately pull out of ERIC, the terrible Voter Registration System that 'pumps the rolls' for Democrats and does nothing to clean them up," the former president wrote on his Truth Social platform. Three more red states — Florida, Missouri, and West Virginia — this week followed Louisiana and Alabama in withdrawing from a multistate data-sharing partnership that facilitates voter registration and maintenance of voter rolls, citing unmet concerns over protecting voter information and partisan influence at the nonprofit. The latest withdrawals from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) came after the nonprofit's board of directors rejected...

Why was the January 6th riot allowed to happen in the first place? The Nazi party used two events to cement its political power prior to World War II. One was the killing of Ernest von Rath by Herschel Grynszpan in London in November 1938. The murder was quickly adapted by the Nazi leadership into a pretext for the Kristallnacht attack on German Jews. Hundreds of synagogues were destroyed by brown shirts (and not the angered populace as Goebbels claimed) as were thousands of Jewish businesses. The murder of von Rath led to the death of nearly 100 Jews and...

The American Red Cross is under fire for reportedly providing migrants with maps and guides to help them make the dangerous journey through Mexico to the U.S. border. Packets stamped with the American Red Cross logo revealed by the Daily Caller News Foundation include the locations of hotels and clinics, routes to American border cities and tips on "self care" and the use of contraceptives. Lamb argued the message the American Red Cross should send instead is: "Do not cross." The journey, the desert, the snakes and the people are all too dangerous, he said. "We can't keep making it...

Shortly after September 11, 2001, I became known as a “neoconservative.” The term was a bit puzzling, because I wasn’t new to conservatism; I had been on the right ever since I could remember. But the “neocon” label came to be used after 9/11 to denote a particular strain of conservatism that placed human rights and democracy promotion at the forefront of U.S. foreign policy. This was a very different mindset from the realpolitik approach of such Republicans as President Dwight Eisouenhower, President Richard Nixon, and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and it had a natural appeal to someone like...

No, says Judge Fernando Gaitan's opinion today in Geico Gen. Ins. Co. v. Brauner (W.D. Mo.). The policy covered "bodily injury" "arising out of the ownership, maintenance or use" of an automobile, but the court held that this language didn't cover such a situation: Kansas courts have held that "For an automobile insurer to be liable for an automobile accident, unless the express language of an insurance policy provides otherwise, the automobile must, in some manner, be involved in the accident, and the mere fact that an accident takes place in or near the automobile does not impose responsibility upon...

Batten down the hatches — the Big Apple faces a greater rise in the risk of catastrophic hurricane damage over the next 30 years than any other city in the nation. By 2053, New York City will see a 302% increase in average annual losses as climate change intensifies the power of tropical storms, the nonprofit First Street Foundation predicts in a hyper-local analysis of more than 50,000 likely storm tracks. “We’re more likely to see storms that actually hold together and maintain hurricane-strength winds by the time they reach New York City,” said Dr. Jeremy Porter, First Street’s head...

When an Ivy League school breaks with its storied past by introducing a degree for nontraditional students, the relevance for other institutions of higher learning can’t be overlooked. In 2016, the University of Pennsylvania created such a program, leading to the B.A.A.S. (Bachelor of Applied Arts and Sciences). The motivation for the change, according to Dean Steven Fluharty of the School of Arts & Sciences, was the recognition that working adults and other under-served students possessed valuable knowledge and skills that might be useful in a current or future career. All that was needed was the opportunity to demonstrate the...

(Daily readings from the USCCB)“Look, all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders; yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends. But when your son returns who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fattened calf.” Luke 15:22–24This was the reaction of the faithful son in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Recall that after squandering his inheritance, the Prodigal Son returns home humiliated and poor, asking his father if he will take him back and treat him as if he were a...

After all these years, I wanted to check on the status of the 45 goals of Communism that was presented as: Congressional Record--Appendix, pp. A34-A35 Current Communist Goals EXTENSION OF REMARKS OF HON. A. S. HERLONG, JR. OF FLORIDA IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Thursday, January 10, 1963

EDMONDS WA — Jaxon Kennard learned that forests capture planet-warming carbon. So the soft-spoken seventh grader pitched in to remove tree-killing invasive ivy. When classmate Ava Woodsum discovered the high environmental cost of mining lithium for batteries, she researched sodium ion batteries, a potential alternative. Other middle schoolers in the Climate Crisis Solutions Class at Maplewood Parent Cooperative gave presentations to elementary school kids. “A lot of them paid attention a lot more than we were expecting,” eighth grader M.J. Pandow said. “They asked interesting questions.” The elective course these students took during fall semester is taught by Bradley Barton....