Free Republic

This is the #1 download on iTunes, as We The People contemplate the events depicted. The totality of a corrupt American government, led by a system of control, is a painful realization. However, America always rises. And yes, “lambs become lions.” {Direct Rumble Link}

If you wondered if Joe Biden was going to run for reelection, wonder no more. You’re going to see some amazing gymnastics from Biden in that pursuit. Biden will be throwing everyone under the bus because what he’s doing now is a loser. Biden was initially in support of a DC Council bill to basically make crime legal in DC: The D.C. Council bill would reduce penalties for murders, carjackings, armed robberies, armed home invasions, and sexual assault offenses, even amid rising crime in the nation’s capital. Then suddenly Biden changed his tune The White House issued a Statement of...

Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) Chief Executive Officer Greg Becker sent a video message acknowledging the "incredibly difficult" 48 hours leading up to its collapse on Friday. He stated that he is working with banking regulators to find a partner for SVB and wore a stylish black zip-up jacket from Gleneagles.

Saudi Arabia’s state-controlled oil giant Aramco on Sunday reported a record net income of $161.1 billion for 2022 — the largest annual profit ever achieved by an oil and gas company. Aramco said net income increased 46.5 percent over the year, from $110 billion in 2021. Free cash flow also reached a record $148.5 billion in 2022, compared with $107.5 billion in 2021. “This is probably the highest net income ever recorded in the corporate world,” Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said on a Sunday earnings call. The results are nearly triple the profit that oil major ExxonMobil posted for 2022,...

Oh so woke, oh so green, oh so diverse Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) just went bust. One can go to its website—still up for who knows how much longer—and see that it claims assets of $212 billion. But as they say, the bigger they are, the harder they fall; and SVB makes for the second largest bank failure in U.S. history. Remarkably, 93 percent of the bank’s $161 billion in deposits are uninsured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which only covers accounts up to $250,000. And Roku, to name just one whale, had $487 million in Silicon Valley...

On this date in 1960, the former French colony of Vietnam made its last use of that most characteristically Gallic killing-machine: the guillotine. Communist cadre Hoang Le Kha of the Vietnam People’s Army — the insurgent force also known at different times, in different manifestations, and through different eyes as the Viet Minh, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and the Vietcong* — earned the unpleasant distinction. According to a disappointingly truncated article (.pdf) from the Texas Tech University Vietnam Archive, the beheading took place notwithstanding an appeal pending before the International Control Commission, the multinational body charged with overseeing the...

You’ve heard the complaints: When am I ever gonna use this? How is this relevant to the real world? How is reading Shakespeare going to make me a better banker? I don’t run into this kind of thinking as frequently in the economics classroom, but I hear my students’ complaints about their other courses pretty regularly (and maybe professors in those courses hear students’ complaints about mine). Why, they wonder, are they expected to study art history? Or biology? Or “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”? Or Mesoamerican mythology? When are they ever gonna use this stuff? My answer?...

Expectations were great. When 2023 started, there was a general sense that the stock and bond markets had turned over a new leaf. A repeat of 2022 was out of the question. The primary assumption was that inflation would relent. After that, everything else would neatly fall in line. Specifically, interest rates would decline, and the next great stock market boom would bubble up just in time to bailout the meager retirement savings of aging baby boomers. That was the general outlook when 2023 commenced. But instead, the opposite is now happening. Inflation is persisting. Interest rates are rising. And...

It’s impossible to understand the current moment in history without understanding the ongoing spike in violence across America. And — due to local city politics & broken incentives in documenting crime — the only legitimate national measure of violence is found in Murder data. It’s just not that easy to hide a body. You’ve surely heard a lot about crime since May 25, 2020. But it can all be summarized with just one number. This is a comprehensive review on the demographics of murderers and their victims; published here with the goal of educating the public on an under reported...

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Sunday that the federal government would not bail out Silicon Valley Bank, but is working to help depositors who are concerned about their money.The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insures deposits up to $250,000, but many of the companies and wealthy people who used the bank — known for its relationships with technology startups and venture capital — had more than that amount in their account. There are fears that some workers across the country won’t receive their paychecks. Yellen, in an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation,” provided few details on...

While making the rich pay their fair share of taxes has been the rhetoric favored by President Biden, in her testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, admitted that 90% of the enforcement actions by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will be focused on businesses and families earning less than $400,000 per year. Yellen explained that “billionaires are a hard target for the IRS. They can afford the best accountants and lawyers to help them minimize the taxes they pay. Those with smaller incomes are a riper source for reaping more taxes. It is not...

California's wine industry is on the brink of a financial crisis following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. The bank had been the main financial institution for bank for wineries in the Golden State for almost three decades. The California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation closed the bank on Friday following a run by venture capital customers. On Friday night, thousands of wineries found that they were completely locked out of their accounts with no clear timeline as to when they might be able to access their funds. Kendra Kawala, co-founder of Maker, a canned wine company located in...

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen appeared to rule out a federal bailout for Silicon Valley Bank while underscoring that government officials have been scrambling to assist depositors. Silicon Valley Bank collapsed Friday following a run of the bank, prompting a takeover by federal regulators. Given the size of SVB, many have compared it to faltering banks during the financial crisis of 2008, but Yellen contended the circumstances are different.

Protesters in the center of Chisinau ended the rally by issuing an ultimatum to the authorities The rally of the "Movement for the People" in the center of Chisinau ended with the adoption of a resolution demanding that the government pay bills for heating and electricity, RIA Novosti correspondent reports. "We demand that the authorities pay for all bills for gas, electricity and heat for all citizens of the country for three winter months. This is our ultimatum demand. We give the government 24 hours to implement our demands<" said Maria Tauber, vice charman of the Shor party...

The government says it is working "at pace" on a plan to prevent UK tech firms caught in the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank from running out of cash. The Treasury said it wanted to "minimise damage to some of our most promising companies in the UK" after the US bank's failure on Friday. Firms could start to run into problems on Monday morning without intervention. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey "were up late last night" and have been "working through the weekend to come up with a solution" to the...

Monkeys in modern-day Thai forests create stone artifacts uncannily similar to those crafted by early humans — challenging the established narrative of human cultural evolution. A new study published on Friday in Science Advances suggests the possibility that a critical hallmark of human tool use happened by accident — potentially blurring the line between tool use by early humans and our primate relatives. - snip - In an abandoned oil palm plantation on a national park site, the monkeys would create nut-cracking ‘stations’ beneath the feral trees. There they break open the palm fruit’s oil-rich pit between hand-wielded hammer rocks...

Are you ready? Despite cries from Summers, Yellen and other the DC illuminati (Biden is oddly silent), US banks are NOT fine. In fact, banks in general are suffering from Fed rates increases due to holding of long-term Treasuries and MBS. In fact, The Federal Reserve’s fight against inflation is causing serious problems, as exemplified by AOC. No, not THAT AOC. but bank Accumulated Other Comprehensive Income. Accumulated Other Comprehensive Income (AOCI) are special gains and losses that are listed as special items in the shareholder equity section of a company’s balance sheet. The AOCI account is the designated space...

One of the best stories from the last twenty years Hollywood history was the 2014 cyberhacking of Sony's computer network. It was credited to the "Guardians of Peace" but apparently done by North Korea in retaliation for the studio making The Interview, Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen's black comedy that ends with Kim Jong-Un blowing up with his helicopter. It was part of a pressure campaign by the totalitarian state that at least partially worked, as Rogen and Goldberg were forced to re-edit their film's ending, while major theatre chains pulled out of screening the picture.But that was when we...

Over the last year, the Ukraine war has played out both on the battlefields of Ukraine, and on global markets where energy warfare, sanctions, and industrial mobilisation efforts went head to head. Russia wanted to freeze Europe, while the Western allies sought to strangle the Russian economy with sanctions. A year on - I want to look at how successful these competing economic campaigns have been. Setting the stage to look at battlefield developments, attrition, and force regeneration in the near future.

The best outcome for the failed Silicon Valley Bank would be for U.S. officials to find a buyer for it on Sunday, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said, after its collapse last week. “The best outcome will be can they find a buyer for this SVB bank today before the markets open in Asia later in the day,” Warner said on ABC’s “This Week.” “The depositors can be taken care of and the best outcome will be an acquisition of SVB.” The fall of the bank last week sent shockwaves throughout the tech industry, which relied heavily on the bank for...