Free Republic

The Fed (Bernanke, Yellen, Powell) kept rates too low for too long (their new moto?), and hell is now being paid. US financial conditions index collapsed on the 3 bank failures … so far. Despite what Resident Biden said about banks, bank stocks fell again today.

President Xi Jinping wants to parlay China’s success in brokering a diplomatic deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia into a more active role in global affairs. China should “actively participate in the reform and construction of the global governance system” and promote “global security initiatives,” Xi said on Monday in a speech to the legislature. That will add “positive energy to world peace and development,” he claimed. And in a blend of statecraft and blunt force, Xi spoke of turning the People’s Liberation Army into a “great wall of steel.” “We should comprehensively promote the modernization of national defense and...

A calculator created to facilitate COVID-19 vaccination rates amongst Australians has been updated to include the latest information on vaccines for kids in order to increase child vaccinations. Launched by the Immunisation Coalition, and made up of a team of GPs, medical scientists, public health physicians, epidemiologists, and statisticians, the COVID-19 risk calculator (CoRiCal) was created to help people see their risk for getting COVID-19 under different transmission scenarios. University of Queensland virologist and one of the tool’s lead researchers Kirsty Short said users can access the tool and input their age, sex, community transmission and vaccination status to find...

Evidence is accumulating that the Chinese Communist Party is poised to add a shooting war to the pre-kinetic “unrestricted warfare” against America in which it has long engaged. Increasingly shrill rhetoric about the United States – including Foreign Minister Qin Gang’s recent comment that conflict is “inevitable” if we do not change course – is being accompanied by, among other things, the stand-up of defense mobilization offices across China. Center for Security Policy expert Dr. Bradley Thayer says dictator Xi Jinping is preparing his people for the sacrifices associated with a long conventional, or even a nuclear, war with the...

Betting against the stocks that CNBC host Jim Cramer promotes appears to be a surefire way to make a fortune in the current stock market. Cramer dumped a new load of bad stock advice during the fallout from the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapse. He tweeted March 10 that “[First Republic Bank (FRC)] is new focus... very good bank.” However — just three days after Cramer’s tweet — FRC’s stock value took a 65 percent nosedive during premarket trading on Monday morning after declining 33 percent the prior week, according to CNBC. Cramer just can’t seem to catch a break...

VIDEOIf Benny Hill did a bit on road rage, it would probably look something like this real life example. The really funny thing is that the Road Rage Guy in the video looks a lot like Benny Hill.

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street is worried about what may be next to topple following the second- and third-largest bank failures in U.S. history, and stocks are swinging sharply Monday as investors scramble to find someplace safe to park their money. The S&P 500 was virtually unchanged in morning trading, but only after tumbling 1.4% at the open. The sharpest drops were again coming from banks. Investors are worried that a relentless rise in interest rates meant to get inflation under control are approaching a tipping point and may be cracking the banking system. The U.S. government announced a...

Financial expert Michael Burry sent one perfect Tweet on Sunday that explained why the economy is collapsing around us. Burry, best known for his portrayal by Christian Bale in hit movie “The Big Short,” has been signalling the alarm for an impending, massive recession for quite some time. After Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse Friday and Signature Bank’s shut down, Burry took to Twitter with one perfect statement: “2000, 2008, 2023, it’s always the same.” Burry wrote, now shared on his archive page. “People full of hubris and greed take stupid risks and fail. Money is then printed. Because it works...

'Thanks to him, a great danger was averted,' says R. Meir Mazuz, dean of the K. Rahamim. Mazuz argued, “prevented a very great danger,” referencing reports prior to Goldstein’s shooting at the Tomb of the Patriarchs of a planned Arab terror attack in Hebron. "The Arabs were bringing in axes and hiding them under the rugs in the Tomb of the Patriarchs, along with rifles, knives – there was a terrible danger at the time.”

Donald Trump is going to be indicted. (Pause for effect.) This is not earth-shattering news for most of us, but the mainstream media is going to portray it as a shocking development. It’s history, don’t you know? But no matter how Trump’s legal troubles are characterized in the hysterically rabid anti-Trump press, the country will divide, as usual, between those who hate Trump and those who love him. That won’t change. And since almost everyone has already made up their mind about Trump, it’s not likely that large numbers of voters will be swayed one way or another after this...

(Daily readings from the USCCB)When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were all filled with fury. They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong. But he passed through the midst of them and went away. Luke 4:28–30One of the first places Jesus went to begin His public ministry was His own home town. After entering the Synagogue and reading from the Prophet Isaiah, Jesus proclaimed that the prophecy of Isaiah was now fulfilled in His very...

Key PointsThe Biden administration on Wednesday recommended a scaled-down version of a major oil drilling project in the North Slope of Alaska, taking a step toward approving the $8 billion Willow plan that climate groups have long condemned.The Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management released an environmental analysis that proposes lowering the number of drilling sites from five to three under the project, which is led by ConocoPhillips, Alaska's largest crude oil producer.The federal government has 30 days to issue a final decision on whether to approve the project. President Joe Biden’s administration on Wednesday recommended a scaled-down version of...

First Republic said Sunday it had received additional liquidity from the Federal Reserve and JPMorgan Chase. The bank said the move raises its unused liquidity to $70 billion, before any funding it could get from a new Fed facility. The Federal Reserve created a new Bank Term Funding Program that will offer loans for up to a year to banks in return for high quality collateral like Treasurys. In this article BAC -0.93 (-3.09%) KEY -4.06 (-25.93%) ZION -8.67 (-21.47%) WAL -32.26 (-65.38%) PACW -4.47 (-36.19%) FRC -59.93 (-73.30%) First Republic tells CNBC the bank isn’t seeing that many depositors...

Silicon Valley Bank collapsed spectacularly on Friday. Then yesterday, down went Signature Bank in New York. And the big three regulators – the Treasury, Federal Reserve, and the FDIC – had to work all weekend (poor things) to come up with a solution that would hopefully stop widespread bank runs leading to America's banking system collapsing like the Jenga tower in "The Big Short." Their solution, which they announced last night, they're calling "BTFP." Despite all the acronyms you could create with those letters to describe what's currently happening, BTFP stands for "Bank Term Funding Program." They're not calling it...

When you’ve even lost woke Pope Francis, what’s left? Watch for furious Leftists to start characterizing the pontiff, hitherto a reliable ally, as a bigoted, hate-filled, right-wing extremist for daring to criticize “gender ideology.” In a strange turnaround for the pope, who has recently heartened the LGBTQ industry with some supportive statements that skirted the outer limits of Roman Catholic orthodoxy, Francis even characterized the trans craze as “dangerous.” The Catholic News Agency (CNA) reported Saturday that Pope Francis called today’s fashionable gender madness “one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations” of our age. “Why is it dangerous? Because it...

Leftwing bigotry: MERETZ progressive atheist activist tells politician Simcha Rothman: "A piece of religious sh#t" LEFT WING @leftwing2022 Replying to @newsisrael13 and @avivamar96 חתיכת חרא דתי. 12:44 PM · Mar 11, 2023 A piece of religious sh#t ___ Dpd... Mar 11, 2023 Replying to @leftwing2022 @newsisrael13 and @avivamar96:Aheist piece of sh#t|

Winning an Oscar is a big deal for many reasons, but most important, your name will now have the words Academy Award winner before it in every trailer you appear in for the rest of your life. So that’s nice. Plus you get a really cool gold paperweight and/or bathroom décor. This year, a whole new crop of actors, producers, editors, screenwriters, designers, and more earned their special pre-fixes at the 95th Academy Awards. Hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, sans exclamation point, the evening saw Everything Everywhere All at Once, who walked into the ceremony riding high after receiving the most...

Shares in Western Alliance Bancorp are getting hammered as smaller lenders come under pressure after the failure of Silicon Valley Bank. The Arizona-based bank's stock plunged 83% to $7.84 on Monday, following a 21% slide on Friday. US regional banks have fallen victim to SVB's sudden meltdown, with First Republic Bank shares tumbling 78% and PacWest Bancorp down 53% on Monday. That poor showing comes despite efforts to ease investor concerns that other banks would be hit by the same problems suffered by SVB. On Sunday, Signature Bank became the third lender to shut its doors in the space of...

On Saturday, Jack Posobiec posted a screenshot of a now-deleted 2018 tweet from Greta Thunberg, which linked to an article predicting humans would go extinct by 2023 due to climate change. "A top climate scientist is warning that climate change will wipe out all humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years." Thunberg's post read from 2018. The website Thunberg sourced in her original tweet, gritpost.com, has since been shut down. "Time flies when you're on the grift," one Twitter user wrote.

A recent study from the National Student Clearinghouse revealed that undergraduate college enrollment dropped 8% from 2019 to 2022, and this decline is even after the resumption of in-person classes.According to a study by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce college dropouts, earn 75 percent less compared with those who get bachelor’s degrees.Experts fear that fewer college graduates could worsen labor shortages in sectors such as health care and information technology.There are many possible reasons for this decline in college enrollments.According to the most recent quarterly tally by the Federal Reserve, student loan borrowers in the United States...