Free Republic

A series of weak auctions for U.S. Treasurys are stoking investors’ concerns that markets will struggle to absorb an incoming rush of government debt. ... inflation not tamed ... Federal Reserve will leave interest rates at multidecade highs for .. years to come. The 10-year yield—the benchmark for borrowing rates on everything from mortgages to corporate loans—finished the week around 4.5%... At the same time, the government is poised to sell another $386 billion or so of bonds in May—an onslaught that Wall Street expects to continue no matter who wins November’s presidential election. While few fear a failed auction—an...

Auction prices of used trucks are falling almost as quickly as they rose over the last year. That is leaving owner-operators stuck with overpriced equipment they thought they could pay for in a hot spot freight market that is cooling off. “The market is primarily absorbing trucks from fleets no longer retaining all of their older iron as new trucks trickle in and, to an extent, from owner-operators leaving the industry or going to work for a fleet,” said Chris Visser, senior analyst and commercial vehicles product manager for J.D. Power Valuation Services. In its latest Guidelines report, Power said...

René Magritte’s Surrealist masterpiece L’empire des lumières sold for a record £59.4 million (US$79.8 million) at a Sotheby’s sale on Wednesday, achieving a world auction record for the artist. The 1961 painting, with a paradoxical image of darkened home lit from within yet under a bright blue sky of floating clouds, was sought by three telephone bidders over more than seven minutes before a winning hammer offer of £51.5 million, before fees, was secured by Alex Branczik, the auction house’s chairman of modern and contemporary art in Asia. Magritte’s previous auction record of US$26.8 million was achieved for a 1937...

When she was growing up in Paris, Pauline Baer de Perignon was always told the same story about her great-grandfather, Jewish art collector Jules Strauss. Strauss — a German Jew living in Paris — owned a trove of Impressionist pictures by Renoir, Degas, Monet and many others. But the stock market crash of the 1930s forced him to sell much of his collection, leaving his heirs nothing. He died in 1943 of old age.

The gun will be auctioned in France on Wednesday (June 19), where it's expected to sell for more than $50,000. For years, most Van Gogh experts have accepted the explanation that he shot himself in the chest with a pistol in a suicide in July 1890 Van Gogh lived on for 30 hours before dying from the wound. His last words, according to his brother Theo, were "the sadness will last forever." But in 2011, biographers Gregory White Smith and Steven Naifeh argued that Van Gogh didn't shoot himself, but was shot accidentally by 16-year-old René Secrétan, who was spending...

(Now for something for all the Star Wars fans. . . the ultimate fan icon auction, an original R2D2 is being auctioned off.) 1298. Complete “R2-D2” unit assembled from original components spanning the original Star Wars trilogy and Episodes I & II. (TCF, 1977 - 2002) A complete film used R2 unit is not known to be in the public domain – this R2-D2 offering represents the pinnacle of the Star Wars collecting universe. For the productions following Star Wars: A New Hope, to save time in meeting production deadlines, R2 components were reused from the previous Star Wars films....

A bag used to collect lunar samples during the first manned mission to the moon legally belongs to an Illinois woman who bought it for $995 when it was mistakenly sold during a government auction, a judge ruled Wednesday. Judge J. Thomas Marten, of the U.S. District Court in Wichita, said he doesn't have the authority to reverse the sale of the bag used during the Apollo 11 moon mission in July 1969, even though it shouldn't have gone up for auction. The white bag, which has lunar material embedded in its fabric and which the government considers "a rare...

The terror group strips girls naked, conduct virginity tests, and send them to slave auctions after they have attacked their villages, often killing their husbands, fathers and brothers ISIS terrorists are picking out the “prettiest virgins” from the women they capture and sending them to their Syrian stronghold to be sex slaves, according to a UN expert. And there are horrific reports about the fate of the brave women who resist the murderous terrorists - including one victim who was burned alive for refusing to perform “extreme sexual acts”. Fierce haggling usually breaks out at slave auctions, where the girls...

Hours after his younger brother Lee Harvey Oswald, the presidential assassin, was gunned down in the basement of the Dallas police station, Robert Oswald wrote a $710 cashier’s check to a Fort Worth funeral home as he made arrangements for his brother’s burial. The purchase included a No. 31 Pine Bluff coffin and vault, a dark suit and flowers. More than five decades later, the simple pine coffin — now badly deteriorating — is at the heart of an unlikely epilogue to the drama that gripped the nation on Nov. 22, 1963. Three days after he assassinated President Kennedy from...

The U.S. Treasury Department sold $29.000 billion of seven-year notes at a yield of 2.221 percent, as demand fell relative to the last auction of securities with the same maturity. ust7auc The bid/cover ratio, which gauges demand by comparing the number of bids to the amount of securities sold, fell to 2.43 from 2.54 at the last seven-year note sale, indicating weaker demand. The bid/cover ratio was the lowest since 2.26 at the May 2009, auction. 7ybdrat The same occurred at the last 10 year auction of Treasury debt. Again. back to 2009 levels. bidcover333 Indirect bidder participation (which includes...

5-YEAR TREASURY AUCTION FINISHES ON THE SCREWSMatthew BoeslerJune 26, 2013 Wikimedia Commons The results of today's auction of $35 billion of 5-year U.S. Treasury notes are out. The high yield during the auction was 1.484%, matching the when-issued yield before the auction. In bond market parlance, this means the auction finished right "on the screws." The bid-to-cover ratio, which measures the dollar amount of bids versus the dollar amount of bonds actually auctioned, came in at 2.45, down from 2.79 at the May auction – marking the weakest demand for 5-year notes since September 2009. Direct bidders, those who bypass...

On December 8th, Auctions America by RM is holding one of the largest ever sales of WW II-era vehicles at the National Military History Center in Auburn, Indiana. Over 80 vehicles, including this White M3A1 Armored Scout Car will be crossing the block.

Loeb is Chicago based but no crony capitalism connections. We have recently bought factory equipment to upgrade our own operations for pennies on the dollar. Still, new offers for liquidations keep coming in. Loeb Equiment and Appraisal Company is just one factory liquidator in the country, but they have some awfully good stuff to offer. Some of it very up to date.

I recently saw an online ad that touted a guy who bought a brand new Apple iPad for just under $21. Since they retail for around $500, I thought I'd check it out. The company is QuiBids (quibids.com) and it's legit. The way it works is that you buy the number of "bids" you want. For example, you can buy 45 bids for $27, which works out to 60 cents per bid. At any given moment, there are dozens of items being auctioned, from iPads, TV's, gift certificates, golf clubs, you name it. You find an item you're interested in...

Profiting from Self Storage Auctions Many people have lost valuable belongings they had in a storing facility. To their dismay, unable to pay the monthly rent, the items were sold. There are two types of self storage auctions held for unpaid units. The items are sold by the lot, which will be the entire contents of the unit or by the piece. These auctions are leading savvy entrepreneurs to profit. Renters of these units become in default when they do not pay their rent. They are given legal notice their property will be sold at public auction if payments are...

...We live today in an age which seems to require perfection. Our hair must be perfectly styled, glossy and controlled. Our teeth must be perfectly white, and of course perfectly straight. Our (women’s) bodies must be a perfect size 0, the clothes we wear must be, if not haute couture, then either high-end fashion or so unattractive and ill-fitting as to be seen as stylish. Our homes must be perfect palaces, spacious and impressive, furnished with gleaming marble countertops, brushed stainless kitchen appliances, enormous flat screen televisions in the home theater, and additional domestic perfection throughout the rest of the...

Even as we speak, I have an agent bidding for me at a local auction house for some exciting items. Well, exciting to me, anyway. And to Agent Mom, as well. The problem with summer auctions, especially in our little slice of heaven here in New England, is that we are a summer resort community. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love the fact that people from far away come here just to spend time in our beautiful community. And they not only spend time, they spend money. Which is good for the community, allowing it to thrive. This is...

There are times in life when one witnesses something so outside the scope of normal experience, that at first you don’t see it. Captain Cook’s diaries tell us that upon first seeing his ships offshore in Australia, the aborigines expressed “neither surprise nor concern.” Cook notes that it was not until he and his men approached the shore in smaller, more familiar vessels that the villagers reacted, arming themselves as “the sight of men in small boats was comprehensible to them: it meant invasion.” Well, I had a similar experience during yesterday’s bond auction. Before going into the details, we...

There's no other way to describe this: Bad. Actually, let's go worse than bad and call it what it is - by any definition this is just one step off from "Failed." Yield was way over where it was trading at the time, as you can see here: The more-worrying factor here is that we've got this "mystery" direct buyers out here again taking nearly 25% of the offered amount (who is bidding for that undisclosed?) and another 11% taken down by The Fed for the SOMA account.

What would it be like to wake up in the bed of a supermodel? Auctioneers Moore Allen & Innocent are putting the supermodel’s bed under the hammer - with a guide price of a mere £200. Kate sans bed