Free Republic

Rep. Joe Wilson, R- S.C., announced that he plans to put forward a proposal for the development of a $250 bill that features President Donald Trump. "Grateful to announce that I am drafting legislation to direct the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to design a $250 bill featuring Donald J. Trump," the congressman declared in a post on X. "Bidenflation has destroyed the economy forcing American families to carry more cash. Most valuable bill for most valuable President!" he added. Current U.S. law indicates that only the portrait of a dead person may appear on U.S. currency and securities. Wilson,...

Amazing. Just amazing. The consummate Bidenomics simp and former New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is trying to make “Trumpflation” a thing in the public discourse. “Lies, Damned Lies and Trumpflation,” railed Krugman in his latest February 14 certifiable screed. What was hilarious was that the first five paragraphs of his piece literally had nothing to do with the economy aside from drumming up conspiracy theories about President Donald Trump’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention potentially hiding data on the next hypothetical pandemic. Then came the kicker: “But while I’m not an epidemiologist, I do know something about inflation.”...

Inflation in the United States surged higher in January. The Department of Labor said Wednesday that the consumer price index (CPI) rose 0.5 percent in January from the prior month, much more than expected. Compared with a year ago, consumer prices are up three percent. Economists had expected the monthly pace of inflation to decline to 0.3 percent after prices rose 0.4 percent in December. The median forecast called for a 2.9 percent gain over the past 12-months, matching the prior month’s year-over-year gain. Core inflation, a metric that excludes volatile food and energy prices, rose by 0.4 percent for...

A Comex exchange-for-physical crisis is in progress, repeating the disruption during covid. The media story blames Trump’s potential tariffs. But is this the real reason gold is hitting new highs? Gold and silver rose further this week, driven by continuing premiums on Comex futures over London spot. In European trading this morning, spot gold was $2794, up a further $24 from last Friday’s close. And silver was $31.60, up $1.25. The gold/silver ratio fell from 91.7 on Monday morning to 88.4. While silver is still well below recent highs, it has outperformed gold since the New Year as our headline...

Home sales in 2024 tumbled to their lowest level in nearly two decades but the Northeast offered a small glimmer of hope in an otherwise challenging year for the housing market.Existing-home sales dropped to 4.06 million in 2024, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) said in a news release on Friday, Jan. 24. That figure marked the worst year for the US housing market since 1995.The sales drop happened as the median price of a home reached a record high of $407,500, up six percent from 2023."The median home price was elevated partly due to the upper-end market's relative better...

Along with all the changes we’ve seen across the country in the early throws of 2025, consumers have been warned to expect some record-high egg prices in the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) price outlook, egg prices are predicted to increase by 20.3 percent by the end of 2025. This isn’t necessarily a surprise, since retail egg prices were up by 8.4 percent in December. The elevated egg prices come after the 2022 outbreak of bird flu, which led to more than 20 million egg-laying chickens dying in the U.S. during the last quarter of...

January 2021, the unelected vote fraud fake president came in. Eggs were 99¢ a dozen. They rapidly went up to three, four, five. Now they are ten dollars a dozen as the illegitimate “administration” leave. Crazy.

CNN host Fareed Zakaria tried to claim (a) Bidenomics was mind-boggling genius, and also (b) white working-class voters hated it and rejected it in November. So forget those unwashed, uneducated white voters. Democrats should stop trying for those voters and stick to college-educated women and minorities. The host of CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS bellowed in a January 17 op-ed for The Washington Post that Biden’s spendthrift economic catastrophe was actually “a resounding success.” But, alas, as Zakaria lectured in his ridiculous headline, “Biden failed to win the working class. Democrats might want to stop trying.” Of course, Zakaria’s idea of...

Inflation picked up speed in December as the U.S. economy showed unexpected signs of strength at the end of 2024. The consumer price index (CPI) rose 0.4 percent in the final month of 2024 and ended the year up 2.9 percent, according to data released Wednesday by the Labor Department. Economists expected the annual inflation rate to hit 2.9 percent and prices to rise 0.3 percent on the month, according to consensus estimates. The new inflation numbers come as the Federal Reserve faces a crossroads with President-elect Trump set to take office Monday. The Fed ended 2024 with three consecutive...

US corporate bankruptcies hit their highest level since the 2008 financial crisis - as Americans tighten their belts. Companies have also incresingly been grappling with high rising debts - driven by high interest rates that caused borrowing costs to spike. In 2024, 686 companies filed for bankruptcy, up 8 percent from 2023 - and almost more than 2021 and 2022 combined. It also marks the most filings since 2010, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. In addition last year, more companies tried to avoid bankruptcy through out-of-court actions, with these efforts outnumbering actual bankruptcies two to one, according...

At the top of a nearly hour-long briefing in the Roosevelt Room, Biden pledged to send “every resource we can find” to support local officials, praising the firefighters and other first responders as “heroes.” He announced that the federal government would cover the full cost of recovery efforts, which includes things such as debris removal and temporary shelters, for the first 180 days. “I told the governor and local officials: spare no expense to do what they need to do and contain these fires in their communities that have really been devastated," Biden said. "And we're doing literally everything we...

Projection is blaming someone else for your own bad behavior. We saw a classic case of projection in Thursday’s presidential debate, when President Biden—who is overseeing annual budget deficits of $2 trillion—asserted that his predecessor, Donald Trump, added more to the federal debt than anyone else. It’s part of the latest leftist argument: that if Trump wins the election, he will run deficits twice as large as Biden would. Debate moderator Jake Tapper joined the chorus of federal finance falsehoods when he claimed Trump had “approved $8.4 trillion in new debt,” while Biden’s actions will increase the debt by (merely)...

For supporters, the law finally removes limits imposed on benefits for public servants. Critics say it would speed up the Social Security program’s insolvency. President Joe Biden on Jan. 5 signed into law a bill that would increase Social Security benefits for millions of Americans who have worked in eligible public service fields. The bill, dubbed the Social Security Fairness Act, specifically boosts benefits for around 3 million Americans who have worked in public jobs, particularly affecting those who received state and local pensions separate from Social Security. “By signing this bill, we’re extending Social Security benefits for millions of...

Credit card defaults in the US skyrocketed by 50% in the past year. Credit card defaults reached $46 billion in the first nine months of 2024, a level not seen since 2010. The cost of living has simply surpassed manageable levels for the majority of households. CreditCardDefaults2024 Americans are feeling the impact of inflation and compounding interest. The New York Federal Reserve found that credit card debt hit a record high in September 2024 after surpassing $1.17 trillion during Q3. The Fed also reported that household debt reached a high of $17.94 trillion, with mortgages ($12.59 trillion), autos ($1.64 trillion),...

People across America are feeling the sting of the rising cost of eggs in part being driven by the bird flu outbreak. In October, Vice President-elect Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) pointed to the skyrocketing price of eggs as evidence of President Joe Biden (D) and Vice President Kamala Harris’s (D) economic policies, per Breitbart News. “Eggs, when Kamala Harris took office, were short of $1.50 a dozen. Now, a dozen eggs will cost you around $4, thanks to Kamala Harris’ inflationary policies,” he said.

Democratic strategist James Carville, who coined the phrase “It’s the economy, stupid,” admitted his predictions for the 2024 race were wrong and that Democrats lost because of the economy. Carville, in an opinion piece for The New York Times, noted that while he truly believed Harris would win the election, he is reviewing what went wrong for Democrats since President-elect Trump’s decisive victory in November. “I’ve been going over this in my head for the past two months, all the variables, all the what-ifs, all the questions about Joe Biden’s re-election decisions and what kind of Democrat or message might...

Last Saturday, I poured wine, greeted regulars and strangers and bused tables at Contento, the restaurant I co-owned in East Harlem, for the last time. After more than three years of service, during which The New York Times ranked us twice among the 100 Best Restaurants in New York City and the Michelin Guide gave me its sommelier award, I had to say goodbye to my talented staff and lifelong dream of owning a restaurant. The combination of inflation, rising crime that required us to pay for security guards and declining profits simply proved insurmountable.I’m crushed that we had to...

It’s no surprise that Americans often rely heavily on credit cards to make ends meet. And with a recent period of rampant inflation, it’s equally unsurprising that credit card balances are on the rise. In the third quarter of 2024, U.S. credit card balances rose by $24 billion, reaching the $1.17 trillion mark — the highest level recorded by the Fed in 20 years.

It’s still the economy, stupid By now, we’ve all heard, said, or read one of several versions of the exact same hypothesis: President-elect Donald Trump romped to victory in the election because America had grown sick of feeling the painful pinch of inflation. Whether the tariff-heavy policies of the incoming administration will keep a lid on higher prices is unknown, but one thing that is inevitable is that inflation will be a hot-button issue for years to come. What we talk about when we talk about inflation Let’s start with some basics. Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, inflation is...

When Prime Minister Shinzo Abe set out to rejuvenate Japan’s economy more than a decade ago, he laid out a strategy known as the “Three Arrows,” which aimed to banish deflation by easing monetary policy, increasing government spending and restructuring the economy so that it was poised for growth.President-elect Donald J. Trump could soon brandish three arrows of his own. Mr. Trump’s Treasury secretary pick, Scott Bessent, has mapped out a three-pronged approach to jump-starting a U.S. economy that has been saddled with inflation and sluggish output. The concept, which he billed during the campaign as his 3-3-3 plan, entails...