Free Republic

In January, Girls Who Code founder and CEO Reshma Saujani ran a full-page ad in The New York Times calling on President Biden and the rest of Congress to pass her Marshall Plan for Moms, which includes $2,400 monthly checks to mothers for the unpaid labor they do at home...Now, one month later,...the ad appears in The Washington Post and it's signed by 50 male allies including NBA player Steph Curry, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin startled financial analysts, bankers and economists Sunday by issuing an unusual statement declaring that the nation's six largest banks had ample credit to extend to American businesses and households...Two Trump advisers, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the calls would stoke unnecessary alarm. "No one thought we were at crisis level," one of these people said. "It's going to create more of an issue than we had already." Mnuchin and the president had a call on Saturday to talk about how to reassure the markets. Aides said that Trump knew the Powell story hurt the...

When you leave the classroom or office and go into the world, you see at first its richness and confusions, the variety and tumult. Then, if you keep moving and do not quit looking, commonalties begin to emerge. National success is eccentric. But national failure is programmed and predictable. Spotting the future losers among the world's states becomes so easy it loses its entertainment value. In this world of multiple and simultaneous revolutions--in technology, information, social organization, biology, economics, and convenience--the rules of international competition have changed. There is a global marketplace and, increasingly, a global economy. While there is...

Well, I guess we can rule out another rate hike in January. That's what economists are saying, not that anyone seriously believed that the Federal Reserve was going to engage in back-to-back hikes after promising that rates would go up only gradually in the months ahead. With Wall Street off to its worst annual start in history, stock prices have been but one indicator that the economy could slow in the weeks and months ahead. That should give the Fed pause. Stocks, of course, have not been the only market-based gauge to suggest that both the domestic, and global, economies...

WASHINGTON – The desperation of homebuilders was a running joke among top Federal Reserve officials during the waning phase of the housing bubble in 2006, according to transcripts released Thursday. They laughed about the cars that builders were giving to buyers. They laughed about efforts to make empty homes look occupied. They laughed at a report that one builder said inventory was rising “through the roof.”

(CNSNews.com) - Federal spending bills approved by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives have increased the national debt by more than $1 trillion dollars in just 10 months. Republicans won a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in the November 2010 elections and took control of the House on Jan. 5, 2011, when the chamber convened and elected Rep. John Boehner (R.-Ohio) as speaker. But the Republican-controlled House did not gain a veto power over federal spending until March 4, 2011. That was the expiration date of the continuing resolution (CR) that the lame-duck Democrat-controlled Congress approved in December 2010....

Politico has a story about Newt agreeing not to go after Romney any more about Bain, and Newt was just on Hannity’s radio show on the issue. (I’ll post the audio if I can get it.) Newt said there are three or four instances where the record is really bad and Romney needs to defend it. Newt said the challenge is not to the model but how Romney acted in specific instances, and how odd it is that Romney runs on his business record but doesn’t want to discuss the record. Newt made the point that it is impossible to...

Are you ready for the vegetable census? Yesterday I received the “2012 National Agricultural Classification Survey” from the US Dept. of Agriculture. It was accompanied by a cover letter stating (in large, bold font) that my response is required by law; and, if I do not reply, I “may be personally visited.” I am not and have never been a farmer or rancher. My land has never been farmed or ranched. I do, however, have a vegetable garden that I built in 2009. This garden is private and noncommercial. There is no illegal activity whatsoever on my property. The survey...

Well, here’s the totalitarian state, right before my eyes! Today in the mail came a largish envelop for me from The “National Agricultural Statistics Service”, postage and fees paid by USDA Permit No. G-38. A prominant blocked off area on the envelop front stated in large bold letters, “YOUR RESPONSE IS REQUIRED BY LAW.” Also on the envelop and several places inside I find Obama-style logos for the USDA, and one with “AGRICULTURE COUNTS” around the outside, and at the base of the rolling landscape “NASS,” which stands for National Agricultural Statistics Service. That’s right: now we have a National...

Hostess Brands Inc. is preparing to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as soon as this week, said people familiar with the matter, a move that would mark the second significant court restructuring for the Twinkies and Wonder Bread baker in the past several years. The privately held Irving, Texas, company, which employs roughly 19,000 people and carries more than $860 million in debt, has been facing a cash squeeze amid high labor costs and rising prices for sugar, flour and other ingredients, according to people familiar with the matter. Those costs together have proved higher than the company's roughly...

<p>Occasionally in the past, I have received emails from readers asking me if it was time to leave America because of some new infringement on our rights.</p> <p>In the past, I always responded to these emails by saying that it really depended on who the reader was. Anyone, I usually replied, who was in the securities-brokerage industry or the medical profession should start looking, because of how regulated those industries are. If on the other hand, a surfer dude just living for the next wave, would have little reason to be concerned.</p>

Have a column on Iowa coming soon, but first, a quick but absurd note from the world of high finance. It seems Jim O'Neill, the head of Goldman's Asset Management department, is predicting that the United States stock market may go up "15 to 20 percent." O'Neill apparently believes Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve will resort to another round of money-printing, and finally green-light the long-awaited "Qe3," or third round of "Quantitative Easing." The QE programs involve the Fed printing hundreds of billions of dollars and pumping them into the marketplace, where they ostensibly stimulate the economy (although recent...

Obama: Republicans Want to Emulate China, Roll Back Minimum Wage, Prevent Unionization By Fred Lucas January 10, 2012 Subscribe to Fred Lucas's posts (CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama accused Republicans of wanting to make America more like China, of seeking to roll back the minimum wage and of wanting to prevent collective bargaining and said the GOP wants to “get rid” of clean air and water rules. Obama made the comments Monday at a campaign fundraiser at the Capital Hilton in Washington on the eve of the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary. “Republicans in Congress and these candidates, they think...

ISTANBUL - Turkish customs officials intercepted four trucks on Tuesday suspected of carrying military equipment from Iran to Syria, a Turkish provincial governor. The governor of Kilis province said the trucks were confiscated at the Oncupinar border crossing into Syria after police received information about their cargo, according to Dogan news agency. "The four trucks were confiscated by customs. They are alleged to be carrying military equipment," Governor Yusuf Odabas said. He said experts were being sent from Ankara to examine the cargo.

How To Prepare For The Difficult Years AheadMichael SnyderJanuary10, 2012 How should people prepare for the difficult years that are coming? I get asked about that a lot. Once people really examine the facts, it is not too hard to convince them that an economic collapse is coming. But once they accept that reality, most of them want to know what they can do to prepare themselves and their families for the hard times that are ahead. Well, the truth is that it does not have to be complicated. Many of the things discussed throughout this article are things that...

The Obama administration will be asking Congress to raise the debt limit in the coming days, White House press secretary Jay Carney said on Tuesday. "I'm confident it will be executed in a matter of days, not weeks," he told reporters. The notification by the administration — which had been scheduled for last month — was delayed because Congress has been holding only pro forma sessions.

The United States is rapidly becoming the very first "post-industrial" nation on the globe. All great economic empires eventually become fat and lazy and squander the great wealth that their forefathers have left them, but the pace at which America is accomplishing this is absolutely amazing. It was America that was at the forefront of the industrial revolution. The United States has become a nation that consumes everything in sight and yet produces increasingly little.

Say it with me, readers: College is worth it.For all the bellyaching about wasted degrees and the many indebted grads stuck on their parents’ couches, recent college graduates are still doing a lot better than their less-educated counterparts. Unemployment for new graduates is around 8.9 percent; the rate for workers with only a high school diploma is nearly three times as high, at 22.9 percent.That’s according to a new report [PDF] from Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce. The report also had some fascinating statistics on earnings and jobless rates by college major, something we’ve written about before.The...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- U.S. consumers increased their debt in November by a seasonally adjusted $20.4 billion, the largest increase since November 2001, the Federal Reserve reported Monday. Monthly debt rose at a 10% annual rate in November, a much faster pace than had been expected by Wall Street economists.

Checks of banks in the European Union, Japan and the United States are to beginning early in 2012 to see if they have put the globally agreed Basel rules into practice, central bank governors said Sunday. The Group of Governors and Heads of Supervision (GHOS), the oversight body of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS), announced the checks in a statement issued after a meeting. The group agreed that the results of the tests would be made public, the statement added. … The "Basel II" capital rules for the world's biggest banks are designed to prevent a repeat of...