Free Republic

A $409 million tab projected for retiree benefit costs looms for the cash-strapped St. Paul Public Schools. Some on the school board are urging the district to tackle the liability more aggressively. But officials say there's little they can do to put a dent in the costs, which have bumped up tax bills and diverted money from the classroom. St. Paul recently started socking away money to help cover the benefits, slated to sunset in 2014. But the investment came later and started out smaller than planned, and recent market turmoil chipped away at it. "I feel we're throwing a...

Since 1976, every time the GOP has run a RINO for president, the party has suffered an ignominious defeat – against a peanut farmer in ’76, a serial lecher in ’92 and a Marxist in 2008. But Mitt Romney isn’t taking any chances. Should he secure the nomination, his primary campaign will ensure his defeat in November – 9% unemployment, a national debt hurtling toward the abyss, socialism and surrender notwithstanding.

Solar failuresThe Orange County Register December 29, 2011 10:03 AM Sooner or later, the laws of economics prevail, even in heavily subsidized industries like solar power. The latest evidence that government manipulation cannot overcome economic reality is the decision by BP PLC, the giant British energy company, to leave the solar power business. BP has developed solar energy for 40 years and for more than a decade touted its “Beyond Petroleum” campaign. The Wall Street Journal suggested, however, that BP’s solar experiment was more gimmick than serious investment. BP spent millions trying to go green, but simultaneously spent billions on...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Oh, jeez. I just heard something. You know, I really like Dana Perino. Maybe I ought to stop there. Greetings, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome. It's Rush Limbaugh from high atop the EIB Building at the EIB Southern Command in a hidden location heavily fortified here in South Florida. The telephone number if you want to be on the program, 800-282-2882. The e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com. Well, she said she was listening to Huntsman yesterday, heard Huntsman say that the country is screwed. She said, (paraphrasing) "That's not presidential. That's not the way we want to talk, to...

Call it the Big Selloff—America is headed toward a future in which fewer people own the spaces they call home. The effective homeownership rate, which excludes borrowers whose homes are underwater, stands at 62 percent, down from 69 percent in 2006, according to a 2010 report by the New York Federal Reserve. As more people move from owning to renting, apartment vacancy rates have fallen fast, from 8 percent in 2009 to 5.6 percent in third quarter 2011. That’s pushed up rents in all markets by 2.5 percent, including apartments and single-family homes, to an average of $846 nationwide, according...

The dollar is losing value, but this fact is not just some recent phenomenon. In case you missed the charts comparing the decline of the US dollar to the Roman silver denarius, what they show is that the US dollar has, over the course of the last one hundred years, experienced a steady decline amounting to about a 95% loss in purchasing power, closely mimicking the fall of the world’s reserve currency circa the 2nd and 3rd centuries. Every single day our central bank and the US government utilize the stealth tax known as inflation to make you poorer by...

Explanation of the debt limit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li0no7O9zmE

HOISINGTON: NO WAY TO AVOID RECESSION IN 2012 21 December 2011 by Cullen Roche The great bond fund manager, Van Hoisington, is joining the growing list of those calling for recession in 2012. In a recent interview with Barrons he says 2012 is a year of global recession that the USA will not be immune to it: “Our expectation is that we are going to enter another recession next year, when we haven’t really fully recovered from the previous one. We think we are in what Niall Ferguson, a Harvard historian, recently termed a slight depression. This isn’t a normal...

This new intercontinental ballistic missile, nicknamed "Satan" by Western analysts, will sport a 100-ton warhead and replace the Voevoda-class missile in the Russian nuclear arsenal, according to recent news reports. This massive ICBM will take its place alongside the Yars, Topol-M and Bulava-class ballistic missiles sometime in 2015, according to Sergei Karakaev, head of Russia's Strategic Missile Forces. Development of the new ICBM will coincide with plans to revamp the country's missile silo complexes over the next decade, Karakaev told Russian media. Moscow's decision to accelerate work on the new "Satan"-class ICBM was directly tied to recently failed missile defense...

Given a lot of the rhetoric coming out of Washington and mainstream media outlets these days, one could be forgiven for believing that the United States has entered a new age of unprecedented austerity. This is hardly the case. Indeed, despite the best efforts of an insurgent Republican majority in the House of Representatives — elected in 2010 as a rebuke to Democratic fiscal recklessness — federal spending continues to rise.

LIMA, Peru (AP) -- Peru's government abused its authority by barring paroled U.S. activist Lori Berenson and her 31-month-old son from leaving the country to spend the holidays in New York City with her family, her lawyer charged Saturday. "Administratively, you can't block a court order," Anibal Apari said after Berenson told The Associated Press that she and her son Salvador were prevented from boarding a flight Friday night despite being granted permission in court.

More Upside For Gold As Government Spending Continues Unabated By Bill Bonner 12/16/11 Baltimore, Maryland – Have yourself a merry little depression. Dow up 45 points. Gold down $9. We’re still waiting for a major correction in the gold market. Each time one begins, it seems to run out of steam before doing any real damage. At yesterday’s closing price, $1,577, gold is still solidly ahead for the year. So, where’s the soft spot? Where’s the test? Where will it come from? When? Don’t worry, dear reader, Mr. Market will test us. He’ll throw his curve ball. We have to...

Fitch just downgraded a bunch of global banks, including Bank of America and Goldman Sachs. Fitch cited “increased challenges the financial markets face,” including a rocky economy and regulatory risk.

President Barack Obama said Tuesday he wishes he knew the full extent of the economic crisis when he took office, if only so he could have let Americans know just how tough the coming years would be. "I think we understood that it was bad, but we didn’t know how bad it was,” Obama said in an interview with KIRO in Seattle. "I think I could have prepared the American people for how bad this was going to be, had we had a sense of that." Obama’s comments came as he sat down with a string of local TV reporters...

Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday ordered $1 billion in midyear cuts to California's budget that will result in pain for students who rely on school buses to get to class, mothers who depend on child care subsidies to keep working and support programs for the developmentally disabled. Brown, a Democrat, said that the state's revenues will fall about $2.2 billion below the $88.4 billion he and state lawmakers had hoped for when they passed the budget last summer. The announcement was not surprising and could have been worse. The state's legislative analyst had predicted revenues would fall $3.7 billion below...

Hendry's 'China Short' Fund Makes Big Returns Published: Monday, 12 Dec 2011 | 9:08 PM ET By: Sam Jones, Hedge Fund Correspondent Shorting the credit of companies positioned to do badly from a Chinese slowdown has proved to be one of the hedge fund industry’s most successful trades of 2011. Hugh Hendry, the outspoken U.K. hedge fund manager known for his bearish, often contrarian views on the global economy, has seen his ‘China short’ fund rack up gains of more than 52 percent so far this year, investors have told the Financial Times. The gains compare to a loss for...

The 17 eurozone states and six other EU countries agreed early Friday to create a new treaty that will allow them to introduce stricter fiscal rules in the hope of containing a worsening debt crisis, but Britain's prime minister immediately threatened to block the new accord. The failure to get agreement among all 27 members of the European Union at a summit meeting in Brussels reflected in large part a deep split between France and Germany on the one hand and Britain on the other. France and Germany are the two largest economies in the eurozone; Britain does not use...

You're on the trading floor, trying to price out if a 15-year bond issued by General Electric will generate the returns needed to placate your investors. Bad news, your calculator is dead and the trader from Cantor Fitzgerald is readying to signal his buy. What to do? Well, if all you need to do is double the investment in five-years, you're in luck. That's probably not the case, and GE probably isn't issuing 15-year debt. But we compiled a list of six math tricks that might just come in handy. If you have a math trick you'd like us to...

Major news networks have all rejected two animated television spots developed by Phoenix-based Swiss America Trading Corp. depicting Ben Bernanke and President Obama printing money with abandon, and promoting ownership of gold and silver as protection against this policy. The ads have been rejected by Fox, Fox Business, CNBC, NBC, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, & the Discovery Channel.

It is, said the foreign minister whose country holds the EU presidency, "the edge of a precipice the scariest moment of my ministerial life." The chief executives of Shell, Unilever and Phillips called it "one minute to midnight." Even the EU's own financial affairs commissioner, Olli Rehn, says Europe only has ten days to stop the euro falling apart. By this coming Friday, the ninth of those ten days, the continent's leaders are supposed to have agreed a plan that satisfies the markets and gives their tottering currency a future. They have tried, and failed, three times this year already....