Free Republic

Hillary Rodham Clinton pointed to the 1990s as a time of broad-based prosperity under her husband, former President Bill Clinton, contrasting it Friday with policies under Republicans that she said promoted tax cuts for the wealthy and the emergence of “an entire shadow banking system.” The potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidate offered her most extensive remarks on the economy since departing the State Department as the nation’s top diplomat, portraying her husband’s two terms in the White House as a period of steady job growth and opportunity for many Americans. …

As home prices have soared in cities around the country, sales have cratered. The weather has been blamed, though the weather has been gorgeous in California where sales have crashed too, even in temporary boom town San Francisco. The “lack of inventory” and other excuses have been dragged out as well. In reality, homes have gotten too expensive.... Even for hedge funds, private equity funds, REITs, and other forms of Big Money with access to the Fed’s limitless free juice. They’d become powerful buyers over the last two years, gobbling up vacant homes sight-unseen by the thousands, in order to...

China's economy accelerated more than expected in the first quarter, while consumer and wholesale inflation -- though mixed -- indicated a broadly rising trend, stoking further concerns of economic overheating in the world's third-largest economy. Gross domestic product rose 11.9% from the year-ago period, accelerating from 10.7% in the last quarter of 2009. The expansion was the fastest in nearly three years. On the inflation front, March's consumer price index was 2.4% higher than a year earlier, easing slightly from a 2.7% rise in February. Dow Jones Newswires and Reuters had each published surveys expecting a 2.6% rise in the...

The Chinese central bank has a significant advantage over the U.S. Federal Reserve. Chairman Ben Bernanke and his cohort may print a lot of money (and they did), but there's almost nothing they can do to speed the velocity of money. They simply cannot force banks to lend without nationalizing them (and only the government-sponsored enterprises have been nationalized). They also cannot force corporations and consumers to spend. Since China isn't a democracy, it doesn't suffer these problems. China's communist government owns a large part of the money-creation and money-spending apparatus. Money supply therefore shot up 28.5 percent in June....

A reporter contacted me recently with the following question: "I am a reporter, and I am doing a story on Bernard Madoff's life after pleading guilty. As part of this, I was wondering if you could comment on what significance he will have in the history of this period. Will he represent more than a scamster who stole a lot of money from a lot of people? As Bernie Ebbers and Ken Lay came to embody corporate greed and deceit, what will Madoff symbolize?" Americans lived in a "Made-off" and Ponzi bubble economy for a decade or even longer. Madoff...

In the latest sign that officials in Beijing are serious about reining in rampant inflation, China tightened controls on food prices Wednesday, requiring producers to seek government approval to implement any price increases. According to an official Xinhua news report posted on the government's English-language Web site, China's top economic planner announced price controls on a package of products, including grain, edible oil, meat, milk, eggs and liquefied petroleum gas. "Major enterprises are required to submit the price-raising scheme to the government for official approval 10 working days before they intend to raise the prices," said the National Development and...

WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- Democrats hoping to use the issue of job losses to other countries against President Bush were given some fodder when Gregory Mankiew, the President's chief economic adviser suggested that outsourcing was "probably a plus for the economy in the long run." Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) said that, if elected, he would require companies that ship jobs offshore to tell the Labor Department and the workers when, where, and why the jobs are moving. "Companies will no longer be able to surprise their workers with a pink slip instead of a paycheck," Kerry said....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan defended himself Saturday against a criticism of his tenure, saying policy-makers would have damaged the economy in the late 1990s had they tried to burst that era's speculative stock market bubble. "The notion that a well-timed incremental tightening could have been calibrated to prevent the late 1990s bubble while preserving economic stability is almost surely an illusion," Greenspan said in a speech to the American Economic Association's annual meeting in San Diego. A copy of his remarks was distributed in Washington. Greenspan previously has defended the Fed's handling of the high-flying stock...