Free Republic

A Google employee said he and his wife were both laid off by the tech giant in Friday's mass cull. Ashish Kalsi wrote on LinkedIn that they stared at each other in "disbelief" that morning as their daughter slept.Kalsi said he's on an H-1B visa and has a 60-day "countdown" to find a new role or leave the US. A Google engineer said he and his wife stared at each other in "disbelief" upon learning on Friday they'd both been laid off by the company. Ashish Kalsi, an associate principal of global engagement on Google's trust and safety team, wrote...

The December new home sales report is good news and bad news. The good news? US new home sales rose by 2.3% in December from November to 616k units sold SAAR. That is the good news. The bad news? Since December of 2021, new home sales fell -23% year-over-year (YoY). The median price of new home sales rose 7.8% YoY, but the trend as The Fed withdraws monetary stimulus (orange line) is not good. Perhaps there is a communications breakdown between the Biden Administration and The Federal Reserve.

Data show that in the first 10 months of 2022, European countries have reduced their holdings of U.S. debt by a total of $126.34 billion, while Asia has reduced its holdings by a whopping $521.38 billion. China has sold a total of $171.2 billion in U.S. debt, while Japan has sold a total of $240 million in U.S. debt. As of November 2022, the largest holders of U.S. debt are still Japan and China. Among them, Japan holds $1.0822 trillion in U.S. Treasuries, selling $14.6 billion in August alone; China has reduced its holdings of U.S. Treasuries for three consecutive...

Video @ Link........................ The decline of a currency’s world reserve status is often a long process rife with denials. There are numerous economic “experts” out there that have been dismissing any and all warnings of dollar collapse for years. They just don’t get it, or they don’t want to get it. The idea that the US currency could ever be dethroned as the defacto global trade mechanism is impossible in their minds. One of the key pillars keeping the dollar in place as the world reserve is its petro-status, and this factor is often held up as the reason why...

Today’s GDP report from the BEA reminds me of the Peggy Lee song “Is That All There Is?” Between the massive Fed monetary stimulus since late 2008 (and particularly since Covid in 2020) and all the Federal spending (Covid relief, Inflation reduction, Omnipork spending bill, etc.), US real GDP rose by only 2.9% in Q4 from Q3. But signs of slowing underlying demand mounted as the steepest interest-rate hikes in decades threaten growth this year. Gross domestic product increased at a 2.9% annualized rate in final three months of 2022 after a 3.2% gain in the third quarter, the Commerce...

Protests in at least six German cities and towns tonight opposing government policies including the decision to send tanks to Ukraine. Protesters calling for 'peace without weapons' in Ukraine rallied in the hundreds in Munich tonight... New air raid warnings in Ukraine where it's Thursday morning... "No To War" The English translation of a banner near France's National Assembly in Paris this evening. A group of protesters... In Spain an attack on churches with one killed others wounded in the 'stabbing attacks". Authorities opening a terrorism investigation. The attacker wearing a North African robe and shouting during the attack at...

The Biden administration has become notorious for pushing clearly unconstitutional bureaucratic rules in hopes of causing maximum damage before the court system has time to work.The White House’s “eviction moratorium” comes to mind. Thousands upon thousands of landlords were harmed by a federal power grab barring evictions of long-delinquent renters. Eventually, the Supreme Court stepped in to shut Biden down, but while the moratorium went away, many landlords were left financially ruined in the process.Was there even an apology given to landlords who watched lifelong investments be destroyed by non-paying renters that squatted for years on end in some states?...

Convenience store chain 7-Eleven has discovered that homeless people don’t like opera and classical music blaring in their ears as they beg for money, do drugs, or harass the locals. The practice launched in Canada and then San Francisco and several beach locales in Florida followed suit. Now, it’s a mainstream solution for business owners struggling to cope in certain neighborhoods. The immediate problem is that a whole lot of customers who buy Twinkies, lottery tickets, and slushies don’t much like that style of music either. Therein lies the rub. “Studies have shown that the classical music is annoying. Opera...

A New York Times editorial board member actually claimed that Americans should be concerned about their taxes being too low when thinking about the $31 trillion-plus national debt crisis. Yes, you read that correctly. Binyamin Appelbaum, The Times editorial board’s so-called “lead writer on economics and business” argued that the government is actually a victim in the debt crisis that it created. “The Real Debt Crisis Is Low Taxes,” read the headline of his nonsensical Jan. 25 op-ed. It seems he realized just how stupid his headline sounded as The Times later changed the headline entirely, making it appear more...

There appears to be a trend going on at liberal video programming distributor DirecTV. The company dropped Newsmax from its channel lineup just months after it nixed One America News from the platform. Newsmax reported Jan. 25 that DirecTV “cut” the outlet’s “signal, immediately shutting the network off from more than 13 million customers of the satellite service, DirecTV Stream, and U-Verse." Newsmax said it was “seeking a fee with a 75% discount to its market value, and compared to fees currently paid by DirecTV, almost all 50 channels below Newsmax in ratings get higher fees.” Newsmax Media CEO Christopher...

Its just like The Federal Reserve to be cutting US money growth as US jobs cuts accelerate. The latest US money growth numbers are out and they are daunting. M2 Money growth YoY is now negative at -1.8%. M1 money, a narrower defition of money, is now down -3.6% YoY. This is happening as the labor market is seeing a wave of layoffs. We are just the stepping stone for The Fed. As The Fed ponders inflation versus job growth, its a case of “Him or Me, What’s it going to be?”

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif) rejected President Biden's demand for a "clean" debt ceiling hike, saying "cramming a bloated federal spending package through during the 'lame duck' session showed total disrespect for the American people's concerns about government overspending. The Republican majority in the House intends to give these concerns a fair hearing. Fending off bankruptcy should be a bipartisan effort." Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen called the Republicans' focus on the national debt "naive. The federal government isn't your random seeker of borrowed money. It is the most powerful organization on the planet. It can crush any opposition--foreign...

Amid the brouhaha over President Joe Biden’s improper retention of classified documents and concerns that his son, Hunter Biden, had access to them, a 2018 form on which Hunter Biden claims to have spent nearly $50,000 a month on rent surfaced from the presidential son’s abandoned laptop. On it, Hunter Biden lists his father’s Wilmington house as his address, raising questions about whether he was using rent payments to pass money to his father. The money, $49,910, was actually a reference to rental payment for a Washington, D.C., office space used by Hunter Biden. But the story of the document...

U.S. oil refining margins, also known as the 3-2-1 crack spread, jumped to a three-month high on Tuesday — and that’s an indication the country faces an ongoing product shortage that might lead to higher gasoline and diesel prices at the pump. The 3-2-1 crack spread is a great indicator to gauge fuel product tightness. High spreads indicate gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and other petroleum products are in short supply, while low spreads mean an abundance of supply. Spread direction is also important — if rising, it would mean fuel inventories are declining. The simple calculation of refining margins is...

Justin Bieber has sold all his peaches. The 28 year old pop star becomes the youngest of all music performers to sell the entire rights to his songs. The buyer is Hipgnosis, the very hot firm that has bought out catalogs of much older stars for more money and with more material. Universal Music Group will own Bieber’s master recordings. But all the songs like “Peaches” and “”Love Yourself” will be owned by Hipgnosis, including parts of songs he wrote with other people. The price is $200 million, which after taxes and paying all the lawyers involved, and maintaining Bieber’s...

They think they are being clever. But they aren't. This week, Democrats in states across America — Washington, California, and New York in particular — are proposing wealth taxes modeled after the federal wealth tax originally proposed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). These taxes are nothing like the taxes you are used to. Instead of taxing a stream of income — the sensible, rational way to raise money for government, from available income streams — they focus on wealthy people and attempt to take a portion off the top of their overall net worth each year. They do not care...

The base level 14-inch M2 MacBook Pro reportedly has a slower SSD than its predecessor, according to tests done by 9to5Mac. In BlackMagic’s Disk Speed Test, the 512GB SSD in Apple’s latest flagship achieved read speed scores of around 2,970 MB/s and write speed scores of around 3,150 MB/s, compared to 4,900 MB/s reads and 3,950 MB/s writes that the M1 Pro with a 512GB SSD was capable of. A previous-generation 14-inch MacBook Pro with a potentially faster SSD than the the latest models. A previous-generation 14-inch MacBook Pro with a potentially faster SSD than the the latest models. ©...

The Chinese Embassy in the African nation of Zambia telling the US to get its own house in order when it comes to debt... The UN Special Envoy for Haiti says that an international force must be deployed there... "They've been asleep for a year. NATO is pouring advisors and weapons into Ukraine to counter a massive Russian invasion. There is no real diplomatic effort. Does anyone in the west or in Russia-think Putin would accept defeat without using nukes?" The opinion of Ezra Levant of Rebel News as the "Bulletin of Atomic Scientists" moved their "Doomsday Clock" 10 seconds...

The sky seems to be perpetually falling if you ask Democrats, journalists, and even some Republicans, and the current fiscal fight in the House seems to be no exception.Joe Biden and the Democrats are adamant that a clean debt ceiling increase has to happen or else the consequences will be dire. Mitch McConnell, the GOP leader in the Senate, is only telling reporters “We will not default.” But in the House, Republicans are poised to force a lengthy battle over the debt ceiling and potential cuts to the federal budget.That puts House Speaker Kevin McCarthy somewhere he may not be...

Have legitimate concerns about the national debt? Well, you may just be one of those GOP “economic terrorists,” according to New York Times bloviator-in-chief Paul Krugman. Krugman’s Jan. 19 column spewed bile at GOP congressional members seeking spending concessions from President Joe Biden on the debt ceiling issue. “Don’t Try to Appease Economic Terrorists,” the headline read. Yes, Krugman actually used the word “terrorists.” [Emphasis added.] He sugar-coated the issue falsely claiming that raising the debt ceiling “simply allows the government to honor its promises, which include everything from paying interest on its debt to sending checks to Social Security...