Free Republic

On Sunday, December 7, US lawmakers unveiled the final text of the defense policy bill, which includes record funding for national security as well as aid for Ukraine, according to Reuters, Fox News, and AOL.Media reports state that the bill allocates $901 billion for military spending for fiscal year 2026-$8 billion more than what President Donald Trump requested in May of this year.The legislation also assists Ukraine.“The legislation reauthorizes the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative at $400 million per year for fiscal years 2026 and 2027,” Fox News reports.Additionally, the US Congress will require more frequent reporting on allied contributions to...

@RepThomasMassie Republicans campaigned on reducing spending, but after the election almost all Congressmen voted to spend hundreds of billions more in 2025 and 2026 than in 2024.

Black Friday spending surged this year to new highs, fueled by record-breaking online spending that reached $11.8 billion on Black Friday alone, according to market data. Online sales made on Black Friday made up about 10% of total sales for the month of November, more than $111 billion dollars, according to Adobe Analytics’s report on holiday shopping trends. This represents a 9.1% increase in online sales compared to last year. Adobe tracks over 1 trillion U.S. retail site visits.

MOSCOW, Nov 25 (Reuters) - Russia's government is discussing different ways to prop up Russian Railways, the country's biggest commercial employer, which has built up a 4 trillion rouble ($50.8 billion) debt pile, two people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. State-owned Russian Railways, which employs about 700,000 people, has suffered a fall in revenues amid a sharp slowdown in Russia's war economy while debt costs have soared, driven by the highest interest rates in two decades. According to two people who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, Moscow has been discussing ways...

Three provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill are designed to boost worker pay and encourage business investmentNational Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett joins 'Sunday Morning Futures' to weigh in on the potential economic fallout if Trump’s tariffs are struck down in the Supreme Court and rising tensions over China’s rare-earth minerals.Democrats’ favorite word lately is "affordability." They have painted the false narrative that the election of socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani in solidly blue New York City or Democrat Gov. Abigail Spanberger in solidly blue Virginia were somehow referenda on President Donald Trump’s agenda. This fallacy not only ignores the...

Game Over DOGE: US Starts Fiscal 2025 With Record Budget Deficit, Shocking Interest Expense It was back in February, when we explained to Elon Musk why his strategy to shock the US government into spending "efficiency" through DOGE, while noble, is ultimately doomed to wit: "What Musk is doing in trying to streamline the govt is admirable but ultimately it will be Congress that decides the endgame. And there things are as status quo as always." Status quo it was indeed, and it took the world's richest man several months to realize it, and while there has been a heated...

During last week’s excruciating Oval Office make-nice between an insultingly buddy-buddy American President and a fraudulently obsequious New York City mayor-elect, the contest was over which pol was the more patronizing. At one point Trump graciously granted his petitioner permission to call him a “fascist” while clearly implying the guy’s OTT campaign rhetoric had been embarrassing. Donald Trump sat regally on his throne, patting Zohran Mamdani’s arm while commending “Attaboy!” as if petting a golden retriever that had fetched a ball. For his part, Mamdani stood mutely by the Resolute desk with cartoonish humility, hands over crotch. This cowed performance...

At least one Republican senator has said that the U.S. government cannot afford a Trump administration proposal to send out $2,000 tariff-derived rebate payments. “If we’re bringing in revenue through the tariffs, that ought to be applied to reduce the deficit, not just to make cash payments to Americans,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) told Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo on Monday. Bartiromo then told him: “It sounds like you would vote ‘no’ in terms of $2,000 checks going to individuals.” He added that “we can’t afford it” and that he wishes the U.S. government was “in a position to return the...

DoGE has been DoGE’d. The once fearsome government efficiency office has been shut down eight months before its contract officially ends in July 2026. What was supposed to be an organization that exploded traditional ways of running the federal government has turned into a damp squib. It was established by President Trump on the first day of his second term in office. Headed by Tesla chief Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy (who resigned early on to run for Ohio governor), it struck the kind of fear into government bureaucrats that a visit from the Red Guards might instill during...

It's a question that puzzles many: if every nation is in debt, who exactly holds all that money? Who is the lender? This video dives into the structure of the global financial system to answer this fundamental paradox. In this clip, wolff responds to the common confusion surrounding sovereign debt. We explore who actually buys government bonds and how national debts are created and financed. This wolff responds analysis demystifies the difference between internal and external debt. The discussion clarifies the roles of central banks, private financial institutions, and even other countries in holding this debt. This wolff responds segment...

Summary DOGE disbanded eight months ahead of scheduled end in July 2026 Former DOGE employees take new roles in administration Elon Musk initially led DOGE, promoting its work on social media WASHINGTON, Nov 23 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency has disbanded with eight months left to its mandate, ending an initiative launched with fanfare as a symbol of Trump's pledge to slash the government's size but which critics say delivered few measurable savings. "That doesn't exist," Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor told Reuters earlier this month when asked about DOGE's status. It is...

While Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government is catapulting Germany into a debt spiral, long-struggling Argentina has begun paying down its liabilities. President Javier Milei is holding up a mirror to Berlin’s debt-addicted political class -- and the reflection is one of unmistakable failure. It took Argentina’s President Milei barely six months, right in the middle of the severe economic crisis he inherited from his socialist predecessors, to clean up a completely ruined public budget. That was in June of last year. This week, the Finance Ministry in Buenos Aires reported something that, in Germany today, would probably be dismissed as fiscal...

Good question. Maybe the inflation of the Biden Regency has impacted the prices of political campaigns? Of course, Republicans don't seem to have the same issues with donors as Democrats. Nor do they have the same leftover bills that Kamala Harris left the DNC, either. DNC chair Ken Martin paints the move to tap credit as a sign of investment, but the New York Times doesn't quite buy it:The Democratic National Committee took out a $15 million loan last month to replenish its shrunken coffers before elections in Virginia and New Jersey and to keep operations fully funded entering 2026,...

This is a pretty good review of economic crashes.

Notionally, Americans have never been better off. The ructions in tech stocks over the past few weeks cannot detract from the fact that the US economy has been outgunning other developed economies all century. The overall graph of real disposable income for Americans continues to trend upward, almost as if the sharp dip during the pandemic had not happened. That is certainly not true everywhere: in many countries, Covid has been followed by stagnation in GDP and wages. Yet, for all the wealth generated, many Americans simply do not feel that they are living in a thriving country. On the...

What’s clear is that the 2024 election was not the final boss. It didn’t destroy wokeism. You have to picture the spider in The Lord of the Rings, Shelob, crawling back into her cave after being stabbed by Samwise. Is she injured? Yes. Dead? No. She will probably be back to kill you. Republicans and pundits and podcasters will come up with all sorts of reasons for the latest losses (including blaming the Jews), but it comes down to fundamentals. Ground game. Optics. And of course, “It’s the economy, stupid!” The GOP has no ground game in part because it...

Dressing up like Wolverine or Cersei Lannister is probably more fun than scouring the classifieds for menial jobs. Imagine you're a college graduate stuck in a perpetually lousy economy. That's a problem Japanese twenty-somethings have faced for more than 20 years. Two decades of stagnation after the collapse of the 1980s real-estate and stock bubbles — combined with labor laws making it tough to fire older workers — have relegated vast numbers of Japanese young adults to low-paying, temporary contract jobs. Many find themselves living with their parents well into their twenties and beyond, unmarried and childless. Then again, they...

They Designed a System You Can Never EscapeWatch here Every country on earth is in debt. The US owes $38 trillion. The planet owes $315 trillion. But if everyone owes money, who is owed? The answer will change how you see the entire financial system. WHY WATCH THIS VIDEO: (15 Mins) This video reveals the documented history of how four bankers across three centuries engineered a system where debt can never be repaid. You'll discover: ✓ How William Paterson's 1694 Bank of England charter made government debt permanent for the first time in history ✓ Why Nathan Rothschild's bond market...

“We’re gonna be issuing dividends later on, somewhere prior to — the middle of next year, a little bit later than that,” he said, noting it would include “Thousands of dollars, for individuals of moderate income.” [Scott] Bessent also floated a rough income limit of $100,000 that would disqualify higher income families from receiving the dividend.

Mississippi turns a corner, but can the federal government?The future for our state looks bright. In just the past five years, Mississippi has seen more economic growth than in the entire 15 years before that combined.We’re on track to phase out the state income tax entirely, allowing families to keep more of what they earn. Mississippi has attracted a surge of new investment, and for the first time in years, our workforce participation rate is finally heading in the right direction.Zoom out, and the picture gets even better. Contrary to the endless gloom from the pundits, the American economy has...