Free Republic

Most people have no idea that Wall Street has become a gigantic financial casino.  The big Wall Street banks are making tens of billions of dollars a year in the derivatives market, and nobody in the financial community wants the party to end.  The word "derivatives" sounds complicated and technical, but understanding them is really not that hard.  A derivative is essentially a fancy way of saying that a bet has been made.  Originally, these bets were designed to hedge risk, but today the derivatives market has mushroomed into a mountain of speculation unlike anything the world has ever...

NATO's invasion of Tripoli prompts discussion of a potential occupation of Libya where the people of Libya could experience the suffering of Iraq. Press TV talks with Jeff Steinberg, Executive Intelligence Review, in Washington who claims this is a heavy NATO invasion of Tripoli not the outcome of a civil war and that similar misery is set to befall the Libyan people as NATO moves ever toward an occupation of another oil rich Muslim country. Following is a transcript of the interview. Press TV: What do you think of the new developments in Libya? Jeff Steinberg: First of all this...

WELLINGTON (BNO NEWS) -- Heavy snow fell in many parts of the North and South Islands of New Zealand on Monday, causing major disruption, closing schools, roads and airports, the local daily New Zealand Herald reported on Tuesday. Forecasters have said that more snow is expected to strike much of the country later on Tuesday, turning the novelty into far more treacherous conditions. The blizzards have already caused a number of car accidents as well as power outages in hundreds of houses which were left in very cold conditions. Meanwhile, severe disruptions are again expected on Tuesday for schools, businesses...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Sales of new single-family homes fell 1.0% in June as purchases in the Northeast dropped to the lowest level since the government began tracking the data in 1973. Single-family sales fell last month to an annual rate of 312,000, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had expected sales to climb to an annual rate of 325,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis. Sales for May were revised slightly lower to an annual rate of 315,000. Sales of single-family homes sank 15.8% in the Northeast and 12.7% in the West. The Midwest saw sales climb 9.5%...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — U.S. home builders sharply increased construction in June, according to estimates released Tuesday by the Commerce Department. Housing starts rose 14.6% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 629,000, the highest level since January, the data showed. Details underlying the June figures were also strong. There was a large increase in starts of multifamily units and a smaller gain in starts of single-family homes, the department reported. Analysts said this will be the new trend in home building as there are more renters than buyers in the market. The report was much better than expected. Economists surveyed...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The job market is defying history. A dismal June employment report shows that employers are adding nowhere near as many jobs as they normally do this long after a recession has ended. Unemployment has climbed for three straight months and is now at 9.2 percent. There's no precedent, in data going back to 1948, for such a high rate two years into what economists say is a recovery. The economy added just 18,000 jobs in June. That's a fraction of the 90,000 jobs economists had expected and a sliver of the 300,000 jobs needed each month to...

Barack Obama has now been president for more than 29 months, yet in none of those months has a majority of Americans believed the nation’s economy is getting better rather than worse, according to the Gallup poll.In fact, in no month of Obama’s presidency has belief that the economy is getting better exceeded 41 percent among American adults, a peak it reached in April 2010 and again in January 2011.In the most recent three day-period reported by Gallup—July 1-July 3—only 31 percent of Americans said they believed the economy was getting better. Meanwhile, 63 percent said they believed it was getting worse. Each day, Gallup...

Charles and Jill Segal have not made a mortgage payment in nearly five years -- but they continue to live in their five-bedroom West Palm Beach, Fla. home. Lynn, from St. Petersburg, Fla., has been living without paying for three years. In Thousand Oaks, Calif., an actor has missed 30 payments, and still, he has not lost his home. They're not alone. Some 4.2 million mortgage borrowers are either seriously delinquent or have had their cases referred to lawyers to pursue foreclosure auctions, according to LPS Applied Analytics. Of those, two-thirds have made no payments at all for at least...

Come on. The later 1960's druggies who believed they could change the world through drugs, wild sex, and weird music came to realize they weren't changing anything -- at least in whatever sober moments they/we had. Bur we still have the music!

RATS can't STAND lower taxes. Enter at your own risk - Seven Right-Wing Ballot Initiatives That Could Ruin Your Government for Decades to Come

STOCKHOLM (AFP) – The ozone layer over Sweden was thicker in February than it has been in decades, just a year after the second-thinnest level was recorded, the Swedish meteorological institute SMHI said on Tuesday. Measurements taken at SMHI's station in Norrkoeping, just south of Stockholm, showed the ozone layer was at its thickest in February since recordings there began in 1988, with a measurement of 426 Dobson units (DU). At the Vindeln station in northern Sweden, where measurements began in 1991, a record high of 437 DU was recorded. "We have to go as far back to the measurements...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – A former CIA agent rose to the agency's No. 3 rank despite a record of misconduct that stretched over 20 years, prosecutors said, until his career came to an end with his conviction in a bribery scheme. In court papers, prosecutors describe how Kyle "Dusty" Foggo was investigated in the late 1980s for punching a bicyclist in a traffic dispute and for numerous relationships with foreign women that could have compromised security. ... Instead, Foggo is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria after pleading guilty to a single count of fraud as...

WASHINGTON – Voter turnout will be the highest in decades, dwarfing recent presidential elections, experts predict. The only question dividing experts is how huge will it be. Will it be the largest since 1968, largest since 1960 or even, as one expert predicts, the largest in a century? Soaring early voting levels hint at a big turnout, but that could just be the same voters casting ballots earlier instead of more voters hitting the polls. Weather should generally be favorable, according to forecasts. --snip-- Michael McDonald of George Mason University is so optimistic he's predicting the highest level in a...

Election Could Decide Future of Abortion for Decades Washington, DC -- The Los Angeles Times, in a weekend article clearly articulated the massive stakes for the pro-life movement in the upcoming presidential election. The newspaper confirms the importance pro-life groups have placed on the election -- saying that it could determine the fate of legal abortions for decades because of the power the next president will have to shape the Supreme Court. This is important as Barack Obama has pledged to only appoint pro-abortion judges while John McCain promises jurists who won't make up the law from the bench.

Maybe it’s a good idea. A music-themed amusement park in Eloy just might work. True, the park would be in the desert between Tucson and Phoenix with a limited available work force and limited infrastructure for large numbers of visitors. Still, there have been surprises before. Who could have predicted Branson, Missouri? But, the developers of Decades Music Theme Park want a big favor from the state. They want their park to be a “Theme Park District.” This would be a mini government agency with the ability to issue tax-free government bonds. The bonds would be paid off with a...

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan, July 18, 2007 – The war on terrorism is going to last at least another 20 to 30 years, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told American servicemembers based here today. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine Gen. Peter Pace addresses about 400 personnel attached to Combined Security Transition Command at Afghanistan Camp Eggers, Afghanistan, July 18, 2007. Defense Dept. photo by Staff Sgt. D. Myles Cullen, USAF  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Marine Gen. Peter Pace is visiting the U.S. Central Command area, and during his stop here he...

WASHINGTON -- It may take decades to change anti-American feelings around the world that have been aggravated by war in Iraq, U.S. policy toward Israel and America's "sex and violence" culture, the State Department official in charge of dealing with the U.S. image abroad said Thursday. "The anti-Americanism, the concern around the world ... this ideological struggle, it's not going to change" quickly, Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes said in an interview with The Associated Press. "It's going to be the work of years and maybe decades." Hughes, a longtime adviser to President Bush, has worked for more than a...

Great-grandmother Anna Kitner may be Tucson's top expert in the ups and downs of military life. For three generations, she's helped troops and their families through the hills and valleys. She's held their hands over flag-draped coffins and watched them return as hollow-cheeked prisoners of war. When they arrive at strange new bases with sick children in tow, she passes out toys and hugs. You couldn't pay her to do it. She works for free as one of the longest-serving civilian volunteers at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. "I've always been glad to do it because the need is so great,"...

When Correctional Officer Shayne Allyn Ziska was charged with conspiring to help prison gang members kill other inmates at the California Institution for Men, it wasn't the first time he'd been accused of misconduct. But it was the first time he faced any consequences. Ziska was convicted in February by a U.S. District Court judge on charges of conspiracy, civil rights violations and violent crime in aid of racketeering. He was sentenced last month to 17 years in federal prison. At his trial, several witnesses told how Ziska allowed inmates associated with the white supremacist Nazi Low Riders out of...

Democrats rip GOP on Social Security planBy MIKE WILSON, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 21 minutes ago DES MOINES, Iowa - The Republican plan to privatize Social Security could cause huge debt for decades, a Democratic candidate seeking a House seat in Iowa, a state with a high concentration of elderly residents, said Saturday. "If the Republican plan is allowed to pass, future generations both here and across the country will be saddled with decades of debt and no guaranteed retirement security," Bruce Braley said in the Democrats' weekly radio address. Braley, 48, a lawyer from Waterloo, faces Republican Mike...