Free Republic

This is life under Joe Biden. Record sovereign risk, record high debt, near 40-year highs in inflation, a hot war in Ukraine with Russia, failure of DOJ/FBI to do anything about the content of Hunter Biden’s laptop, repression of free speech, soaring crime, out of control borders. Should I keep going? It is a disastrous mess created by Obama/Biden and their creepy allies. US sovereign risk just hit 130, the highest since CDS was recorded. This alligns with Biden/Congress massive borrow and spend policies where Federal debt has soared to it highest level in history. Inflation, while cooling, remains high....

On April 26, 2021, we predicted the current inflation before it began. Now we are predicting an upcoming stock market crash, and we even know the date that it will take place. Interviewer Margaret Brennan and European Central Bank President Christine LaGarde gave the date away during their conversation on "Face the Nation" on April 16: MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to ask you about the US. And it’s not a political question, it’s an economic one. But there are predictions that the US could default in its national debt as soon as June, some say September, and we have a...

1,212 watching now Started streaming 2 hours ago #paris #protests #englishnewslive Barricades Set On Fire In Paris As Pension Reform Protests Turn Violent | Paris Pension Protest News Protesters angered by the French government's surprise move to force through its pension reform clashed with riot police in Paris on Thursday evening as barricades of garbage bins and trash were set on fire in the streets. #paris #protests #englishnewslive #cnnnews18live #news18live n18oc_world link u tube linkius

Are you ready? Despite cries from Summers, Yellen and other the DC illuminati (Biden is oddly silent), US banks are NOT fine. In fact, banks in general are suffering from Fed rates increases due to holding of long-term Treasuries and MBS. In fact, The Federal Reserve’s fight against inflation is causing serious problems, as exemplified by AOC. No, not THAT AOC. but bank Accumulated Other Comprehensive Income. Accumulated Other Comprehensive Income (AOCI) are special gains and losses that are listed as special items in the shareholder equity section of a company’s balance sheet. The AOCI account is the designated space...

As the country heads towards a debt ceiling showdown later this summer, a dangerous idea is gaining currency. It is that the U.S. Constitution makes debt default impossible. This idea risks breeding complacency among our politicians about the economic and financial market dangers associated with the debt ceiling standoff that lie ahead. The essence of the idea is that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution unequivocally states that “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law . . . shall not be questioned.” If the debt ceiling were breached, so the idea goes, the government...

The last US debt crisis occured in 2013 when Congress finally raised the debt ceiling … and kept on borrowing and spending, But if you thought that a debt crisis would scare Congress (and the Administration) into balancing the Federal budget, you would be wrong. In fact, since the 2013 debt crisis, Federal debt is up 88% (+$14.7 TRILLION over the last 10 years). And with the massive growth in Federal debt under Obama, Trump and Biden has resulted in an explosion in interest payments on the Federal debt. And with $182 TRILLION in UNFUNDED liabilities, the debt issuance won’t...

South of the border, down Mexico (and Guatemala) way. What a mess in Washington DC. While House Republicans are at lagerheads with Senate Democrats and Resident Biden over Federal spending cuts, the price of insuring against a debt default just rose to 76.75. How bad it that? Put it this way. Millions are fleeing Mexico and Guatemala and coming to the US. But Mexico has a lower cost of insuring against a debt default than the USA. And Guatemala is almost as expensive as the USA. It will all be over soon, according to CDS prices. Maybe the USA needs...

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that “there will not be a default” while discussing raising the federal debt ceiling while controlling government spending. Partial transcript as follows: MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to get to some of the top agenda items. You have accepted an invitation to meet with President Biden. When will that happen, and what offer will you put on the table? MCCARTHY: Well, we’re going to meet this Wednesday. I know the President said he didn’t want to have any discussions, but I think it’s very important that our whole government...

Despite polticians like President Biden cheerleading his great economic accomplishments and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen dipping into Social Security to fund the Federal government (much like Biden’s dipping into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve), there are serious problems facing America’s middle class and low-wage workers. Inflation is still brutal (but slowing) and REAL weekly earnings growth has been negative for 21 straight months (meaning that Biden’s bragging about wage growth has been destroyed by the inflation created by his energy policies and massive spending sprees). Personal spending rate YoY has plunged -53.5% to cope with inflation. To quote Joe Biden (Chauncy...

While the children in Congress and the Administration argue about cutting the Fedcral budget (as if there isn’t trillions of dollars of wasteful spending in the budget), we saw an ever dumber suggestion from Pramila Jayapal (WA-D), Adam (Shifty) Schiff (CA-D) and Sheila Jackson Lee (TX-D): a bill to eliminate the debt ceiling altogether to allow unlimited Federal spending. That reminds me of the Tom Arnold/Julie Ford film “The Stupids.” Yet these clowns keep getting re-elected. In any case, The Federal Reserve’s quantitative-tightening program risks being propelled toward an early end as US politicians bicker in Washington over raising the...

Ah, the start of a new week with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen arguing (with a straight face) that there is no room in the Federal budget for cuts. Apparenly, Yellen never read any of the massive, pork-laden spending bills signed by Biden (no one else did in Congress either, nor did Biden). Let’s start with the US credit default swap (1 year). It remains high at 68.72 (the price of insuring against a US default). And the US Treasury yield curve (10Y-3M)? It remains deeply inverted at -114 basis points this morning signaling an impending US recession. Then we have...

Its a sign of the times! First, US default risk as measured by credit default swaps remains elevated (primarily because Biden and Democrats refused to cut wasteful spending or reign in non-retirees on Social Security). And NY Fed’s Reverse Repos remain elevated. And then we have Citi’s economic surprise index for the US at -17 as The Fed slows money growth to 0%. I wish I knew a place where inflation and insane Federal government spending and policies doesn’t exist. Joe Biden was in California and had a secret meeting with Nancy Pelosi’s nephew Gavin Newsome. Is Joe replacing Kamala...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Thursday he is confident that the U.S. will never default on its debt and that he is not concerned a financial crisis could be on the horizon. McConnell told reporters in his home state that while the push to raise the debt ceiling is “always a rather contentious effort,” he believes lawmakers will succeed at doing so before the Treasury exhausts its “extraordinary measures” in June. “No, I would not be concerned about a financial crisis,” McConnell told a gaggle of reporters following an event at the University of Louisville to discuss disaster...

Newly-minted US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy faces a daunting task: trying to avoid a US debt default. As I have discussed many times before, nothing has been the same since the US housing bubble and near-collapse of the banking system that produced an expensive bailout of seemingly all financial institutions. After 2008, Federal spending has gone out of control. The budgetary hawks (or pigeons) in the US House of Representatives (with Pelosi, Boehner, Ryan then Pelosi again) went on Federal spending sprees of epic proportions. The Manhattan Institute has a nice chart showing the explosion in the Federal budget since...

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) issued a joint statement Friday calling on Congress to avoid a potential default “forced by extreme MAGA Republicans,” the opening salvo in what will be a months-long battle over raising the federal debt limit. Lawmakers in both parties predict the Democratic-controlled White House and Senate are headed for a showdown with newly elected Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) over the debt limit after McCarthy pledged to House conservatives last week to attach spending reforms to debt limit legislation. Schumer and Jeffries called on Republicans to move quickly on...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen notified Congress on Friday that the U.S. is projected to reach its debt limit on Thursday and will then resort to “extraordinary measures” to avoid default. In a letter to House and Senate leaders, Yellen said her actions will buy time until Congress can pass legislation that will either raise the nation’s $31.4 trillion borrowing authority or suspend it again for a period of time. Those measures include divesting some payments, such as contributions to federal employees’ retirement plans, in order to provide some headroom to make other payments that are deemed essential,...

Belarus said on Wednesday it was unable to repay its foreign currency-denominated debt due to sanctions imposed on it by the European Union and the United States. The World Bank said on Monday it had placed all loans made by its main lending arm to Belarus into "nonperforming" status effective immediately.

Traditional debt crisis signs of crashing currencies, 1,000 basis point bond spreads and burned FX reserves point to a record number of developing nations now in trouble. Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Russia, Suriname and Zambia are already in default, Belarus is on the brink and at least another dozen are in the danger zone as rising borrowing costs, inflation and debt all stoke fears of economic collapse. Totting up the cost is eyewatering. Using 1,000 basis point bond spreads as a pain threshold, analysts calculate $400 billion of debt is in play. Argentina has by far the most at over $150...

When many people feel disconnected from their social environment they become prone to fanatical belief in an unreasonable narrative, creating favorable conditions for the emergence of a totalitarian state, said Mattias Desmet, a professor of clinical psychology. The psychological phenomenon where individuals who feel disconnected from their natural and social environment and experience purposelessness in life start to fanatically believe in a certain narrative—even if it is absurd—is a specific kind of group formation called mass formation, Desmet told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program on June 16. The individuals in the grip of the mass formation are blind to the...

Russia was poised to default on its foreign debt for the first time since 1918, pushed into delinquency not for lack of money but because of punishing Western sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine. Russia was likely to miss payments on two foreign-currency bonds late Sunday, according to holders of the bonds who had yet to see funds deposited. The day marks the elapse of a 30-day grace period since the country was due to pay the equivalent of $100 million in dollars and euros to bondholders.