Free Republic

Steering the utility from the brink of bankruptcy justified a $1.7 million raise for its CEO, the company said. Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc. and its subsidiaries faced torrents of bad news in 2024. Federal investigators found the company’s equipment had started the Lahaina wildfire that killed 102 people and destroyed most of the historic town. The company agreed to pay $1.9 billion to settle hundreds of lawsuits blaming it for the fire. Legislative measures to help bail out the company stalled. The bottom line: a net loss of $1.4 billion for the company. [Caption] Hawaiian Electric Industries, whose equipment sparked...

SALEM - Salem is the latest city in Massachusetts to test out a guaranteed income program that would give thousands of dollars directly to its poorest residents. The Uplift Salem initiative will give $500 a month to 100 Salem residents for an entire year. There's no restrictions on how recipients can spend the income. "We want Salem to be an affordable place for everyone, and a guaranteed income program offers an innovative approach to help achieve that goal," Salem Mayor Dominick Pangallo said in a statement.

KEY TAKEAWAYS Biden’s unprecedented freezing of U.S. dollars owned by a foreign central bank has fundamentally jeopardized the currency’s hard-won reserve status. Janet Yellen dropped a bombshell last year, casually admitting that not only is de-dollarization happening, but Americans should expect more. At a minimum, it’d be multiple years of double-digit inflation like we’re used to seeing in third world countries. At worst, it’d be a full-blown Weimar Republic. America’s political establishment has less respect for the U.S. dollar than our foreign adversaries. That was made clear when Tucker Carlson recently interviewed the Russian strongman President Vladimir Putin, who clearly...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) special agents along with Colombian customs inspectors and Colombian National Police (CNP) officers seized approximately $11.2 million Wednesday at the port of Buenaventura, Colombia. The seizure was the result of a joint investigation conducted by the CNP and ICE Attaché Bogota. The U.S. currency was hidden in two shipping containers, each containing 20 big bags filled with ammonium sulfate. Sixteen of the 40 bags contained $700,000 in $20 dollar bill denominations. The containers departed from the port of Manzanillo, Mexico, destined to the west coast port of Buenaventura, Colombia. According to...

CNBC personality Rick Santelli said on Thursday’s “Squawk Box” that it takes a $1.19 to buy what a dollar bought before the coronavirus pandemic. Santelli said, “Our Consumer Price Index read for the month of December by Bureau of Labor Statistics expected to be up 0.2% up 0.3%. And if you strip out food and energy, it is exactly as expected, which is up 0.3%.” He continued, “Let’s go along here. Year over year, CPI is expected to be up 3.2. It’s up 3.4. The best it’s been was 3.0 in June of last year. That is the best since...

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that none of the $6 billion released by the U.S. for humanitarian aid in Iran was used to help fund Hamas’ attack against Israel on Saturday, which resulted in hundreds of deaths. Anchor Dana Bash said, “While we’re talking about Iran, I have to ask you to, if you want to respond to what we’re hearing from Republicans who are over and over since this happened using word appeasement when it comes to Iran and they criticized the decision to unfreeze $6 billion in Iranian funds. I...

Your control of your money is about to be ripped away from you. Biden’s been busy resurrecting a government program that was the brainchild of Obama. His plan cannot be stopped even if he loses the 2024 election. You are running out of time to protect yourself. The plan is to take away control of all your cash. In the past few weeks, you’ve probably seen the news of banks collapsing in America and around the rest of the world. First, Silicon Valley bank, then Silvergate, Credit Suisse, and more. These bank collapses have paved the way for the government...

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Friday said he “was advised” that he did not have to disclose a series of trips reportedly paid for by a Republican mega-donor. The trips, which were revealed on Thursday by a ProPublica investigation, led to outrage from Democrats and judicial watchdog groups. COURT BATTLES Clarence Thomas says he ‘was advised’ he didn’t have to disclose trips paid for by GOP donor BY ZACH SCHONFELD - 04/07/23 11:26 AM ET SHARE TWEET Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Friday said he “was advised” that he did not have to disclose a series of trips...

Ukraine needs from 40 to 48 billion US dollars in financing to support the economy in 2023, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said.She also noted that the IMF is working on a program with Ukraine and supports it in conducting a “war economy”. The work is being carried out jointly with the USA and the EU.The IMF chief previously described the invasion of Ukraine as the “single most important negative factor” for the economy in 2022.

Emerging markets are burning through stockpiles of U.S. dollars and other foreign currency at the fastest rate since 2008, raising the risk of a wave of defaults across the world’s most fragile economies. Emerging and developing nations’ foreign reserves have shrunk by $379 billion this year through June, according to data from the International Monetary Fund. Excluding the effects of exchange-rate fluctuations and the large foreign-exchange holdings of China and Gulf oil exporters, emerging markets are seeing the biggest drawdowns since 2008 according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.

While the Zimbabwe dollar has been allowed to gradually weaken from parity with the greenback in February 2019 to 112.80 to the dollar today, it trades at over 200 to the dollar on the black market, stoking inflation. The local currency slid 3.68% at the first auction of the year to 112.80 per U.S. dollar, according to data provided by the central bank. That’s the largest decline in two months.Source: BloombergThe black market ZimDollar trades at 240/USDAs Bloomberg reports, business has said it is at the receiving end of the currency rate disparity. It struggles to obtain the foreign currency...

President Joe Biden continued pushing a new White House talking point that claimed his $3.5 trillion spending agenda actually cost “zero dollars.” “My Build Back Better Agenda costs zero dollars,” a post from Biden’s Twitter account read on Saturday.

The US Federal Reserve took a step toward developing a digital currency as it announced plans to publish a research paper on the subject. The aim is to gather public comment and get the US play a "leading role" in the development of international standards, said Fed chairman Jerome Powell in a video message. "To help stimulate broad conversation, the Federal Reserve Board will issue a discussion paper this summer outlining our current thinking on digital payments, with a particular focus on the benefits and risks associated with CBDC in the U.S. context," Powell said. "As part of this process,...

The eight-member countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), including China, Russia, and Pakistan, have made the principle decision to conduct bilateral trade and investment and issue bonds in local and national currencies instead of US dollars.

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So far as I can tell the only Bloomberg among all US MSM have published any news reports on the $135 billion of US bearer bonds being smuggled by two Japanese businessmen from Italy into Switzerland. This story has raised many interesting and important questions, to which there have been no answers yet. But there is another interesting and important question I haven't seen discussed. Why, when major European and Japanese media have reported it, have none of the US MSM done so? I can think of only two reasons: 1) the story is now known to be only an...

Hundreds of millions of dollars in cash has been shipped from Russia to Venezuela, providing a lifeline to the South American country as U.S. sanctions limit its access to the global financial system. A total of $315 million of U.S. dollar and euro notes were sent in six separate shipments from Moscow to Caracas from May 2018 to April 2019, according to data reviewed by Bloomberg from ImportGenius, which compiled Russian customs records it obtains through private sources. ...As a consequence of the scrutiny, the central bank is conducting more transactions in cash, sometimes offering local clients access to euro...

Austin tax dollars to city election campaign dollars has some concerned about the legality of so called "Democracy dollars" An Austin commission is kicking around the idea of giving taxpayer dollars to residents who would then donate the money to local political candidates. Fred Lewis of the Charter Commission calls it the democracy dollars program. The program was created in Seattle and is so far the only US city with such a program. The commission’s Fred Lewis explained its to combat major donors from dominating elections. Each voter could get 50 bucks for each city race they can vote in....

On paper it’s called a “book deal”, “film rights” etc. The reality is that former FBI Director James Comey, a man who most believe lied under oath, leaked classified information, and turned the power of the FBI against POTUS Trump in order to secure a now far-reaching special counsel investigation, is being rewarded by the Deep State for a job well done to the tune of tens millions of dollars. Not bad for a guy whose FBI salary was $172,000 per year. James Comey is now a multi-millionaire. Here’s just one of many headlines from last week: James Comey Has...

1 Bitcoin equals 2251.00 U.S. dollars, and 1 ounce of Gold is 1.260.85 U.S. dollars.  https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=bitcoin+price&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 and http://goldprice.org/live-gold-price.html   How is that bit coin is more valuable than gold?