Free Republic

The U.S. Geological Survey reported a 3.8 magnitude earthquake at 6:15 a.m. centered on the northeastern edge of West Seneca, near the Lackawanna border. Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said shortly after 6:30 a.m. that he had spoken with his county emergency services department and confirmed the initial reports showed the quake had been "felt as far north as Niagara Falls and as south as Orchard Park." Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown told WBEN Radio that no injuries have been reported. “It was a heavy vibration that shook the whole house. It was crazy,” said Jim LiPuma of Academy Road.

Panic has begun to sweep the sub-prime mortgage sector in the United States after the bankruptcy of 22 lenders over the past two months, setting off mass liquidation of housing loans packaged as securities... ...The rapid deterioration could not come at a worse time for British bank HSBC, which has set aside $10.5bn (£5.4bn) to cover bad loans in the US... ...The cost of insuring against default on these loans has rocketed in recent weeks, from 50 basis points over Libor to 1,200, raising fears that a credit crunch could spread to the rest of the property market. Low-grade BBB-rated...

Can the Second Coming of Paul Volcker Save the Dollar? Thoughts on the eve of high level talks in Beijing by Antal E. Fekete, Professor, Intermountain Institute for Science and Applied Mathematics "Dismal Monetary Science" December 14, 2006 History replaying One of the most frequently asked questions from my readers is the title above. Conventional gold-bug wisdom holds that in 1979 the new Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker, raised interest rates drastically, thereby putting an end to the galloping inflation then raging, and aborting the bull market in gold. Volcker’s high-interest policies are credited with the feat of...

Judy Ettenhofer: Gore's 'Truth' needs to be acted upon now By Judy Ettenhofer, June 21, 2006 When "Fahrenheit 9/11," the Michael Moore screen diatribe against our current president, arrived in Madison theaters shortly before the 2004 presidential election, people sympathetic to its message couldn't get enough of it. They flocked to screenings and breathlessly implored their friends to see the movie that bolstered all their reasons for hating George W. Bush. It is my profound hope that the same kind of passionate evangelism occurs as a result of a much, much more crucial film that arrived at Westgate and Eastgate...

WASHINGTON - Consumer borrowing fell in November for a second straight month, the first time that has occurred in more than 13 years. The Federal Reserve reported Monday that borrowing declined at an annual rate of $648.8 million in November following a record rate of decline of $8.4 billion in October. The weakness in November caught analysts by surprise. They had been expecting a rebound in borrowing based on the fact that consumer spending and consumer confidence both revived in November, reflecting a drop in gasoline prices. The $8.4 billion rate of decline in borrowing in October was a record...

Bird flu virus shows signs of evading newest drug By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent 1 hour, 22 minutes ago WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The feared avian influenza virus is showing signs it can evade the drug considered the first line of defense against bird flu, researchers They found so-called resistant strains in a Vietnamese girl who recovered from a bird flu infection after being treated with Tamiflu. They also found evidence she was directly infected by her brother and not by chickens, a rare case of human-to-human transmission of the virus. When bacteria and viruses develop resistance to a...

All it takes to give the election to Kerry is a 2-3% swing. We are now seeing that swing in the polls. All the Bush campaign has to do is show the chain of custody over Al Qa-Qaa from when the 101st was there until the Weapons Search Team arrived a month later, when the explosives were definitely not there. I presume we did not leave Al Qa-Qaa completely unguarded in that month. To date, the Bush campaign has relied on the NBC report, which was later retracted. We NEED hard evidence that the explosives were not taken from Al...

So GWB did not dominate the first debate, the sky is not falling. It seems that Freerepublic is filled these days with whiney little weenies that want to do nothing but complain. Would you people please toughen up! Elections are hard work and you can't expect the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth to carry your water all the way to November. Live with it and do something postitive to help, instead of bitching about it. Some of these same namby-pambys are the people that complain the most about "spineless republicans" that let the dems roll them over. When the going...

Despite the lack of enthusiasm John Kerry has shown for his very own campaign, he will become the 44th President of the United States. Although it can be easily argued that it is much too early to call this election, I feel confident that a majority of Americans are so disgusted with the actions of George W. Bush and his administration that they would vote for any candidate that does not come from Bush family lineage. As it stands in the current polls, Bush and Kerry are neck-and-neck by percentage; however Kerry has a lead in the Electoral College with...

A few days before the attack on 9-11-2001 a friend of mine sent an email to me that had a picture attached to it. The picture was of a group of arab looking people who were riding on an old truck. The truck was bursting at the seams so to speak because there were way too many people on it. The caption of the picture said... "I have some friends coming into town to visit, do you have any room available to put some of them up in?" Of course I laughed at the email and eventually sent it off...