Free Republic

Editor’s Note: Matthew Smith is a close friend of Doug Casey’s. He is the co-founder of the podcast “Doug Casey’s Take,” where he and Doug discuss a variety of topics and share wisdom on how to navigate today’s uncertain environment. We urge you to read Matthew’s article on how to thrive in “The Great Reset.” — If you watch our podcast Doug Casey’s Take, you already know. We’re in the middle of a complex and destructive phase full of unknowns. Our goal with The Phyle is to focus on solutions. To make progress, we must clearly articulate the problem. Amidst...

Wake up, America. That ticking sound you’re hearing is the American debt time bomb that with each passing day is getting precariously close to detonating and crashing the US economy. Businesses, consumers and especially the federal and state governments have become hooked on red ink as if it were crack cocaine. Two factors have fueled this borrowing binge: an era of low interest rates (that’s coming to an end) and falling real wages thanks to the 15% rise in prices of Bidenflation. Let’s review the borrowing up-escalator that accelerated during COVID but hasn’t subsided. The King Kong of borrowing is...

German Minister of Economics Robert Habeck is under fire after his comments during an interview with an ARD broadcaster on Tuesday evening. The conversation surrounded the astronomical rise in the price of energy taking all the income away from people who would purchase other goods and services. As Germans no longer can afford purchases, the stores and businesses can no longer operate. Minister Habeck was asked if that means a wave of bankruptcies and business closures are forecast. Mr. Habeck responded that businesses can stop operating, but that doesn’t mean they will go insolvent. Just because the business loses most...

Fox News host Tucker Carlson reveals the potential consequences of the Green New Deal if implemented on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight. TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: Imagine you went to school with Sandy Cortez. A lot of people did. Imagine it's 2011, and you're both students at Boston University, a not quite prestigious, but highly expensive school for kids who couldn't get into Tufts. You know who Sandy Cortez is because three days a week at 12:20, you see her and your philosophy of gender and sexuality class. She's always there in the front row, snapping her gum and then, like clockwork,...

If history is any guide (and it should be) we have very little time left to pull ourselves out of this cultural tailspin. This cancel culture phenomenon that’s been foisted upon us is a manifestation of true evil, of both intent and results. I have no doubt that, if it’s allowed to continue unchecked, we will be headed for a fate as bad as that of other once-great cultures in history. As soon as freedom and creativity are snuffed out, a culture rapidly begins the process of decay. One example is ancient Babylon, once the most advanced city in civilization....

As I have written many times at this site, the consequence of socialism, and of left-wing public policy more generally, is gradual relative economic decline. Take a prosperous country (or state or city), then put in place the progressive policy prescriptions, and wait twenty or thirty or forty years, and you will find a place that has been passed by by all the competition. But why would the people give governing leftists twenty or more years if they are running the place into the ground? The answer is that great promises are made of infinite government resources to solve all...

They are assuring us that we don't have to be concerned about "inflation" because they have everything under control. Do you believe them? The value of the U.S. dollar has been steadily declining for a long time, and most Americans have grown accustomed to having the cost of living rise at a faster pace than their paychecks do. But over the past 12 months an enormous paradigm shift has begun. Instead of devaluing our currency a little bit at a time, now our leaders are going "full Weimar". Our money supply is growing at an exponential rate, and this is...

Those who insist on governing us have spent decades shaking and shaking the world's largest can of carbonated Coke, and now they expect it somehow not to explode.... A friend of American Thinker, understandably upset about the unraveling of America around us, reached out with a heartfelt question: how did we as a society come to behave so acrimoniously toward one another? The two words that stood out to me while turning this question over in my mind were "we" and "society." Who "we" are as Americans has changed radically over the last half-century, and during that time, the political...

Dear Chuck, Is America heading towards an economic collapse? If so, how do I prepare? Worried Boomer Dear Worried Boomer, My view is we are headed towards another economic crisis with a low risk of an actual economic and/or currency collapse. In either scenario, there are ways to be prepared. Economic Crisis vs. Collapse An economic crisis is different from a collapse. America has worked through several in my lifetime: ‘70s stagflation, ‘81 recession, ‘89 savings and loan crisis, post-9/11 recession, ‘08 great financial crisis, and the 2020 coronavirus crisis we are in now. A collapse is brought on by...

Since the arrival of COVID-19 and the subsequent decision to lockdown entire cities and nations, world economic activity has significantly decreased. When normal recessions strike, they typically involve only one nation or a single region. But the COVID Recession has hit the whole world at once. This is the first time every nation has simultaneously seen a decline in output since the Great Depression. Despite the scale of this economic disaster, many economists are calling for a quick V-shaped recovery once the coronavirus is brought under control. But is this likely? No. Even if the virus disappears tomorrow, we won’t...

BEIRUT (AP) — Power cuts that last up to 20 hours a day. Mountains of trash spilling into streets. Long lines at gas stations. It may seem like a standard summer in Lebanon, a country used to wrestling with crumbling infrastructure as it vaults from one disaster to another. Only this time, it’s different, Every day brings darker signs Lebanon has rarely seen in past crises: Mass layoffs, hospitals threatened with closure, shuttered shops and restaurants, crimes driven by desperation, a military that can no longer afford to feed its soldiers meat and warehouses that sell expired poultry. Lebanon is...

BEIRUT: Zakaria Al-Omar was walking through Beirut when a stranger robbed him at knifepoint, a desperate crime of a kind that has become increasingly common in crisis-torn Lebanon. The small Mediterranean country is mired in an economic crisis marked by a steep currency fall and runaway inflation that have plunged nearly half of the population into poverty. Omar, a 37-year-old graphic designer, recalled the terrifying and tragic encounter that started when a man in his 40s crept up behind him as he walked alone at night through Beirut’s Hamra commercial district. “He told me that he didn’t want to hurt...

...The relief for small businesses is not adequate. A tax credit for some small businesses for 50% of wages paid to employees during the coronavirus crisis is absurd. Most have been ordered to be closed so there were no wages and they had to fire employees so they could collect unemployment. They need business loans suspended and property taxes. That will put pressure on states to lift the absurd closures.

Dr. Thamar Eilam Gindin, and expert on ancient Persia and modern Iran, spoke today (Tuesday) with Anat Davidov on Radio 103FM and referred to the sanctions imposed by US President Donald Trump on Iran yesterday. "I found a heartbreaking site, in which there are dozens of people with phone numbers offering to sell their kidney," said Dr. Elam Gindin. Iran's economy was teetering even before the sanctions were re-imposed. Last week, the Iranian rial plunged to a record low of less than 1,000 to the American dollar. "What is going to happen today are restrictions on foreign currency trading. It...

(snip) Speaker of the House John Boehner (R – OH) stated at the weekly GOP leaders press conference that Americans needed “accountability from their government.” However, some Democrats are doubling down on the issue. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D – NV) told reporters on Tuesday that some conservative organizations, like Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, deserve to be scrutinized. (snip) Congressman Alan Grayson (D – FL) told Breitbart News he thinks the “Koch brothers have abused the system by setting up 501c3’s that are doing political activity,” arguing, “It doesn’t make any sense to look for something on the other...

(CNSNews.com) - The Open Society Institute, a private foundation controlled by liberal billionaire and political activist George Soros, received more than $30 million from U.S. government agencies between 1998 and 2003. Last year, Soros donated at least $20 million of his own money to such liberal groups as Moveon.org, in a failed attempt to block the re-election of President George W. Bush. Tax records the Open Society Institute (OSI) is required to file with the Internal Revenue Service list "FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AGENCIES" as "Contributors" of amounts between $4.6 million and $8.9 million over a six year period: * 1998 -...

The career assassination of Cornel West: A messy intellectual divorce reveals layers of broken heart — and to what end? Independent of one’s stance on the rift between Michael Eric Dyson and Cornel West — a rift years in the making and now clearly delineated in the form of Dyson’s essay on West in the New Republic, “The Ghost of Cornel West” — this has all the hallmarks of a messy divorce between two public, black intellectuals who were, perhaps, better served keeping things offline. Maybe try to squash their beef in the privacy of an on-campus office or in...

Does a shadowy group of obscenely wealthy elitists control the world? Do men and women with enormous amounts of money really run the world from behind the scenes? The answer might surprise you. Most of us tend to think of money as a convenient way to conduct transactions, but the truth is that it also represents power and control. And today we live in a neo-fuedalist system in which the super rich pull all the strings. When I am talking about the ultra-wealthy, I am not just talking about people that have a few million dollars. As you will see...

Hundreds of stores across the nation are closing as some of America’s most famous retailers struggle to stay in business. The country is facing what CNBC has labeled a tsunami of store closings and blogger Michael Snyder has called a retail apocalypse. JC Penney, which lost $586 million in three months in 2013, is planning to close 33 stores in 19 states and lay off 2,000 people. JC Penney’s stock has lost 84 percent of its value since February 2012. Sears has decided to shut down its flagship store in Downtown Chicago, and it has closed 300 stores in the...

By Michael Snyder July 2nd, 2014 July 4th, the United States will celebrate Independence Day once again. But who in the world are we trying to kid? Our founders intended to create a society where freedom and liberty would be maximized, but that is not what America looks like today. Instead, we live in a country that literally has millions of laws, rules and regulations. We have a government that is obsessed with spying on the entire planet and that tries to watch, monitor, track and record as much information about all of us as it possibly can. A “Big...