Free Republic

Nixon was worried about trade deficits and a deteriorating balance of payments. He rejected the advice of Volcker, then treasury undersecretary, and the Fed chairman at the time, Arthur Burns. Instead, Nixon closed the gold window, meaning foreign governments could no longer exchange dollars for gold. The value of the greenback fell like a stone. So as the value of our currency declined, prices denominated in dollars sky-rocketed. We printed bad money and too much of it, and that’s the definition of inflation. Excess money in relation to demand will do it every time. Lack of value will do it...

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman said Monday night on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” that Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) are “standing up for our democracy” by opposing the notion former President Donald Trump didn’t lose the 2020 presidential election. Friedman said, “When people ask me how I feel, I give an answer that sounds like English is my second language. I say to them, country not right. Country not right. Our country is not right. What Liz Cheney is doing and Mitt Romney is doing is standing up for our democracy.”

Chinese state media are trumpeting New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman's China-friendly comments, the latest example of the Gray Lady's ties to the Chinese propaganda apparatus. When Friedman, a longtime columnist for the Times, participated in a March 29 "fireside chat" with the Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing think tank with close ties to the regime, the state-owned China Global Television Network (CGTN) broadcast the entire 90-minute interview. Once the interview was over, the network disseminated the interview as an example of a Western intellectual calling for improved relations between the two superpowers. "Friedman said 1979-2019 was a...

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman urged national Democrats to move to Georgia and vote in its upcoming Senate runoff elections—a clear violation of state law, should the voters leave after the races conclude. "I hope everybody moves to Georgia, you know, in the next month or two, registers to vote, and votes for these two Democratic senators," Friedman said during a Monday-night CNN appearance. Georgia election law does not include a length-of-residency requirement in order to vote in the state. It does, however, prohibit prospective voters from "residing in the state briefly with the intention just to vote and...

Had he stuck around Mr. Milton Friedman would have turned 108 years old yesterday. This week's episode of The Resistance Library podcast focuses squarely on the great libertarian economist and firece critic of Keynesian economics. Perfect to listen to if you've just paid taxes last month! You may also read our very own Sam Jacobs' article on Mr. Friedman here: ammo.com/articles/milton-friedman-forgotten-history-godfather-of-american-conservative-libertarianism

New York Attorney General Letitia James announced Wednesday that former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch will advise her office's fast-moving probe of the New York Police Department and its clashes with protesters at demonstrations sparked by the fatal arrest of George Floyd. James announced that Lynch and Barry Friedman, a New York University professor who serves as faculty director of the NYU Law Policing Project, will join the investigation as special advisers. "The right to peacefully protest is one of our most basic civil rights, and we are working without rest to ensure that right is protected and guarded," James...

You know politics have gotten weird when a liberal New York Times columnist begs Democrat voters to abandon Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in favor of nominating Michael Bloomberg to lead the Democratic ticket. Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman wrote a wacky Feb. 11, op-ed headlined “Paging Michael Bloomberg.” In the piece, Friedman suggested Bloomberg, owner of Bloomberg News, was more capable of appealing “to independents, moderate Republicans and suburban women” than self-proclaimed democratic socialist Sanders. Friedman was determined to get Democrats not to nominate Sanders: “Please, Democrats, don’t tell me you need Sanders’s big, ill-thought-through, revolutionary grand schemes to get...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who holds a bachelor's degree in economics from Boston University, had to correct herself Saturday evening after mixing up two "very different" economists during a lengthy Instagram discussion. "UGGGH TYPO,” the freshman congresswoman wrote after confusing John Maynard Keynes, an early 20th-century British economist who theorized that government spending was linked to economic growth, with Milton Friedman, a free-market American economist and 1976 Nobel Prize winner, according to The Washington Examiner. Ocasio-Cortez mistakenly combined their names into "Milton Keynes." “I was just reading today about how in 1930, famed economist Milton Keynes predicted that by 2030...

And now it is Tom Friedman’s turn to panic about the Democrats’ sharp turn to the left. Savor some yummy samples from his column yesterday: I’m struck at how many people have come up to me recently and said, “Trump’s going to get re-elected, isn’t he?” And in each case, when I drilled down to ask why, I bumped into the Democratic presidential debates in June. I think a lot of Americans were shocked by some of the things they heard there. I was. I was shocked that so many candidates in the party whose nominee I was planning to...

I’m struck at how many people have come up to me recently and said, “Trump’s going to get re-elected, isn’t he?” And in each case, when I drilled down to ask why, I bumped into the Democratic presidential debates in June. I think a lot of Americans were shocked by some of the things they heard there. I was.

Dr. Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate, promoting "Free to Choose" on the show Donahue.Worth watching....Donahue...actually conducted a decent interview.

The ecstatic sailor shown kissing a woman in Times Square celebrating the end of World War II has died. George Mendonsa was 95. Mendonsa’s daughter, Sharon Molleur, told The Providence Journal Mendonsa fell and had a seizure Sunday at the assisted living facility in Middletown, Rhode Island, where he lived with his wife of 70 years.

Friday on CNN’s “The Situation Room,” New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman described President Donald Trump as “demented.” Friedman said, “It’s really sad. This is a party that has simply laid down for a demented man. They have been laying down for anyone who would energize their base, going back to Sarah Palin and the Tea Party, and now it’s Trump.” He added, “We’re really risking our luck here. How long can this go on? We have a disturbed man as president. That’s very clear. We have a party that is not ready to stand up to it. What worries...

Time for G.O.P. to Threaten to Fire Trump Republican leaders need to mount an intervention. Thomas L. Friedman By Thomas L. Friedman Opinion Columnist Dec. 24, 2018 Up to now I have not favored removing President Trump from office. I felt strongly that it would be best for the country that he leave the way he came in, through the ballot box. But last week was a watershed moment for me, and I think for many Americans, including some Republicans. It was the moment when you had to ask whether we really can survive two more years of Trump as...

A federal judge dismissed charges Tuesday against two doctors and six others involved in the genital mutilation of nine girls at a Detroit clinic, and also declared a US law banning the practice unconstitutional. US District Judge Bernard Friedman dismissed mutilation and conspiracy charges against Dr. Jumana Nagarwala, who performed the surgery, and Dr. Fakhruddin Attar, who allowed his clinic in Livonia, Michigan, to be used for the procedure. The same charges were dismissed against Attar's wife, Farida, and Tahera Shafiq, who assisted in the procedure, as well as four women who tricked their daughters into going to the suburban...

The nation is deeply divided, with each side seeing the other as “the enemy.” I began my journalism career covering a civil war in Lebanon. I never thought I’d end my career covering a civil war in America. We may not be there yet, but if we don’t turn around now, we will surely get where we’re going — which was best described by Senator Jeff Flake on Monday: “Tribalism is ruining us. It is tearing our country apart. It is no way for sane adults to act.” Sure, we’ve experienced bouts of intense social strife since the American Civil...

The United States on Thursday downgraded the status of its main diplomatic mission to the Palestinians by placing it under the authority of the U.S. Embassy to Israel. The move, which was immediately denounced by the Palestinians and hailed by Israel, is the latest Trump administration decision to align with Israeli government views and a victory for U.S. Ambassador David Friedman. He had long sought to end the Jerusalem consulate’s independent status but had faced resistance from within the State Department. Friedman’s push picked up steam in May after the Trump administration moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem...

An attorney for Trump, Jay Sekulow and his senior counsel Carly Gammill appeared in a Washington D.C. federal court last week to find out when they will be receiving documents related to the Obama unmasking scandal. The ACLJ (American Center For Law and Justice) filed a FOIA lawsuit last summer and they are just now beginning to receive documents. Sekulow revealed the first batch of unmasking documents on his radio show Jay Live on Tuesday. The ACLJ received heavily redacted emails from former US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power that show unprecedented unmasking and political bias in the final...

Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman speculated the Mueller special counsel probe will result in some sort of finding that will lead to a “constitutional crisis.” That according to Friedman will lead to former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama having to step and prevent a constitutional crisis.

News coverage of Israel is distorted both by the lopsided amount of attention it gets from world media and from a “herd mentality” that embraces and promotes a narrow, simplistic view of “what the story is,” according to an author and former Associated Press reporter in Israel. Israel accounts for 0.01 percent of the world’s territory and has roughly the population of New York City, but when Matti Friedman joined the AP in 2006, he recalled in Jerusalem this week, the wire service had 40 full-time staff in the country. That was more than the number of AP staff covering...