Free Republic

PARIS – The French Senate, pushed into an early vote, approved on Friday a hotly contested bill raising the retirement age to 62, hours after riot police forced the reopening of a strategic refinery to help halt growing fuel shortages amid nationwide strikes and protests. In tense balloting after 140 hours of debate, the Senate voted 177-153 for the pension reform. The measure is expected to win final formal approval by both houses of parliament next week. President Nicolas Sarkozy's conservative government, keen to get the measure passed and quell increasingly radicalized protests, cut short the debate and voting process...

With jazz music, prayer and offerings to the gods, hundreds of Hurricane Katrina survivors on Saturday demanded the government move faster to rebuild the city and provide evacuees with more disaster assistance. Shouting "We're Back," protesters said they feared the city's poor would be shut out of reconstruction after being dispersed far across the United States since the storm. City officials estimate more than 300,000 New Orleans residents have yet to return since Katrina flooded the city, reducing entire neighborhoods to a rubble-strewn wasteland. In one of the largest rallies in New Orleans since the hurricane, survivors marched to City...

Debt issued by banks can never be repaid in full. Some people can repay everything while others cannot repay anything at all. All this is because every time banks lend money, they expect the borrower to pay back the money plus interest. But where do they expect people to earn the interest? Here is the problem: Let's say the federal reserve prints a trillion dollars. Banks put that money into circulation by lending it to the people. The people invest the money and somehow they pay it back with interest. The question is where do they get the money to...