Free Republic

You should keep a close eye on barges. You probably do not spend much time thinking about barges. This is something that you ought to change. The barge industry is quite important. It’s crucial for moving aluminum, petroleum, fertilizer and coal, particularly on the Mississippi River and its tributaries. About 60% of the grain and 54% of the soybeans for U.S. export are moved via the noble barge. Barges touch more than a third of our exported coal as well. Right now the barge industry — and all of us who depend on its wares — is mired in a...

Lee Keltner was identified by his mother, Carol,... “My son Lee was at the patriot rally today in Denver,” she wrote to the group. “After the rally a person on the BLM and Antifa side went up to him said a few nasty words then shot him in the head. He was murdered because he backed the police.” “His 24-year-old son was with him. I moved to Arkansas because Colorado got too expensive and liberal,” she added. “The left has gotten out of hand.”

Britain’s post-Brexit trade deal with the United States could lead to even higher rates of obesity through the import of American foods high in fat and sugar, children’s doctors have warned. US “hostility” towards measures aimed at promoting healthier eating habits, such as traffic light labelling, is also a major threat to the government’s anti-obesity drive, it has been claimed. {snip} Recent research by the Harvard University school of public health pinpointed free trade deals involving the US as a key factor in a process of “nutrition transition” – from a traditional native diet to a much more western one...

I was absolutely stunned to learn that the Baltic Dry Shipping Index had plummeted to a new all-time record low of 504 at one point on Thursday. I have written a number of articles lately about the dramatic slowdown in global trade, but I didn’t realize that things had gotten quite this bad already. Not even during the darkest moments of the last financial crisis did the Baltic Dry Shipping Index drop this low. Something doesn’t seem to be adding up, because the mainstream media keeps telling us that the global economy is doing just fine. In fact, the Federal...

I think we’ve all been struggling to explain Big Guy’s foreign policy. Fortunately, the New York Times has finally done it for us: At Global Economic Gathering, U.S. Primacy Is Seen as Ebbing. As world leaders converge here for their semiannual trek to the capital of what is still the world’s most powerful economy, concern is rising in many quarters that the United States is retreating from global economic leadership just when it is needed most. “America Bows Out”“I’ve been searching for a word to describe it, and the one I use is ‘withdrawal,’ best I can come up with,”...

British, American and European jihadistas are completely at ease with IS violence The United States has a problem with Islamic State. Its problem is that it refuses to acknowledge why Islamic State is a problem. The problem with Islamic State is not that it is brutal. Plenty of regimes are brutal. Islamic State poses two challenges for the US. First, unlike the Saudis and even the Iranians, IS actively recruits Americans and other Westerners to join its lines.

<p>The prospects for a new trade pact between the US and the European Union worth hundreds of billions have suffered a severe setback following allegations that Washington bugged key EU offices and intercepted phonecalls and emails from top officials.</p> <p>The latest reports of NSA snooping on Europe – and on Germany in particular – went well beyond previous revelations of electronic spying said to be focused on identifying suspected terrorists, extremists and organised criminals.</p>

Did The Global Trade Collapse Just End? Joe WeisenthalNov. 11, 2012 Back at the end of September, we ran this chart from Morgan Stanley, pointing to the severe slowdown in world trade growth.Morgan Stanley So is the severe downturn over? Trade data this weekend from China supports the view that things are improving. SocGen has the summary: China’s export growth rose further to +11.6%yoy in October from +9.9%yoy in September, beating expectations (Cons. +10%; SG +9%) for a second month. There were two more workdays last month than that in October 2011, which contributed to the headline improvement. But, even...

Last year, a German tourist traveling through China spotted a set of nested salt and pepper shakers: The slender cylinder of pepper rested perfectly in the center of the doughnut-shaped salt holder. It was a sleek design. It was also, he recognized, an almost exact copy of the successful Two-in-One salt-and-pepper set made by Geislingen (Germany)-based WMF, and he sent it to the company. As a result, the maker of the imitation—Shantou Lian Plastic Products of Guangdong, China—is one of 13 winners of the Plagiarius Award, a dubious honor bestowed on makers and distributors of the "best" (which is to...

GLOBALIZATION is imperfectly understood by many American policy makers, with dangerous consequences for the United States economy, says Clyde Prestowitz, author of "Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East" (Basic Books, 2005, $26). A former trade negotiator in the Reagan administration, he is president of the Economic Strategy Institute in Washington. Here are excerpts from a conversation:Q. Why do you say that many American policy makers don't understand globalization?A. There are two different concepts of globalization. One concept is based on the American experience, which is one of a democratic country under a...

Just a litle history lesson.....I just bought this on Ebay. Is it from 2005? It uses all the key phrases. This looks like a standard talking points for peaceniks, just insert the name of the war in the appropriate box and start ranting. It’s from a 1974 home printed newspaper by members of the Black Panthers (My best guess based on the content). Included in this particular issue are features on the “Pig of the Month “, some photos and article about Vietnam Vets against the war (that group rings a bell…Hmmmm) and don’t forget to boycott all Boone’s farm...

The biggest chatter in the markets today is about the article in the Financial Times that talks about the shifting of central bank reserve positions from dollars to euros. This is something that we have warned about for some time now in previous editions of Daily Fundamentals as well as in our 2005 currency outlook. Russia has already announced their intentions to shift their mix of reserve allocations. The central banks of oil exporters in the Middle East have also reduced their dollar holdings over the past 3 years. According to the report, 90 percent of central bank portfolio...

Any thoughts? my friend recently loaned me this book and it's quasi-marxist rant, anti-globalist - "blame America first" dogma have made my blood boil. Would appreciate if anyone can give me some solid information to refute this rubbish.

A global trade ruling against U.S. steel tariffs puts White House in a Mess WASHINGTON - A global trade ruling against U.S. steel tariffs Monday put the White House in the middle of a political and economic squeeze play as President Bush weighs the sanctions' fate - and his re-election prospects. Supporters and opponents of the three-year tariffs shelled the White House with arguments over whether to keep the sanctions in place in the face of a new World Trade Organization ruling declaring them illegal. The European Union has threatened $2.2 billion in retaliatory sanctions if the tariffs, imposed in...

Hands Off, China Tells G7 on Eve of Talks Sept. 19 — By Alan Wheatley, Asian Economics Correspondent DUBAI (Reuters) - China bluntly told the United States on Friday not to make it a scapegoat for its economic woes by pressing for a revaluation of the yuan at this weekend's meeting of the world's leading industrial powers. The need for China and other Asian nations to let their currencies rise to help iron out major imbalances threatening the global economy will be a major talking point when Group of Seven (G7) finance ministers gather on Saturday in Dubai. With the...

Sept. 19 (Bloomberg) -- When Goldman Sachs Group Inc. chief China strategist Fred Hu predicted during the 1997 Asian financial crisis that China would retain its three-year currency peg against the U.S. dollar, he contradicted Asia's leading traders and economists. He was right: The peg stayed. Now Hu, formerly a paid-up member of China's Communist Party, expects the world's sixth-biggest trading nation to let the yuan appreciate as early as this year. China has fixed the currency at about 8.3 to the dollar since 1995, ``China's business cycle is different from the U.S., so there's no reason why the dollar...

Monkeys Demand Equal Pay 12:27 p.m. EDT September 17, 2003 A fair shake is a fair shake -- whether you're a human or a monkey. A recent study shows brown capuchin monkeys refused to play along when they saw another monkey get a better payoff for performing the same work. The monkeys were trained to trade a granite token for a piece of cucumber. When the reward was the same for both monkeys, they took the cucumber 95 percent of the time. But it was a different story when one monkey was given something better -- namely, a grape. Then,...