Free Republic

One of the most popular ideas taught in American civics classes is that the strength of the American political system lies in the fact that we have a two-party political process. This, I maintain, is akin to teaching that babies come from storks. It's a fairy tale we spin out to avoid messy details of reality we prefer not to face. The reality is that the Democratic and Republican parties, as distinctive parties, are shams. They have become nothing but two divisions of the Central Leviathan Party. This has been our political reality ever since Dwight Eisenhower defeated the "old...

The chorus calling for the Fed to facilitate higher money-supply growth has become deafening. Jude Wanniski and Larry Kudlow have been long-term members of this chorus, while gold market commentator and veteran trader Jim Sinclair has just added his voice. Apparently, as opined by Mr Sinclair in recent commentary at his web site (www.jsmineset.com), faster money-supply growth is needed now in order to avoid a 1930s-style deflationary outcome and depression. To support his view he uses charts of money-supply growth and 'money velocity', where the velocity of money is calculated by dividing the GDP growth rate by the M2 growth...

The recent exciting rallying action in the NASDAQ has been awesome, but it sure looks like an echo bubble, a mini speculative mania, is festering. Article:Do you remember the amazing days of the tech-stock mania of late 1999 and early 2000? Boy I sure do!I have been interested in the stock markets almost my entire life. When I was a young kid around 12 or 13 years old my wonderful father helped me make my first purchase of common stock. Ever since then I have had a strong passion for the markets, which I find perpetually intriguing and exciting....