Free Republic

People aren't laughing any more at the way-out-there predictions of Peter Schiff, whose long-standing pessimism about the economy and stock market has been largely borne out. Schiff heads Euro Pacific Capital, a brokerage in Darien, Conn. with more than $1 billion in assets under management. He has silenced critics because he predicted the collapse of the housing market, the subprime crisis and the soaring of oil prices in his market commentaries before they came to pass. A YouTube video called "Peter Schiff Was Right" shows him being repeatedly mocked when he went on TV stock shows to make those ultimately...

Keeping track of the ever mutating bailout debate is becoming increasingly difficult. With the Federal money spigots now thrown wide open, and with no one of influence advising restraint, the only debate is where to direct the torrent. During the past week, the talk began with Detroit and Citigroup, but by Friday had shifted to a massive "stimulus package" to bail out consumers. The early buzz includes some very large figures. But first, a bit of a recap: On Monday, the $300 billion Citigroup bailout took center stage. Once again Henry Paulson decided to throw taxpayer funds into a bottomless...

Stow the red wheelbarrow back in the shed. Despite forebodings by Texas Rep. Ron Paul and other gold bugs about hyperinflation, your wallet will be sufficient to hold your spending money for the foreseeable future. Paul and other inflation hawks correctly note that the Fed's printing presses are running full tilt. Nevertheless, some economic experts argue that we won't require wagonloads of debased currency to buy a stick of butter, mirroring Germany's 1923 nightmare. Reason: Deflation still hangs like a low, dark cloud over our sinking economy. Too few dollars are chasing too many goods, and this will worsen as...

WASHINGTON, Dec 5 (Reuters) - First Georgia Community Bank, a small institution with $237.5 million in assets, was closed by state regulators on Friday, marking the 23rd U.S. bank failure this year. All $197.4 million in deposits were transferred to United Bank of Zebulon, Georgia, and the failed bank and its offices will reopen as branches of United Bank, the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp said. First Georgia had branches in Jackson, Covington, Griffin and Locust Grove. United Bank will also buy about $60.6 million of First Georgia's assets, the FDIC said. The bank failure will cost the FDIC's deposit...

Concerted government policy helped trigger the financial meltdown—and will almost certainly extend it. It was not an absence of federal intervention that produced the Great Financial Panic of 2008. Contrary to the assertions of those clamoring for new regulations (see "Is Deregulation to Blame?," page 36), the liquidity shortage and credit freeze that triggered Washington's biggest intrusion into the economy since Richard Nixon's wage and price controls were caused by bad government policy and worse crisis management. As the housing bubble inflated from 1997 to 2006, banks, fueled by the Federal Reserve, prodded by activists, and egged on by Wall...

CLEVELAND (AP) — A financially ailing Ohio school district has joined the ranks of banks and automakers clamoring for a portion of the $700 billion economic bailout package. Olmsted Falls Superintendent Todd Hoadley said Tuesday that if automakers and big U.S. cities can ask for federal bailout money, schools should be able to follow suit. "I feel a moral obligation to our taxpayers to make this attempt," said Hoadley, who requested $100 million from the Treasury Department last week. "This is a legitimate request. I'll be frankly disappointed if something positive doesn't come out of this."

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Kaupthing Bank hf (KAUP.IC), Iceland's largest bank, has sought bankruptcy protection from its U.S. creditors. The Reykjavik-based lender filed a Chapter 15 bankruptcy petition on Sunday with the U.S. bankruptcy court for the Southern District of New York.

BANGKOK, Dec 3 (Reuters) - The Bank of Thailand surprised markets by cutting interest rates by a full point on Wednesday, saying the economic damage wrought by political unrest and the global downturn triggered its first easing since mid-2007. A rapid retreat in inflation in recent months made it easier for the central bank to slash rates by the biggest margin in over eight years to help the economy, hit by anti-government protests that culminated in an eight-day siege of Bangkok's main airports. "The political problem is having quite a severe impact on the economy," BoT Assistant Governor Duangmanee Vongpradhip...

The rising cost of college — even before the recession — threatens to put higher education out of reach for most Americans, according to the annual report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. Over all, the report found, published college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007, adjusted for inflation, while median family income rose 147 percent. Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade, and students from lower-income families, on average, get smaller grants from the colleges they attend than students from more affluent families.“If we go on this way...

CNBC “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer said on NBC’s “Today” show Dec. 2 that comparisons between the current economy and the Great Depression are “scare tactics.” Maybe he forgot about his own reliance on the juxtaposition. “[T]hat’s got to be taken off the table,” Cramer told “Today” host Meredith Vieira about comparisons to the Great Depression. “There have been enough things done by this government to absolutely preclude that. I, myself, do not want to use that term ever again on the “Today” show even to compare it. Things are very different. We do need help from Europe; we need...

The head of a new congressional panel set up to monitor the gigantic U.S. government bailout says the government still does not seem to have a coherent strategy for easing the financial crisis, despite the billions it has already spent in that effort. Elizabeth Warren, the chairwoman of the oversight panel, said in an interview Monday that the government instead seemed to be lurching from one tactic to the next without clarifying how each step fits into an overall plan.

It's official: The United States is in a recession -- and it started a year ago. The nation's economy peaked, and the recession began, in December 2007, the National Bureau of Economic Research announced today.

As the printing presses for the bailouts run at full speed, those in power are no longer even pretending that the new giveaways will fix our problems. Now that we are used to rewarding failure with taxpayer-funded bailouts, we are being told that this is “just a start,” more funds will inevitably be needed for more industries, and that things would be much worse had we done nothing. The updated total bailout commitments add up to over $8 trillion now. This translates into a monetary base increase of 75 percent over the last two months. This money does not come...

Remarks delivered at the End the Fed rally in Washington, DC, November 22, 2008, across the street from the headquarters of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Welcome, and thank you all for braving the cold weather to make it out here to today's rally. My name is Paul-Martin Foss, and I am representing the office of US Congressman Ron Paul. Like many people in this country, I made it all the way through college without any knowledge at all of economics. While preparing for grad school, I began taking economics courses at George Mason University, where I received my...

Should we abolish the Fed? The Federal Reserve Bank, or "The Fed" as it is commonly known, is the central bank of the United States. It was created by Congress in 1913 as the direct result of the Panic of 1907 (recessions or depressions were previously called panics, and they tended to be short lived and self-correcting).

The end of the work week is generally welcomed, giving rise to the term "TGIF" -- Thank God it's Friday. But the expansion of the U.S. economic crisis has given rise to a new and more worrying acronym: "FDIC Friday." FDIC is a reference to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. This US government agency is charged with the task of limiting "the effect on the economy and the financial system when a bank or thrift institution fails," according to its website. And "FDIC Friday" refers to the fact that Friday is usually the day of the week when the FDIC...

Less than two months ago, Citigroup emerged from the wreckage of the financial crisis as one of the last titans left standing on Wall Street. Now, in a stunning turnabout, the banking giant has sunk to its knees after a series of blows that have driven its stock price to a mere $3.77 on Friday — and left it running short on time and options. In the decade since Citigroup was born from the merger of Citicorp and Travelers Group, it weathered many storms that threatened to pull it apart. But the current turmoil can be traced back to the...

The market is killing banks right now because the market no longer believes balance sheets. There are good banks pegged with this bias at unbelievable bargains. Look at preferred stock values - paying dividends close to 30%. There are still solid regional and national banks if you have guts. This will not last for long: GO GO GO

Bloomberg video posted on Google video