Free Republic

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) was on a Zoom meeting this afternoon with members of Congress, the Fed, the Treasury, and FDIC. The call was organized after Silicon Valley Bank crashed and was taken over by the State of California on Friday. Silicon Valley Bank was the largest US bank to crash since the 2008 banking crisis. During the call on Sunday afternoon Massie reported that one Democrat Senator asked if there was a program in place to censor free speech at this time on social media. The first thought of the Democrat Party is to strip Americans of their right...

It's been two years since Lehman Bros. failed (Sept. 15, 2008) and we still can't conclusively answer this question: What if the government had saved Lehman? Its bankruptcy was pivotal. Until then, deteriorating housing and mortgage markets had triggered what seemed a serious — but not unprecedented — recession. Once Lehman failed, the economy went into a frenzied free fall. It's hard not to wonder whether some of the ensuing turmoil could have been avoided. Consider what happened after Lehman: • Credit tightened. Banks wouldn't lend to each other, except at exorbitant interest rates. Rates on high-quality corporate bonds went...

So is that it? Is the downturn over? After bouncing off of 6500, or more than half its peak value, and with Citigroup briefly breaking $1, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has rallied back more than 1200 points. So, is it safe to go back in the water? Best to figure out what went wrong first -- what I like to call a bear-raid extraordinaire.The Dow clearly got a boost from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's new and improved plan, announced on Monday, to rid our banks of those nasty toxic assets. The idea is to form a "Public-Private Investment Fund"...

The Post hit the nail right on the head when it reported exclusively last September that the US narrowly averted a crash of the financial markets, it was recently revealed. In the days after the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, there was a run on the country's money market funds as investors feared the bonds held by the funds would collapse - which The Post reported in a Sept. 21 story entitled "Almost Armageddon." Rep. Paul Kanjorski, of the House Finance Committee, confirmed the bank run recently. .....