Free Republic

Treasury-market liquidity is drying up and it’s going to get worse. The problem is bigger than it seems. Liquidity in the U.S. bond market, the world’s largest, has been deteriorating since the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates earlier this year. The end of massive monthly bond purchases followed by the start of quantitative tightening has worsened the problem as the Fed tries to extricate itself from Treasury and mortgage markets after buying a third of each. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently said she was “worried about a loss of adequate liquidity in the market,” as Treasury supply booms to...

A newly released photo that has reportedly been shown to jurors in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial show deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and Maxwell lounging on the front porch of a residence that has been identified as the Queen of England’s royal retreat at Balmoral. The photo, which according to multiple U.K. outlets was presented to jurors on the eighth day of the Ghislaine Maxwell trial, shows a beaming maxwell relaxing on the porch next to Epstein, resting her arm on his thigh. UK paper the Mirror reports that “The photograph, which has not been seen before, appears to show the...

Frank Siller is on a mission and headed to the World Trade Center. His mission is to spread the word about the good works of the Tunnel to Towers Stephen Siller Foundation. He is walking 537 miles through six states after starting out three weeks ago from a firehouse whose members responded to the Pentagon on 9/11. He will follow in his brother’s foot steps to Ground Zero.My wife, Patty, joined Frank on his trek. Her hero brother FDNY LT Joe Leavey also ran into the South Tower and never came home. Historic roads led them to the Flight 93...

1,483 trading days: The average length of the time that it takes the Dow to carve out a new all-time high after hitting a bear market The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Monday notched its first all-time high since February, ending a relative fallow period for the blue-chip benchmark, which was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic relative to its peers. But the climb still represents the fastest rebound from a bear-market low for the benchmark in about three decades, according to Dow Jones Market Data.On Monday, the Dow DJIA, +1.59% finished firmly above its Feb. 12 closing high at...

Why Angela Merkel is like the former Soviet leader There was a time when Angela Merkel, like many young East Germans, would don a special shirt (blue rather than brown; different dictatorship) and parade for the Party, sometimes (not everything had changed) by torchlight. On occasion, she and her Free German Youth comrades would have marched behind banners carrying the portrait of Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet leader whose extended (1964–82) rule has more than longevity in common with her own. No, no, Merkel is not a Communist. Nor does she order the invasion of other countries; she merely bullies them....

Liberal deity avoids taxes by using loophole created by Donald Trump ....The hypocrisy really gets ratcheted up with John Oliver, the No. 1 darling to so many liberal anti-Trumpies, who regularly attacks GOP tax schemes.... ...Oliver had a tax attorney set up two revocable trusts, one for him and one for his wife, to hide the couple’s purchase of a $9.5 million Manhattan penthouse. Then he used a tax loophole created by Donald Trump himself back in the 1970s, when the current president was merely a prominent New York real estate developer and aspiring celebrity author.

Trump Ends Obama Contracting Rule President signs resolution overturning Obama's 'blacklisting' executive order President Trump on Monday repealed Barack Obama's blacklisting rule that would have benefitted labor unions in federal contracting. Trump signed a resolution passed by the House and Senate overturning the rule, which would have forced companies bidding for government contracts to report all allegations of unfair labor practices filed against them. Previously, contractors only needed to disclose incidents in which they had been found guilty of labor violations. President Obama issued the "blacklisting" executive order in 2014, saying it would lead to "economy and efficiency in procurement...

Didja hear the one about Trump? Yeah, me neither. The campaign season that was a gold mine for late-night hosts and “Saturday Night Live” has morphed into a post-election land mine for local stand-up comics, who say jokes about the president-elect go over like a gold-plated balloon. “This election was the most polarizing election in the history of our country,” said Jody Sloane, a Boston-based comic. “To even lightly joke about Trump leads Trump supporters to assume you are a Hillary supporter and the ­hatred ensues. You run the risk of losing half of your audience — actually, less than...

"Reince Priebus' former loyalists say they have reluctantly concluded that forces at the RNC will stop at virtually nothing to keep the door open to the nomination of Ohio Gov. John Kasich at the July convention – or, as some skeptics fear, some “white knight” who moderates claim will have broader voter appeal this fall than either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, the two top-delegate winners, have shown in most polls so far."

MBTA General Manager Beverly Scott jetted off at taxpayer expense nearly every month during her two-plus-year tenure — sometimes several times a month — to conferences and meetings around the country, even as the troubled transit system was collapsing around her, a Herald review shows. A review of Scott’s monthly expense reports provided by the MBTA as part of public records request shows she spent 106 days traveling out of state while at the helm of the T, taking 30 trips in 24 months. During that time, Scott, who announced yesterday she’s stepping down in April, racked up $56,753 in...

Bob Owens at Bearing Arms talks about a new piece of Democrat legislation which, rather than trying to ban various types of weapons, seeks to restrict civilians from using certain classes of body armor. These anti-gun Democrats keep failing to stop us from having guns… and so they seem intent on making sure that we cannot defend ourselves against theirs. HR 5344, the laughably titled “Responsible Body Armor Possession Act,” is nothing more or less than attempt ban Level III and higher body armor that can defeat most common rifle ammunition, such as the steel plate armor sold by AR500...

I want to get rid of these new 'T' footnotes as space wasters. Are they a feature of Windows? How are they chosen?

Just reported on Fox News...at a Detroit rally for Obama to preview his joke of a jobs bill, Jimmy Hoffa Jr. warming up the crowd said of the GOP and the Tea Party "Let's take these sons of b-tches out!" This is a clear incitement to violence which Obama must condemn at once. If he does not, then he is a rank hypocrite accusing conservatives of incivility and incitment as part of his attempt to politicize the Gabby Giffords shooting. This is a MUCH MORE CLEAR CALL FOR VIOLENCE than anything they can pin on anyone in the Tea Party,...

I have heard many legal scholars, practitioners, and pundits, say that the legal challenges too the Health Care Reform Act, will fail, becuse the bill falls under the perview of the IRS.

I recently tried green tea for the first time and immediately became addicted to it. I must be drinking 10 cups a day and would probably drink more if I didn't care about sleeping at night. Being new to green tea I know little of the different types, quality, preparation, etc.. and was hoping some knowledgeable Freepers could point me in the right direction by recommending some of the better teas and/or links to any good web resources. Currently I've only tried two- both bought in regular Supermarkets so I'm guessing they are not higher quality teas. One of the...

The traditional understanding of DNA has recently been transformed beyond recognition. DNA does not, as we thought, carry a linear, one-dimensional, one-way, sequential code—like the lines of letters and words on this page. And the 97% in humans that does not carry protein-coding genes is not, as many people thought, fossilized ‘junk’ left over from our evolutionary ancestors. DNA information is overlapping-multi-layered and multi-dimensional; it reads both backwards and forwards; and the ‘junk’ is far more functional than the protein code, so there is no fossilized history of evolution. No human engineer has ever even imagined, let alone designed an...

Knowing Ourselves The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? – Jeremiah 17:9 IntroductionWhen Plato expressed the ultimate purpose and great imperative of philosophy with this command, “know yourself,” he had struck upon a valuable insight. If we would know our purpose in life, how we should relate to the world and to others around us, what our goals and dreams and desires should consist of, how we should spend our time, then we must know who we are. We must know how we were made and for what purpose, and we must know...

The response was typical from the local office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR): Ahmed Bedier, the director and a spokesperson for CAIR’s Central Florida Council stated, “Obviously, if they had recently arrived here and they are from Saudi Arabia, they may not be familiar with American rules and laws. They might have thought it was some kind of public transportation.” CAIR’s usual response any time authorities detain or question Muslims or Arab nationals in the US who are suspected of potential terrorism planning came about when two young Saudi nationals, Mana Saleh Almanajam, 23, and Shaker Mohsen Alsidran,...

Time to dust off the whoopee cushions and hand buzzers. April Fools' Day is here and there's no better place for wisecracks and shenanigans than at work. In its annual April Fools' Day survey, CareerBuilder.com found 33 percent of workers have played a practical joke on a co-worker and 17 percent are planning office tricks for this year's holiday. Although it might be thrilling to finally one-up the office funnyman, pranks also help beat something that's no laughing matter: workplace stress. More than half of workers reported working under stress in another CareerBuilder.com survey. Stress and worry on the job...

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Thanks to the "intelligent design" movement, Charles Darwin's birthday is evolving into everything from a badminton party to church sermons this weekend. Defenders of Darwin's theory of natural selection are planning hundreds of events around the world Sunday, the 197th anniversary of his birth, saying recent challenges to the teaching of evolution have re-emphasized the need to promote his work. "The people who believe in evolution ... really just sort of need to stand up and be counted," said Richard Leventhal, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. "Evolution is the model that...