Free Republic

One month ago, pro-European voices in Austria, and all of Europe, were suddenly muted when in the first round of the Austrian presidential election, Norbert Hofer head of Austria Freedom Party (FPO), described as a "Euroskeptic, right-wing, anti-immigrant party" crushed his opposition buoyed by a migration crisis that has heightened fears about employment and security across the continent, and gathered a whopping 35% of the vote leaving the other five legacy candidates far behind.

Donald Trump certainly knows how to manipulate the media and ruffle some feathers in order to get a reaction, this we know. Trump's plan to build a wall on the Mexican border doesn't need to be rehashed here, but one person who has let Trump's rhetoric on the subject get under his skin is former Mexican president Vicente Fox. Fox has been on an emotional roller coaster ever since Trump started in with his criticisms of Mexico. Initially, Fox took to the airwaves to let everyone know that the wall Trump has said Mexico will pay for, ya, he's not...

Back in February, when we commented on the unprecedented hyperinflation about the be unleashed in the Latin American country whose president just announced that he would expand the "weekend" for public workers to 5 days...... we joked that it is unclear just where the country will find all the paper banknotes it needs for all its new physical currency. After all, central-bank data shows Venezuela more than doubled the supply of 100-, 50- and 2-bolivar notes in 2015 as it doubled monetary liquidity including bank deposits. Supply has grown even as Venezuela has fewer U.S. dollars to support new...

. The current outstanding student loan debt in the United States is roughly $1.3 trillion, and getting bigger by the second. The good news (for those not concerned about economic realities), Obama has just set the precedent that loans will be forgiven, the bad news, parents are now telling their kids to take out more student loans if they intend on going to college. But there is a twist. According to Bloomberg, a new survey by Discover Financial Services found that 48% of parents think their child should pay a portion (if not all) of the cost of attending college,...

Who could have seen this coming? Remember a week ago when TV entertainers crowed about the surge in The Baltic Dry Freight Index was a "clear signal" that 'China is back' baby and that escape velocity growth was just around the corner as global growth was destined to pick up... Well, just as we warned very explicitly, the ramp in the index merely reflected the frenzied speculation in industrial metals by the Chinese and as authorities have cracked down on that idiocy, so the Baltic Dry has plunged by the most since November... as real demand punches back.

When Jim Chanos said earlier this week that days ago that sub-Saharan Africa is facing a severe cash shortage (mostly as a result of their collapsing oil export revenue) he probably did not have the economic basket case of Zimbabwe in mind, and yet this is the country which, after years of monetary and economic collapse "problems", including the occasional bout of hyperinflation, finds itself in the most dire situation. As News24 reports, just this past week, Zimbabweans formed long queues outside banks on Thursday as a cash shortage prompted the government to announce plans to print a local version...

In an oddly ironic twist, today Donald Trump announced that he has picked as chairman of his newly launched fundraising operation none other than a former employee of the bank he has repeatedly criticized in the past, and which he used as a foil to criticize Ted Cruz: Goldman Sachs. Trump announced that heading up his own personal fundraising operation as national finance chairman will be Steven Mnuchin, a long-time business associate, chairman and CEO of the hedge fund Dune Capital. More importantly, however, he spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs where he was most recently a Partner, having built...

Trumped! Why It Happened And What Comes Next, Part 1   Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blogFirst there were seventeen. At length, there was one.Donald Trump’s wildly improbable capture of the GOP nomination, therefore, is the most significant upheaval in American politics since Ronald Reagan. And the proximate cause is essentially the same. Like back then, an era of drastic bipartisan mis-governance has finally generated an electoral impulse to sweep out the stables.Accordingly, the Donald’s patented phrase that “we aren’t winning anymore” is striking a deep nerve on main street. But that is not on account of giant trade deficits or a faltering foreign policy and failed military adventures per se.Indeed, it...

Europe's conservative, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim tide is rising and spreading at an accelerating pace from nation to nation. First it was the unprecedented ascent and surge in the polls of France's National Front, whose Marine Le Pen has become the leading contender in next year's presidential elections; then there was Austria whose Freedom Party swept the competition in last weekend's first round of the local presidential elections; then over the weekend we learned that Germany's brand new (less than three years old) Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has not only adopted an "Anti-Islam manifesto", stating that "Muslims are no longer...

Update: PR Governor Padilla has spoken... -PUERTO RICO GOVERNOR SAYS WON'T PAY DEBT TOMORROW -PUERTO RICO GOVERNOR SAYS ISLAND WON'T PAY DEBT MONDAY -PUERTO RICO GOVERNOR: GOVERNMENT SIGNED MORATORIUM BILL YESTERDAY -PUERTO RICO NEEDS DEAL W/ CREDITORS AND/OR CONGRESS: GARCIA And of course, demands a bailout... -PUERTO RICO GOVERNOR CALLS ON U.S. CONGRESS, PAUL RYAN FOR HELP And then threatens... -CRISIS WILL GET WORSE IF U.S. CONGRESS DOESN'T HELP: GARCIA -PUERTO RICO GOVERNOR CONCLUDES REMARKS TO COMMONWEALTH A default on the $422 million due today is "virtually certain," S&P Global Ratings said April 11.

As Donald Trump inches closer to the Republican nomination, GOP insiders scramble to put a halt to the billionaire’s run for the White House. A new lawsuit filed in the state of California could prove to be the ultimate act of desperation by a frantic establishment willing to go to any lengths to end Trump’s bid for the Oval Office. However, if the allegations contained within the court documents are found to be true, they would not only spell the end of Trump’s presidential aspirations, but most likely his brand as a whole.

While this should be no surprise to any rational non-establishment-teet-suckling economist, former McDonalds' CEO Ed Rensi exclaims, in a recent Forbes Op-Ed, that "a $15 minimum wage won’t spell the end of [fast-food brands]. However it will mean wiping out thousands of entry-level opportunities for people without many other options." The $15 minimum wage demand, which translates to $30,000 a year for a full-time employee, is built upon a fundamental misunderstanding of a restaurant business (and we add simple supply and demand fundamentals) - just "do the math" Rensi rants... “They’re making millions while millions can’t pay their bills,” argue...

Will MartinApril 29, 2016The men behind the legendary finance blog Zero Hedge have been unmasked after one former blogger with the site revealed the identity of his employers. Speaking with Bloomberg reporters Tracy Alloway and Luke Kawa, Colin Lokey — described as a "political science graduate with an MBA and a Southern twang" — said he was part of a three-man team running Zero Hedge, the blog best known for its sensationalist headlines and bearish outlook on the world. Lokey, 32, says the other men behind the site are 37-year-old Daniel Ivandjiiski, a Bulgarian former hedge fund analyst, and Tim...

<p>Anyone closely following the Panama Papers tax haven story, is by now familiar with the role that Rothschild plays in providing virtually identical services right inside the US by the Rothschild Trust, as explained in our recent article "Rothschild Humiliates Obama, Reveals That "America Is The Biggest Tax Haven In The World."</p>

With the topic of Saudi Arabia's involvement in the Sept 11 attack on everyone's lips, if certainly not those of president Obama who is currently in Riyadh where he is meeting with members of Saudi royalty in what may be his last trip to the Saudi nation as US president, many have been clamoring for the information in the suddenly notorious "28-pages" (following the recent 60 Minutes episode) to be released to the public so the US population can finally relegate all those "conspiracy theories" surrounding the real perpetrator behind the Sept 11 terrorist attack to the "conspiracy fact" pile.It...

Presenting an artist's impression of what your new $20 bill will soon look like. It's official.Moments ago Politico reported that the U.S. Treasury will announce that it plans to replace former President Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with Harriet Tubman, the sources said. There will also be changes to the $5 bill to depict civil rights era leaders.Not every dead president is being scraped however: treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Wednesday will announce a decision to keep Alexander Hamilton on the front of the $10 bill and put leaders of the movement to give women the right to vote...

More than 25 million people live in the vicinity of Mt. Popocatepetl, including Mexico City’s 18 million residents. At 2:32 local time on Tuesday morning, the most dangerous volcano in Mexico roared to life in spectacular fashion, and this has many experts extremely concerned about what is coming next. Popocatepetl is an Aztec word that means “smoking mountain”, and historians tell us that once upon a time entire Aztec cities were buried in super-heated mud from this volcano. In fact, the super-heated mud flows were so deep that they buried entire Aztec pyramids. A full-blown eruption of Mt. Popocatepetl would...

Following a dramatic deterioration in official diplomatic channels between the US and Saudi Arabia when over the weekend the Saudis threatened the U.S. with dumping billions in Treasuries if Congress were to pass a bill probing into their alleged support of Sept 11 terrorists in the aftermath of last weekend's 60 Minutes report on the classified "28 pages" from the Septemeber 11 commission, moments ago the Obama administration made a stunning admission, when for the first time it revealed on the record that the Saudis were the original source of funding for Al Qaeda. As Politico reports, Obama's deputy national...

Central Banks China Federal Reserve Hayman Capital Kyle Bass Kyle Bass Lehman Monetary Policy Reality Recession Yuan Hayman Capital founder Kyle Bass sat down recently for a conversation with Maria Bartiromo and Gary Kaminsky on Wall Street Week. He covered a variety of topics such as NIRP, income inequality, and the U.S. presidential race. As our regular readers know, Kyle correctly predicted the housing crisis, and is now calling for the yuan to be dramatically devalued. On the growing use of negative interest rates as a central bank policy tool, he pointed out that while the central planners have their...

Back in July of 2014, we reported that in an attempt to obtain if not compensation, then at least confirmation of bank manipulation in the precious metals industry, a group of silver bullion banks including Deutsche Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia and HSBC (later UBS was also added to the defendants) were accused of manipulating prices in the multi-billion dollar market.