Free Republic

As we keep warning… a debt crisis is coming.The first round appears to be striking Japan, which is the grandfather of monetary insanity. Japan first introduced Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) and large-scale Quantitative Easing (QE) programs nearly a decade before the Fed or other major central banks introduced similar policies. As a result of its near-nonstop interventions running for 25+ years, Japan’s Debt to GDP is over 200% and its central bank’s balance sheet is equal to 90% of the country’s GDP.As I noted yesterday, Japan finally appears to be losing control of its debt markets. Yields on the...

Billionaire investment manager Ray Dalio has warned that the risks of US debt go beyond credit ratings amid the US government's mounting debt in the current economic scenario. The founder of one of the world's largest hedge funds said that regarding the US debt downgrade, credit ratings understate risks because they rate the risk of the government not paying its debt. According to Dalio, credit rating agencies do not include the greater risk that countries in debt will print money to pay their debts, thus causing bondholders to suffer losses from the decreased value of the money they are getting...

Now you know why Trump is so eager to cut wasteful spending! The real mystery is why Democrats and RINOs are so determined to continue wasteful spending and not cut taxes. Trump inherited a fiscal disaster from Biden and Congress. Not to mention The Federal Reserve. Credit default swaps (CDS) for the USA are near Greece (and China) levels. ... Since Covid struck in 2020, US debt is up a staggering 56% ... And M2 Money is up 40% since Covid.

Down in the swamps of Washington, D.C., our Congress is said to be hard at work hammering out a budget for the coming fiscal year. With a crisis of massive deficits looming, supposedly they are going to come up with some major areas where government spending can be cut. One of the areas under consideration for significant cuts is the program formally known as the “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,” or SNAP, and informally known as “food stamps.” According to the latest data from the Department of Agriculture, as of February 2025 the SNAP program had some 42+ million “participation persons,”...

WASHINGTON — A key House Republican holdout on President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” to provide tax cuts, border security, defense spending and green energy clawbacks is still calling for deeper spending cuts to chip away at the national debt — as the legislation heads for a critical vote Sunday. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), one of several GOPers who tanked the bill in the House Budget Committee on Friday, says he and other fiscal hawks are still hoping for hundreds of billions dollars more in savings to help reduce the nation’s $36 trillion debt. The Texas Republican huddled with White House...

President Donald Trump is proposing staggering spending cuts. In his budget request for fiscal year 2026, the president demands that Congress slash an eye-popping 20% of spending which lawmakers allocate each year. "You're going to see $150 billion (in cuts) passed in the House and the Senate. That is real money," said Budget Director Russ Vought on Fox News. "I think for the first time, this budget is not dead on arrival." To be clear, the budget which Mr. Trump sent to Capitol Hill is aspirational. All presidential budgets are. It’s what a president proposes that lawmakers – and his...

Younger Canadians stuck living with their parents and unable to afford starting families supported the Conservative Party. Liberals won anyway.The most memorable meme of the recent Canadian election campaign emerged from the line outside an Ontario microbrewery, where an older Liberal Party supporter named Matt Janes flashed two middle fingers to protesters agitating against Prime Minister Mark Carney.The obscenity went viral — with Janes becoming infamous as the Brantford Boomer — not just for its crass vulgarity, but for exposing the deep generational divide in Canada. Polls showed Canadians boomers overwhelmingly backing the successful Liberal campaign, which Carney centered on...

A great piece in the WSJ by former Reagan speechwriter Kenneth Khachigian reminds us of what happened when Reagan was snookered into raising taxes 40 years ago.“In 1988 Reagan complained that the 1982 tax increase that he reluctantly embraced was among the worst decisions of his presidency.”“The fellas promised I would get $3 of spending cuts for every $1 of taxes I agreed to. Instead, for every dollar of new taxes we got $1.70 in new spending – the complete reversal of what I was promised.” We would add that on several occasions when taxes were proposed to Reagan during...

The U.S. GDP shrank slightly in the first quarter – something we never like to see. This data predates the last four weeks of the trade/tariff war trauma, so we are worried about the second quarter coming in negative – which would technically mean recession. If we could get the tax bill signed sealed and delivered, that would provide immediate juice for the economy. Instead, Congress dithers, and they will get blamed for the technical recession.But there was some good news in the report. Much of the “growth” under Biden was “fake growth” driven by trillions of extra government spending...

Buffett had largely avoided commenting on politics during the afternoon part of the annual meetings Q&A and seemed reluctant to directly address a question on what he thought about Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s efforts to cut government spending through the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. What Buffett did say was Congress isn’t doing its job to reduce the fiscal deficit. “We are doing something that is unsustainable,” he said. Buffett said the gap between revenue and spending was about twice as large as what can be maintained and that the more the gap widens, the more risk of it...

The Trump administration has released its FY2026 budget proposal, and it contains some interesting tidbits. Let's look at some highlights.The recommended funding levels result from a rigorous, line-by-line review of FY 2025 spending, which was found to be laden with spending contrary to the needs of ordinary working Americans and tilted toward funding niche non-governmental organizations and institutions of higher education committed to radical gender and climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life.We also considered, for each program, whether the governmental service provided could be provided better by State or local governments (if provided at all). Just as...

Inflation fell to zero in March, a welcome reprieve after persistent inflation under President Biden and the best reading in nearly five years, even as consumer spending accelerated sharply and incomes rose solidly — a powerful signal of economic improvement at the start of the Trump administration. The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, was flat in March, according to data released Wednesday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Core PCE — which strips out food and energy — was also unchanged, marking the tamest monthly inflation reading since early 2020. Compared with a...

If Republicans like Tillis actually care about lowering Americans’ cost of living, they should slash the federal budget they’ve spent years ballooning.It’s been less than a week since President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff blitz against foreign nations, and Republicans on Capitol Hill are already in full-on freakout mode. Throughout the past several days, GOP members of Congress have run to their favorite legacy media talking heads to express their supposed concerns that the president’s tariff policies could result in higher costs of living for everyday Americans. The latest example of this came on Tuesday, when Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., while...

On the Senate floor, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) expressed deep concern about the Republican budget resolution, and put forward an amendment to raise the debt ceiling.

Congressman David Schweikert (R-AZ-01) raised an alarm about what he believes is the oncoming fiscal demise of the U.S. in a speech from the House floor. Schweikert explained that a simple series of calculations “point to a shrinking labor force, and lack of young people in our society, and the reality that in 8 years, the United States will have MORE deaths than births,” citing the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). CBO estimates that if the debt limit remains unchanged, the government’s ability to borrow using established "extraordinary measures" will probably be exhausted in August or September 2025. https://t.co/xqAdGulBoX— U.S. CBO...

CNN — Campaign spending has smashed records in Wisconsin’s high-stakes Supreme Court race, as megadonors from both parties are directing millions to the closely watched election that’s set to decide ideological control of the battleground state’s high court. And tech billionaire Elon Musk is flexing his growing political influence after his key supporting role in President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign. Musk announced Friday that he would travel to Wisconsin for an event on Sunday naming the winners of million-dollar giveaways orchestrated by his super PAC, reprising a controversial tactic he used in last year’s election. His personal contributions and spending...

Team Trump is battling not only the Democrats and the stock market, but a huge and unproductive spending spree that Joe Biden unleashed in the final months of his presidency, On The Money has learned. It was an attempt to goose the economy and the markets — so people could forget Kamala Harris was an empty suit on policy and get her elected last fall. The good news: It didn’t work for Harris. The bad news: The bill is coming due. During the campaign, whispers of Sleepy Joe’s Harris-related spending spree leaked out of the Trump campaign from time to...

Ex-“Squad” Reps. Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman claimed that Democrats had originally wanted to pass $10 trillion in spending as part of former President Joe Biden’s doomed Build Back Better (BBB) Act. “We were at 10 [trillion] and then it went down to 6 and down to 3 and down to 1.7, I believe,” Bush said on the “Bowman and Bush” podcast on March 14. The two were reflecting on the collapse of Biden’s ambitious Build Back Better Act, which called for hundreds of billions of dollars of investments in “social infrastructure” programs such as universal child care, an expansion...

In a stunning revelation, the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced the discovery of nearly $5 trillion in unaccounted-for government spending. The massive government oversights are due to a previously optional financial tracking field linking US Treasury payments to specific budget line items. For reference, under Elon Musk’s leadership, DOGE aggressively pursues the elimination of government waste and promotes transparency in federal spending, a key priority of President Donald Trump’s administration. The executive order signed on President Trump’s first day in office is a temporary White House initiative with an 18-month mission; the department has already uncovered massive...

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus have condemned the House-passed spending bill and vowed to vote against it when it comes up in the Senate, even as other Democrats say they’ll support it to avert a government shutdown. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) accused Republicans of passing “draconian” policies, and called on Senate Democrats to take a stance against the budget. “We’re facing a hostile government takeover and @SenateDems can do something about it,” Pressley, who opposed the continuing resolution, wrote on social media Friday. “The Trump-Musk spending bill will make our constituents hungrier, sicker, and poorer. Listen to your constituents....