Privatizing the Housing Finance System
Since the credit crunch began in 2007, private sector financing for residential mortgages has been virtually non-existent. At the end of 2010, government-backed organizations—including Fannie Mae,...
View ArticleThe Bogus Case Against Birthright Citizenship
Like gout, anti-immigration restrictionism is a perennial affliction that comes and goes with the seasons. And with Republicans gaining ground this political season, get ready for a particularly...
View ArticleU.S. Stung By Latest Undercover Sting
The nation was left reeling yesterday by the revelation that the presidential election of 2008 was a hoax. The shocking announcement came when White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters that...
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Why We Need a Serious Budget Change
The Congressional Budget Office decided it wants Halloween in March. Last week, in a presentation to the National Association for Business Economics, CBO Director Elmendorf offered four observations on...
View ArticleNuclear Disaster in Japan
The crisis at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants continues. Amazingly, a 40-year-old power plant built to withstand a 7.9 magnitude earthquake on the Richter scale shut down automatically...
View ArticleOur Dodd-Frank Commentaries
With the GOP looking to begin Dodd-Frank reform work, here is a breakdown of our commentaries last year pushing back on Dodd-Frank and suggesting alternative ideas:An Essay: Towards an Alternative...
View ArticlePutting High Speed Rail into Perspective
An article caught my eye entitled, “Trains to Increase Speed Through Randolph County” (Randolph County is in North Carolina.) Considering all of the articles and commentary about high speed rail, it...
View ArticleLet There Be Light
During a Senate hearing last week, Rand Paul complained about the federal energy standards that will force conventional incandescent light bulbs off the market during the next few years. "I can't buy...
View ArticleTax Break Trouble in DC
It turns out that in the battle of scrappy underdog food trucks against organized and moneyed traditional restaurants, it's not just the latter that benefits from government meddling. As Nick Kasprak...
View ArticleMixed Results for D.C. Sin Tax on Bags
On New Year's Day 2010, yet another innovation in sin tax policy -- measures government takes to keep you from buying things it thinks are naughty while raising some revenue for itself -- went into...
View ArticleResilient Japan
An 8.9 earthquake, a 33-foot tsunami, a series of crises at their battered nuclear plants: The people of Japan have withstood the last week with admirable tenacity. There's no shortage of lessons the...
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Downgradocalypse 2015
Ahead of the Curve Issue 2 In 1911, Ambrose Bierce wrote that debt is an ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slave driver. One hundred years later, we are feeling the sting of those...
View ArticleThe $6 Billion Scam
At what point does a public institution move beyond mere self-interest or ineffectuality and become actively evil? Two proposals in California Gov. Jerry Brown’s 2011–12 austerity budget provide a...
View ArticleEnd the Drug War, Save Black America
One key to getting past the race issue in America is to end the war on drugs. John McWhorter says it's the most important thing we could do.Cato's Letter features a lecture by McWhorter, who will be a...
View ArticleState of the State: Nevada in 2011
This is the sixth of a ten-part series on the 2011 State of the State (SOTS) speeches in states with the ten worst projected relative budget deficits for FY 2012. Budget data is from the Center on...
View ArticleQuestioning TARPs Profitability
A recent CBO report put the final cost of TARP at $25 billion, which certainly could be seen as a win given that up to $700 billion was initially put on the line (though it didn't all go to th banks)....
View ArticleA Dysfunctional Fix to a Dysfunctional System
Nearly six months after banks were caught rubber stamping foreclosures and wrongly evicting families from their homes—a scandal since dubbed "robo-gate"—state attorneys general have indicated that an...
View ArticleThe Business of the Court
Does the Supreme Court have a pro-corporate bias? Many liberals would like you to think so. “The Corporate Court has displayed a clear pattern of overreach and ideological bias,” claims Nan Aron of the...
View ArticleAn Overreaching Attorney General
Last fall Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli told an audience in Rocky Mount that in his lawsuits against ObamaCare’s individual mandate and the EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gases, he is...
View ArticleState of the State: North Carolina in 2011
This post is an addition to the ten-part series evaluating 2011 State of the State (SOTS) speeches in states with the ten worst projected relative budget deficits in FY 2012. This addition was made due...
View ArticleSupporters of "Amazon Taxes" Ignore Economic Ineffectiveness
Yesterday, the New York Times ran an unfortunate editorial praising the efforts of state governments to shanghai online retailers like Amazon.com into collecting sales tax as part of its operations....
View ArticleD.C. Council Takes Aim at Taxi Entrepreneurs
Some on the District of Columbia's city council really have it out for entrepreneurs. The city simply has too many of them. Why else would they consider an ordinance that would not only limit the...
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The Truth About Hedge Funds and the Financial Crisis
Editor’s Note: Reason columnist Veronique de Rugy appears weekly on Bloomberg TV to separate economic fact from economic myth.Myth 1:Hedge funds are highly leveraged.Fact 1:The market exposure of most...
View ArticleJoe Bast on Whether R's or D's are Better for the U.S. Economy
Joe Bast, president of the Heartland Institute in Chicago, has two well-written and highly accessible thumbnail summaries of the economic policies of recent presidents in the last two issues of The...
View ArticleNuclear Power's Unchanging Plight
Just as congressional Republicans and the Obama administration had been pushing nuclear power, the disaster in Japan arrived to complicate matters. Proponents of atomic energy fear an unfair, crippling...
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The Triumph of Politics Over Economics
At the very start of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, David Stockman debunked the myth that Reagan and the modern Republican Party were dedicated to small government.In 1981, the 35-year-old Stockman gave...
View ArticleAT&T, T-Mobile and a Maturing Wireless Industry
As AT&T is braces for a battle royale with regulators over its move to acquire T-Mobile from Germany’s Deutsche Telekom for $39 billion, it might be wise to remember that cellular phones, although...
View ArticleCBO's Take on the Obama Budget Confirms It's Just As Bad As You Thought
The Congressional Budget Office released its preliminary analysis of the President's proposed 2012 budget today, The verdict? It's a mess. Were the budget to be enacted as proposed, the federal...
View ArticleHow Drug Cops Go Bad
If you browse the website of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), you will notice a conspicuous theme: The war on drugs is corrupting America's cops.LEAP, a group of current and former cops,...
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Failing Upward in Criminal Justice
When the SWAT team came for Richard Paey in 1997, officers battered down the front door of the Florida home he shared with his wife and their two children. Paey is a paraplegic who uses a wheelchair...
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Hey Congress! There are Consequences Down the Road
Over at Mercatus Center, Veronique de Rugy put together this frightening graph showing the projected composition of federal spending from 2010 to 2084 using data from the Congressional Budget Office’s...
View ArticleGovernment's Work Is Never Done
"When," humorist P.J. O’Rourke has asked, "can we quit passing laws and raising taxes? When can we say of our political system, ‘Stick a fork in it, it’s done’?... The mystery of government is not how...
View ArticleWhy a Sports Stadium Can't Save Baltimore (or Other Cities)
Okay, I admit I got caught by Marta Mossburg'ssatirical riff on Baltimore's economic development policies published in the Baltimore Sun on March 15th. I should have looked at the headline, which...
View ArticleStates Are Finally Turning Their Backs on Cigarette Taxes
After increasing cigarette taxes no fewer than 105 times in the last decade, it looks like states may finally be tiring of pounding smokers with higher rates every time budget trouble rolls around. The...
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Jefferson Quotes on Debt and CBO's 2012 White House Budget Analysis
CBO's preliminary analysis of President Obama's budget proposal is out this month and it has a sharp critique: According to CBO's projections, if all of the President's budgetary proposals were...
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America's Richest 10% Carry More of the Tax Burden Than Anywhere Else
One of the most popular (and powerful) fiscal conservative talking points when the President pushed to raise taxes on the wealthy last fall was that they already pay quite a bit. In 2009, for instance,...
View ArticleIs the Great Stagnation Real?
In his new book The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better, George Mason University economist and New York Times...
View ArticleObama's War of Choice
In December 2007 The Boston Globe asked 12 presidential candidates about military action aimed at stopping Iran from building nuclear weapons. "In what circumstances, if any," the Globe asked, "would...
View ArticleTime to Break Up Detroit (and Other Declining Cities)?
The City of Detroit has lost 25% of its population since 2000, the largest drop of any major city in the U.S. With just 713,777 residents, Detroit's population has fallen to a level not seen since 1910...
View ArticleA War We Don't Need
Contrary to pithy bumper-sticker truisms, war is occasionally the answer. But can anyone explain why it's the answer now? At the moment, at least, polls insist that Americans are generally supportive...
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Do Countries Where the Rich Pay More in Tax Also Have More Income Equality?
Yesterday I commented on the 2008 OECD study that shows the richest 10% of Americans pay more in tax, relative to their share of income, than anywhere else in the developed world. That story has been...
View Article2010 Highlights in State Government Privatization
Bacon's Rebellion In my last Bacon's column, I offered an overview of notable recent trends in local government privatization, and I'd like to continue that theme in this column by focusing on state...
View ArticleThe Rosy Scenario System
President Barack Obama is a budgetary optimist. When he announced his budget proposal last month, he framed it hopefully, as a welcome return to fiscal sanity and a path towards a better tomorrow. It...
View ArticleA Treasury GSE Management Failure
With taxpayers already shelling out $150 billion to bailout Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the government supporting 90 percent of the mortgage financing market, it's time for the Treasury Department...
View ArticleObama's Fatal Attraction to War
It's a good thing we didn't elect John McCain in 2008. A McCain victory would have meant an escalation in Afghanistan, a third war in the Middle East, and a president sending U.S. forces into harm's...
View ArticleEnd Corporate Welfare
In America today, the biggest recipients of handouts are not poor people. They're corporations.General Electric CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt is super-close to President Obama. The president named Immelt...
View ArticleNew at Reason: Treasury is Ignoring Their Legal Requirement to Approve or...
When Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were given their charters, Congress required that the Treasury Secretary review and approve each issuance of debt by the GSEs. While there has been no change in the law,...
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Housing Market in Total Freefall
Housing numbers released in the past few days are almost all at their lowest level on record. Whether it is new or existing home sales, building permits, or prices, the housing market simply sucks. And...
View Article(Video) The Future of the American Dream and Housing Market
Last night, I appeared on RT to discuss the future of the housing market and how the American Dream is changing. See here for more on this week's dismal housing numbers.Also, see here for our paper on...
View ArticleNotes from the Underground
By 1962, Georgia State University historian John McMillian writes in his new book, Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America, corporate...
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