By Neal McCluskey
Sometimes I wish politicians were more like good parents. I know that doesn’t sound very libertarian — the last thing we want is for politicians to become humanity’s moms and dads — but there’s at least one thing good parents do that most politicians constantly avoid: saying “no.” When kids want their food pyramids to have a base of candy, center [...]
If Only Politicians Were More Like Good Parents is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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By Daniel J. Mitchell
I’ve complained many times about the pointless nature of anti–money laundering laws. They impose very high costs and force banks to spy on their customers, but they are utterly ineffective as a weapon against criminal activity. Yet politicians and bureaucrats keep making a bad system worse, and the latest development is a silly scheme to [...]
World Bank: Anti–Money Laundering Rules Hurt the Poor is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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By Daniel J. Mitchell
A few days ago, I explained why I’m a big fan of tax competition. Simply stated, we need to subject governments to competitive pressure to at least partially offset the tendency of politicians to over-tax and over-spend. Tax havens play an important role in this liberalizing process, largely because they do not put themselves under [...]
Time for Me to Defend My Work on Tax Havens is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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By Daniel J. Mitchell
I wrote last year about a backlash from long-suffering Greek taxpayers. These people – the ones pulling the wagon rather than riding in the wagon – are being raped and pillaged by a political class that is trying to protect the greedy interest groups that benefit from Greece’s bloated public sector. We now have another [...]
Revolt of the Irish Tax Slaves is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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By Mark A. Calabria
The normally insightful Gretchen Morgenson ran a column Saturday that I at first suspected must have been intended for April Fools’ Day. She discusses a paper by University of Chicago professors Eric Posner and E. Glen Weyl that suggests we create an agency like the Food and Drug Administration for financial products. I haven’t yet read [...]
Do We Need a FDA for Financial Journalists? is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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By Mark A. Calabria
One of the more contentious issues in corporate governance, particularly as it relates to the stability of financial institutions, is whether a company’s CEO should also be the Chairman of the Board of the company. In the case of Goldman Sachs, the union American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (Afscme) felt it was needed to separate those [...]
Should A Bank’s CEO also be the Chairman of the Board? is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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By Mark A. Calabria
I have some mixed feelings about the good people at USA Today. Yesterday’s paper had a great story on Romney’s support for TARP which quoted me extensively, but under the fold of the front page ran the headline “Low interest rates putting cash in American’s pockets”. While it is true that low interest rates have [...]
Interest Rates Impact Both Sides of the Household Balance Sheet is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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By Mark A. Calabria
Obama’s recent nomination of Jeremy Stein and Jerome Powell to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System raises an important question: How should the Senate treat nominations whose terms are likely to run beyond the term of the current president? If confirmed, Stein could serve until 2018 and Powell until 2014. Of course [...]
The ‘Dodd Rule’ on Nominations is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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By Mark A. Calabria
Tomorrow the Senate Banking Committee will likely hold a vote on President Obama’s recent nominations to the Federal Reserve Board, Harvard professor Jeremy Stein and former investment banker and Treasury official Jerome Powell. I’ve written elsewhere on how these two fail to meet the statutory requirements for board membership, as it relates to geography. But [...]
Wall Street’s Seat at the Federal Reserve? is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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By Neal McCluskey
Like most political discussions, the student aid debate is driven far more by sentiment than reasoned analysis. If we used the latter, we’d be demanding big aid cuts for the sake of students and taxpayers alike. As I testified to a Senate panel earlier this week, the evidence is powerful that there is massive overconsumption [...]
Stop Ignoring Higher Ed Reality is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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