GOP Spending Cap

By Tad DeHaven

Republicans on the Senate Appropriations Committee have announced support for caps on the discretionary spending portion of the federal budget. According to press reports, discretionary spending under the cap for fiscal year 2011 would be approximately $20 billion less than what the president has proposed.
Appropriators — often referred to as the “third party” in Washington [...]

Senate Bill Sows Seeds of Next Financial Crisis

By Mark A. Calabria

With Majority Leader Harry Reid’s announcement that Democrats have the 60 votes needed for final passage of the Dodd-Frank financial bill, we can take a moment and remember this as the moment Congress planted the seeds of the next financial crisis.
In choosing to ignore the actual causes of the financial crisis [...]

Two Cheers for the U.S. Economy

By Gerald P. O’Driscoll

Two articles in today’s Wall Street Journal deal with the housing sector.  They complement each other. Journal reporters note that “Industry Speeds Recovery, And Housing Slows It Down.”  The story notes that that “ground-breaking for new homes and applications for building permits both plunged last month.”  Meanwhile, U.S. industrial output showed strong growth in May.
Bravo [...]

Congress to Expand Deposit Insurance

By Mark A. Calabria

While I never had much hope that this Congress would actually fix the real causes of the financial crisis – loose monetary policy, Fannie/Freddie – I had hoped that they wouldn’t do a lot to make an already bad situation worse.  Boy, was that hope naive.
Take the area of federally provided deposit insurance.  There is a [...]

Congress Begins Conference on Financial Regulation

By Mark A. Calabria

Today begins the televised political theatre that Barney Frank has been waiting months for:  the first public meeting of the House and Senate conferees on the two financial regulation bills.  While there are a handful of important differences between the House and Senate bills, these differences are overshadowed by what the bills have in common.  The [...]

‘Make Wall Street traders and CEOs fear for their lives, or at least for their freedom to travel.’

By Walter Olson

Recall the unionists’ siege of the Maryland banker’s home the other day? Perhaps it was inspired in part by this screed on the world financial crisis that appeared a little while back on the blog New Deal 2.0, published by the left-leaning Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute. Other advice in the same piece on how [...]