The Fed has cut interest rates to ridiculously low levels to try to bail out mortgage borrowers and prop up the U.S. economy.  But that has led to a “vicious cycle.”  The Fed’s cutting rates has led to a severe “credit crunch” and ”flight from the dollar” in foreign currency exchanges, notes Stanford Professor Ronald McKinnon in the Wall Street Journal.  In reaction, “Fed responds to the credit crunch by cutting interest rates” further, and as a result, “capital flies out of the country” even faster.  Mortgage…

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The Supreme Court turned away the Justice Department’s appeal of a ruling that will make it harder to prosecute New Orleans Congressman William Jefferson, who was caught red-handed with $90,000 in bribe money in his freezer.  (While I found Jefferson’s arguments challenging his prosecution on a technicality wholly unpersuasive, an appeals court was   partly persuaded by them, restricting the use of certain evidence against him).

It also agreed to review two strange First Amendment rulings by appeals courts.   The first appeals court ruling struck down an Idaho law challenged by unions that barred public-employee payroll deductions…

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Recently, the Virginia Supreme Court struck down regional taxes to pay for transportation improvements, such as the perverse grantor’s tax on homeowners, based on the principle of no taxation without representation.  Virginia lawmakers are now considering imposing new taxes to replace the invalidated taxes.  They should keep two principles in mind.  First, they should not revive the regional grantor’s tax, which was widely criticized as economically irrational and unreliable, unfair, and unduly burdensome.  Second, if they levy any replacement taxes, they should use the revenue first to preserve the Metro subway…

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Business incubators have long been a place where small companies can get help that makes them grow to the next level. A non-profit in Hyderabad is now applying that method to the most precarious phase of growth for a plant biotechnology start up: the field trials.

International Crops Research Institute for the Semi Arid Tropics are starting up is starting up research facility that will enable smaller firms to outsource field trials. It is a novel approach to business incubating, and…

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Yahoo Finance discusses how mortgage bailout measures turn Aesop’s fable about the ant and the grasshopper on its head, rewarding irresponsibility and punishing thrift and prudence.   Mortgage bailout proposals are proliferating, even though bailing out irresponsible borrowers and banks is a stupid idea, and is unpopular with the silent majority of Americans, as public opinion polls make clear.   A revised, politically-correct version of Aesop’s fable is available here.

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FDA commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach put on his best “Mom, Dad, I don’t get enough allowance! whine” at a conference in DC last week.

“FDA might fail,” he said. “Peril exists!”

He was of course fishing for more funds for his agency. Last time the agency got a huge increase in 1993, they almost doubled the staffing from 1,400 to 2,100, which temporarily led to a more efficient permit approval process before it dropped back down below pre expansion levels.

In order to…

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One of the most ignorant and gratingly common complaints about American politics is that of their being bland, uninteresting, and failing to engage large segments of the population.

To anybody who would say such a thing, it’s worth asking, “What do you actually want from politics?” Naturally, people who see political engagement as a sign of civic virtue and who believe that more choices in a democracy (regardless of what those choices are) are always a good thing are likely to…

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In his latest column, former CEI Warren Brookes Fellow Tim Carney looks at how rent-seeking opportunities based on  feel-good environmental campaigns, which are currently in vogue among some large corporations, can backfire, hurting shareholders, in this case those of Pepsi.

Last spring, PepsiCo bought “renewable energy certificates” covering all the energy consumed in its manufacturing, distribution and corporate facilities. In effect, Pepsi is indirectly paying someone, anywhere, to generate electricity from windmills or solar panels.

But Pepsi is not just changing it’s behavior…

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Bailing out mortgage borrowers is a bad idea that most Americans oppose.  Yet the “Bush administration is finalizing details of a plan,” “backed by public funds,” that would bail out “borrowers who owe their banks more than their homes are worth because of plummeting prices,” by encouraging “lenders to forgive a portion of those loans and issue new, smaller mortgages in exchange for the financial backing of the federal government.”

“The plan is similar to elements in legislation proposed two weeks ago by…

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“U.S. capital markets again lost ground against global competitors last year, highlighting the need to streamline regulation and crack down on excessive securities litigation, industry experts said on Wednesday.  The United States received only 6.9 percent of the funds raised in global initial public offerings in 2007 and did not participate in any of the top 20 global IPOs.”

Lawsuits aren’t the only reason capital is fleeing America for better investment opportunities elsewhere.  Another reason is the devastatingly costly Sarbanes-Oxley law…

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Most Americans oppose a mortgage bailout, both for borrowers and for lenders.  They oppose bailouts for homeowners by a roughly 2-to-1 margin (53 percent to 29 percent).  They oppose bailouts for lenders even more strongly, “by a 4-to-1 margin,” according to pollster Rasmussen Reports.

CEI earlier explained why mortgage bailouts are a terrible idea here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

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The National Center for Public Policy Research has a new study, and Internet ad, on the proposal to list the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act. They point out that, among other things, the population of polar bears in the wild has actually doubled in the last forty years. Aren’t endangered species supposed to be, well, in decline?

Now imagine that animals that are candidates for the endangered species list were treated like candidates for office, and you’ll be ready…

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Mark Tapscott writes about disgraced New York politician Eliot Spitzer’s hypocrisy in the Examiner.   Spitzer flouted the rules while loudly berating others for real or imaginary transgressions, and supported bestowing fabulous riches on wealthy trial lawyers while attacking successful businessmen as being fatcats.

CEI earlier wrote about Spitzer’s overreaching and hypocrisy in The Nation’s Top Ten Worst State Attorneys General, and also in a letter published in the Wall Street Journal, an editorial in the Examiner, an issue analysis, and this blog.

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In today’s New York Times, a feature story profiles a project to create a national economic planning supercomputer by the socialist government of Salvador Allende in Chile in the early 1970s. “Cybersyn,” as the project was known, consisted largely of “a clunky mainframe computer and a network of telex machines.”

A new exhibit in Chile’s presidential palace features a replica of a control chair (pictured right) that was part of the abortive project. The device may seem quaint today, but its being…

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Courtesy of Todd Zywicki at the Volokh Conspiracy, I’ve just learned that President Bush will be appointing William Kovacic to chair the Federal Trade Commission when current chairwoman Deborah Majoras leaves the agency in June. Kovacic has served as one of five members of the Commission since January 2006, and was confirmed by the Senate to that post. So, despite the Democratic controlled Senate’s on-going reluctance to confirm Bush Administration appointees, Kovacic will not need to be confirmed again in order to…

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Morning edition had an amazing story about the government race to patent the atom bomb this morning. The patenting process actually jeopardized the secrecy of the project, but the government still went ahead so they would have a patent estate on all nuclear technology. What I really liked about this story is the loving care and fascination that 26-year old Alex Wellerstein put into documenting the nuclear patenting project.

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Today, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson announced that EPA would respond to the Supreme Court global warming case, Massachusetts v. EPA, by issuing an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) to solicit public comment on a range of complex issues. 

Before finalizing its response to the Court, EPA must figure out how recent statutory changes in EPA’s responsibility regarding fuel economy and renewable fuel standards would affect the setting of auto emission standards for carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases–a possible outcome of Mass v. EPA.

Above all, EPA must sort out how setting…

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Today is the last day to vote for the free market and against overregulation in a debate I am participating at the web site of the magazine The Economist. If Open Market readers aren’t enthused about any of the candidates in this year’s presidential election, here is a venue where their vote could make a difference and the principles of freedom are definitely at stake. If CEI and I and the free-market side win this debate, it could have a…

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With U.S. farm production and farmers’ incomes soaring, why is a bloated farm bill likely to sweep through the House-Senate conference this spring? The Wall Street Journal in a front-page article gives some reasons:

The farm bill has its roots in the Great Depression, when about a quarter of the U.S. population lived on farms and endured extraordinary economic hardship. As first conceived in the 1930s, the bill was designed to be a temporary boost to farm income.

It has since evolved…

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Earlier, I wrote about how immigration authorities were poised to deport Saman Kareem Ahmad because he belonged to a group that rose up against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who was ousted by American troops.  They claimed his opposition to the Iraqi government during “Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom” made him a terrorist!

Other immigrants deemed “terrorists” by immigration authorities “include U.S. allies that fought against” the ”Taliban government in Afghanistan” – a regime that aided and abetted Osama Bin Laden — as well as ”Montagnard tribesmen who…

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