After months of talk about solutions that would rev up job growth and the economy, today the House Financial Service Committee may finally adopt a true bipartisan stimulus. Led by Democratic Reps. Carolyn Maloney of New York and John Adler of New Jersey, two amendments will likely be introduced to the Investor Protection Act that would truly stimulate the economy by partially liberating investors, entrepreneurs and innovators from the shackles of a seven-year-old “investor protection” law that has added billions…

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Tomorrow, 7-Eleven Inc. and other big retail chains will hit Capitol Hill to offer Congress members and their staffs a supersize serving of hypocrisy. Retailers, who rightly complain about costly government mandates in health care and other areas, are now calling for Congress slap price controls on the interchange fees they pay to banks and credit unions for services associated with the credit and debit cards of retail consumers.

7-Eleven has fine stores that offer many conveniences to their customers, but…

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 One year after the Wall Street meltdown, President Obama is touting new regulations he says are urgent for preventing a crisis like this from ever happening again. 

 “Obama challenges Wall Street to support his regulations,” reads the headline of a story from McClatchy Newspapers on Obama’s Monday speech at Federal Hall, opposite the New York Stock Exchange. In the address, Obama asked the audience of Wall Street traders ”to embrace serious financial reform, not fight it.”

But “embracing” Obama’s planned regulation may be easier for the…

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In the new movie “Julie & Julia,” Meryl Streep does well portraying the late Julia Child, but one can say Streep also benefits from her subject.  The much-loved food author and pioneering television chef had a vibrant personality and passion about preparing food that made millions of Americans welcome her into their kitchens. It’s likely that no matter who played Julia in a biopic, her legions of fans would have flocked to the theaters.

So it is strange that Streep acts so…

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Tributes are pouring in for Edward M. “Ted” Kennedy, who lost his battle with brain cancer late Tuesday evening at the age of 77. Most tributes to the “Liberal Lion” focus on his accomplishments at expanding government spending and regulation. And indeed, those were the bulk of his achievements.

But for a brief, shining moment, in the mid to late 1970s, Kennedy viewed smaller government as the most compassionate answer in one area of economic life: transportation. Kennedy was the prime mover…

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Today, after a long and protracted battle between the U.S. and Swiss government, Swiss bank UBS AG agreed to turn over the names of at least 4,450 U.S. holders of accounts in Switzerland who may have violated U.S. tax laws. While the Obama administration may paint this as a victory, this number is less than 10 percent of the 52,000 names it had originally asked for. It is even lower than the estimate of 5,000 to 10,000 names that news reports speculated…

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Lawyers for the U.S. government and the Swiss bank UBS AG have announced that they have reached a deal on releasing to the US the names of UBS account holders. No new details of the agreement have been released, other than what was previously speculated on a week ago.

I will be watching for and examining details that are released. Whatever deal is reached, the Obama administration’s conduct in the case, disregarding both privacy interests and the sovereignty of other nations, has…

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After the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) calculated the enormous costs of an all-encompassing health care scheme with a bloated public option, members of Congress from both parties asked for more due diligence before rubber stamping the plan.

 Yet today, the U.S. House of Representatives may rush through another piece of poorly designed command-and-control legislation that the CBO just yesterday said could have its own tremendous costs.  Though advertised as giving shareholders more “say” over CEO pay, the “Corporate and Financial Institution…

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Amid all the endless media psychobabble about “national conversations” and “teachable moments” - and we will no doubt here more of this in the reporting of the “beer summit” at the White House today — I have been trying to weigh the established facts surrounding Henry Louis Gates’ arrest from a libertarian, constitutional liberties perspective.

I have come to a conclusion siding with Gates against the officers – but only in a limited sense. Although I disagree that this was a case of racial profiling,…

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Once again, the team of politicians and corporate bureaucrats pursuing the witchhunt against former American International Group CEO Maurice “Hank” Greenberg have struck out. Or maybe the better baseball analogy would be that they hit another ball into foul territory.

Greenberg, who built AIG into a financial services powerhouse during the 35-plus years he served as its head, won another legal round today as a federal jury in New York City ruled that he did not have to reimburse AIG for shares taken by an investment firm…

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CEI President Fred Smith yesterday expressed all of our condolences on the death of Washington Times Commentary editor and veteran Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mary Lou Forbes.

I was a colleague of Mary Lou’s when I worked at the Washington Times’ magazine Insight. She could always tell a great remembrance of her 50 years in Washington journalism. She mentored Carl Bernstein and others at the now-defunct Washington Star. In a future post, I will relate her explanation about how FCC rules banning the ownership of…

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If deceptive labeling of bills in Congess were punishable by regulatory agencies, Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) would be paying a hefty fine.

Their so-called “shareholder bill of rights,” recently introduced in the Senate, would impose a one-size fits all regime on public companies that would limit choices for shareholders, reduce corporate performance, and allow political agendas of pressure groups to trump the interests of ordinary investors. Most egregiously, the bill would make illegal a key feature of the corporate…

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Kudos to the judges on the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals for putting a stay on the Obama administration’s nationalization scheme for the bankruptcy sale of Chrysler LLC. Kudos also to Indiana state Treasurer Richard Mourdock for standing up for the middle-income teachers and police officers in the state pension funds and making sure that contracts affecting their retirement savings are respected.

When President Obama announced the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, who coincidentally is an appeals court judge on the Second Circuit,…

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Last week, in nominating Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, President Obama praised judicial qualities that are directly relevant to the courts that will now oversee the bankruptcy of General Motors. The president said that the qualities he most respected in judges were, ”a commitment to impartial justice, a respect for precedent, and a determination to faithfully apply the law to the facts at hand,” as well as “an understanding of how the world works and how ordinary people live.”

As…

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Whatever happens with the confirmation of President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, one thing is clear: she will not be the first hispanic or Latino to serve on the Supreme Court. This is a historical — and not a predictive – statement.

The reason Judge Sotomayor will not be the first hispanic on the Court is that the first justice of hispanic origin was already nominated — by a Republican President — and confirmed by the Senate to serve on the…

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In the next 48 hours, Chrysler is expected to file for bankruptcy because, according to press reports, a significant minority of its creditors object to the Obama administration’s planned takeover in which the government and unions would own a majority stake. The Obama administration hopes to persuade the court to ratify and rubber-stamp its plan.  But the bankruptcy courts should exercise independent judgment instead, as they do in any typical bankruptcy case.

The expected Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing of Chrysler LLC is…

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On the surface, given the economic turmoil we’ve had, there was nothing that remarkable about the bankruptcy of shopping mall owner General Growth Properties (GGP). Late last week, GGP filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, an action that some had been expecting for months  given its debt of almost $25 billion.

GGP was the second largest mall owner in the country — with properties including Chicago’s Water Tower and the DC area-Tyson’s Gallleria – and filed for what has been described the biggest U.S. real…

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Instead of meeting with the executives of credit card issuers and sactimoniously lecturing them about not raising rates, as he is doing today,  President Obama would serve card holders more effectively by meeting with economists and listening to their concerns about the dangers of price controls on credit card services. Economists from all schools of thought — from Keynesian to supply-side — recognize the basic principle of microeconomics that price controls lead to shortages of  commodities, including credit, and cause distortions that…

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One week after Washington Examiner ace investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney broke the blockbuster story reporting that American International Group’s post-bailout CEO Edward Liddy owned a large stake in Goldman Sachs. a top recipient of the AIG bailout, the New York Times has decided that this is news “fit to print.” But for some reason, the so-called paper of record didn’t think it was “fit” to give any credit to the original source of this story.

Almost all of the significant details…

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Everyone should read the blockbuster exclusive in today’s Washington Examiner in which Timothy P. Carney confirms that American International Group CEO Edward Liddy — appointed to his position at the behest of Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner after the government takeover of AIG in September — still owns more than $3 million in stock in Goldman Sachs, one of the biggest beneficiaries of the AIG bailout.

I am privileged to be quoted in this article that both breaks news and puts it…

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