Liberal Supreme Court Justice David Souter is retiring. On social issues, this makes little difference: whoever replaces him will satisfy liberal litmus tests, like supporting racial preferences and partial-birth abortion the way Souter did.

But on economics, where Souter was more moderate, it will matter a lot: Souter was willing to occasionally overturn excessive punitive damage awards, and overturn state regulations that were preempted by federal law (like in Watters v. Wachovia (2007), where I filed a brief on behalf of economists and law professors). Some…

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Gold prices are skyrocketing—recently closing at over $1,000 an ounce, the highest in almost a year—while inflation fears continue rising and the dollar weakens.  This is the news that the media is echoing, quoting several analysts.  Many are blaming President Obama’s stimulus package for amplifying investors’ fears that his spending plan will only push the country deeper into recession.

Analysts’ forecasts, nonetheless, are a mixed bag.  Some analysts are calling the gold rush a bubble that can burst, as the dot-com…

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As the Dow Jones Industrial Average approached record lows, gold prices shined on a seven-month peak, on Tuesday.  Details of President Obama’s new stimulus package catapulted inflation fears causing investors to hurriedly divest out of their portfolios, dumping company stocks and demanding more gold – considered a safe haven asset – according to Bloomberg.

Gold rose for a second straight day on speculation the recession will deepen, boosting the appeal of the precious metal as a haven asset.

In fact, from some…

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Perhaps this is just wishful thinking, but I think that 2009 may see the death of calls for net neutrality regulation and may even see some of the most ardent supporters of neutrality soften their stances as it becomes painfully obvious that non-neutral arrangements for distributing content—especially large files like movies and digitally-distributed software—are the best way for the maturing Internet to deal with the accelerating amount of content online.

But before I address why I think more proponents of neutrality…

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Following Iain Murray’s farewell to 2008’s bailout-o-rama, Former CEI Brookes Fellow Tim Carney, in his Washington Examiner column, bids farewell to “The Year of the Bailout”:

Americans used to get exorcised any time the federal government considered bailing out private interests. When Chrysler got a $1.5 billion loan in 1979 (about $4.25 billion in today’s dollars), there was an outcry. When the Clinton administration bailed out Wall Street bankers in 1994 with a bailout of the Mexican peso, it was scandalous.

But as…

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The global warming community have suggested for a while now that, given the almost-certain change in US administration policy on global warming (remember John McCain’s position), the conference of the Kyoto Treaty parties in 2009 at Copenhagen would result in a sea change in global action on greenhouse gas emissions. Copenhagen would produce a new treaty, son-of-Kyoto, that would have full US participation, set stringent and enforceable emission limits aimed at getting the world to the sort of emissions levels…

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