Today, Wall Street Journal reports that a Miami court has set meeting Friday between the IRS and UBS to look at where they are in settlement negotiations over the case of the IRS demanding that the Swiss bank turn over the names of more then 50,000 U.S. citizens alleged to be tax evaders.
As I have said in past posts on this issue (in which I have been admittedly hard on UBS-but with a purpose), and as UBS seems to now be reiterating, turning…
Welcome to Episode 33 of the LibertyWeek podcast, with your hosts Richard Morrison and Cord Blomquist and technical producer (and this week’s special guest) Ryan Young. After bidding our friend Thor Halvorssen a very happy birthday, we get a fresh recap from Ryan Young on the events of the Free State Project’s recent Liberty Forum in Nashua, New Hampshire (photos). Google’s CEO spurns Twitter (transcript via TechCrunch) in Technology News, John McCain and Richard Shelby say that the government should end the bailouts and…
We normally don’t spend much time praising elected officials here at OpenMarket, but I have to make an exception (this week, at least) for Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama. Over the weekend he appeared on TV and trashed the seemingly endless series of financial services bailouts, making the case that if these companies are incapable of functioning without billions of taxpayer dollars, the government should simply let them go into bankruptcy:
“Close them down, get them out of business,” Shelby, the senior Republican…
This week, host Cord Blomquist and co-host William Yeatman, along with guest commentator Ryan Young (Richard Morrison is off this week) take a whiff of the bank nationalizations floating through the air, and say they stink. Sen. Chris Dodd’s dodgy dealings in real estate come under scrutiny. Rep. John Murtha has a few multi-million dollar skeletons hiding in his own, heavily gilded, closet. Climate czar Carol Browner declares war on the economy. While favoring immigration in general, our hosts question…
Such is the title of the latest BusinessWeek.com debate. Taking the “con” side is CEI’s own Eli Lehrer, who argues (in part):
Long-term government bank ownership, in any case, would simply make the country poorer. Banks actually create money when they lend it out, but doing so only has positive overall economic consequences when the loans get repaid. Government-owned banks would face enormous, understandable pressure to lend to politically powerful groups and industries that can’t reasonably repay their loans. Even the…
Our friends at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights are hosting what promises to be a fascinating public lecture on the state of the U.S. economy and what it means for the future of capitalism. Former CEO and current Board Chairman of BB&T bank, John Allison, will explain the interventionist government policies that brought us where we are today and their anti-capitalist underpinnings.
Location and Details:
The Financial Crisis: Causes and Possible Cures
Thursday, January 29, 2009
National Building Museum—Great Hall
401 F Street NW
Washington,…
Last week, the German government said that Switzerland should be placed on the international blacklist for tax havens. Really? That is, according to Peer Steinbruck (German finance minister):
Speaking to reporters in Paris after a conference on measures to combat tax avoidance, Steinbrück said Switzerland deserved to be on the list being drawn up by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development because Swiss investment conditions encouraged some German taxpayers to commit fraud.
The French budget minister, Eric Woerth, even raised the prospect of ‘retaliatory measures’…
Prepare yourself for the latest episode of the best free market podcast around, LibertyWeek.
Your hosts Richard Morrison and Cord Blomquist discuss the looming presidential election, Halloween, the conviction of Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, the continuing economic unease, tough times for the U.S. Postal Service, American companies react to Internet censorship abroad, Cox’s new wireless service, Microsoft’s new web-based OS Azure, and all the finest Olympic News.
Did the free market cause the financial crisis? Was it unbridled capitalism?
The Competitive Enterprise Institute and the National Taxpayers Union don’t believe for a minute that capitalism caused the financial crisis. How can we be so confident? Because capitalism doesn’t exist in the United States, especially in the financial sector.
Nearly every industry in the U.S. finds itself making regular pilgrimages to Washington to seek special favors—subsidies for this or that, regulations that harm competitors or smaller firms, or trade deals that benefit…
How do you find work as a financial wizard today?
My friend and former colleague Radley Balko posts a video that captures the new economic reality in America.
Former CEI Warren Brookes Journalism Fellow Neil Hrab has an interesting take on Russia’s offer to help out Iceland with its own personal portion of the current global financial meltdown.
The West’s list of grievances against Russia is long…
But one can hear no peep of opposition today from any western country following Moscow’s offer to lend 4 billion euros to Iceland. Full Comment reported on that tiny nation’s current financial difficulties yesterday. Of all the countries affected by the crisis, Iceland may be…
Arnold Kling hits the creation of the secondary market for mortgage loans as the major factor — 50 percent — causing the current financial crisis. As Kling wrote:
In hindsight, I think that the crisis was caused by
a) creation of the secondary mortgage market (50 percent)
b) low down payment mortgages (30 percent)
c) the “suits vs. geeks” divide (15 percent)
d) other (5 percent)The more I think about the secondary mortgage market, the less I like it. Any widespread benefits, such as lower mortgage…
Oh, Happy Day! And it certainly is for all those who value freedom, responsibility and the true free market in which individuals are free to profit from their risks on the condition that they don’t stick the rest of us with their losses.
It’s not hyperbole to say the Republican and Democratic backbenchers who defied both parties’ leadership to defeat this $700 billion package of Wall Street socialism literally saved America. Whatever their reasons, this defeat (or rather victory for freedom),…
Unfettered greed is the suspect many point at to explain the current economic crisis. To some extent, they are right, but it isn’t irrational greed on the part of bank managers or fat cat CEOs. It is the unwieldy bank regulations that forced the entire industry to walk the proverbial plank and then blame it for drowning.
Critics have alternately claimed that over-regulation and under-regulation are the causes for the current crisis. I believe one specific regulation, the Community Reinvestment Act…
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