by Fran Smith
July 09, 2009 @ 10:53 am
Leading trade lawyer Gary Horlick testified yesterday on carbon tariffs before the Senate Finance Committee. As the Senate prepares an energy suppression/global warming bill, it is attempting to find ways to soften the “border adjustment” provisions in the House-passed bill (H.R. 2454).
Horlick points out some of the practical problems of setting up a carbon tariff system and cautions about the potential effects of such measures on the international trading system. As he notes, if the production method rather than the end-product…
Read the full story
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…
Read the full story
by Fran Smith
March 04, 2009 @ 3:21 pm
The “Beige Book” is out, and the news is dismal. This afternoon the Federal Reserve released its summary of economic conditions in the 12 Federal Reserve Districts (see map above). Based on anecdotal information, reports, and interviews with key sources, the report is issued eight times per year.
The key adjectives used to describe recent economic conditions in those districts were “bleak,” “stagnant,” “dismal,” “sluggish,” “slow,” “dropping,” “falling” and other descriptors for a sharp decline in economic activity across almost all areas…
Read the full story
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…
Read the full story
Welcome to Episode 30 of everyone’s favorite podcast LibertyWeek, with your hosts Richard Morrison and Cord Blomquist and very special guest Jeremy Lott. We start with the end of the U.S. economy as we have known it: the $790 billion economic stimulus plan and its chilling consequences. We take note of Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit’s pledge to work for $1 a year and celebrate some good news with Alabama’s plan to legalize beer with a higher alcohol content than most wines.…
Read the full story
It seems that the state of Florida has overpromised insurance coverage to its citizens in the case of a catastrophic storm, and now is coming to Congress for a bailout, lest a major storm bankrupt the state. Naturally, we had something to say about this in a press release today. The director of CEI’s Florida office, Christian Cámara:
Reliance on a Federal bailout as official state policy is reckless at best. Instead of lobbying Washington politicians for money, Commissioner [Kevin] McCarty and…
Read the full story
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…
Read the full story
Your LibertyWeek hosts Richard Morrison and Cord Blomquist welcome you back with a rousing discussion of the much-debated Stimulus to Nowhere and the website where you can evaluate it, StimulusWatch.org. We get an update from the billionaire’s club known as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and then lament the lack of income tax integrity among President Obama’s cabinet nominees in Scandal Watch: Daschle Edition. Finally, you can put this Olympic News in your pipe and smoke it.
Listen here. Also, thanks…
Read the full story
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,…
Read the full story
Welcome to LibertyWeek’s Silver Anniversary with your hosts Richard Morrison and Cord Blomquist and Special Guest William Yeatman. Our 25th episode starts with timely events from years past in The Day in Wikipedia, and then moves quickly into the latest, newest New Mexican news about Gov. Bill Richardson’s bondage municipal bond scandal. We return to the salty seas to see some Somali pirates get their karmic comeuppance, listen to the bailout blather du jour coming out of Washington and New York…
Read the full story
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.
Listen now!
Read the full story
by Cord Blomquist
October 22, 2008 @ 5:08 pm
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…
Read the full story
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…
Read the full story
Loading ...
