john berlau

CEI Podcast for September 29, 2011: The End of Free Debit Cards

by Ryan Young on September 29, 2011

in Economy, Podcast, Regulation

Post image for CEI Podcast for September 29, 2011: The End of Free Debit Cards

Have a listen here.

Every time you use your debit card, the merchant has to pay a fee to the company that issued your card, usually about 1 percent of the purchase price. On October 1, that price will be capped by law to 21 cents. John Berlau, Director of CEI’s Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs, explains the unintended consequences that will hurt consumers, merchants, and banks alike. John has written on interchange fees for The Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, The American Spectator, and other outlets.

LibertyWeek 63: Suing the Government into Honesty

by Richard Morrison on October 5, 2009

in CEI Projects, Features, Podcast, Zeitgeist

Your host Richard Morrison welcomes guest co-host Jeremy Lott and Editorial Director Ivan Osorio for Episode 63 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We start with CEI’s FOIA fight with the U.S. Treasury, 7-Eleven’s attempt to give consumers a big gulp of government and the solution to a jobless recovery. We then move on to union pension politics, Ireland’s regrettable embrace of EU hegemony and some scantily-clad Olympic News.

UBS and IRS reach an “agreement”

by Gary Howard on August 13, 2009 · 1 comment

in International, Legal, Personal Liberty

Yesterday my colleague at CEI, John Berlau, released a statement about the recently announced deal between Swiss bank UBS and the IRS.  It is being reported that the bank may end up turning over at least a portion of the over 50,000 names just to get the U.S. off its back.  As it seems, any agreement reached in this case will be the result of UBS being bullied by the IRS to divulge its customers names simply because it says so.  The potential slippery slope is evident.  In this scenario, the Federal government can persuade foreign companies to ignore the laws of their home nations basically by force.  Berlau makes the point that I have  been making in all of my blog posts on this issue, that advocates of civil liberties:

“should be alarmed by the U.S. government’s sweeping disregard of privacy interests in its demands to the Swiss”

These actions by Federal authorities are setting a bad precedent for the privacy of American citizens.  When the government can demand to know every detail of your financial life, what is there to stop it from exerting control over it? In addition, as I have said in past posts (and here), the disregard for the sovereignty of fellow nations exhibited by these demands is also concerning.  I agree with Berlau in his assessment that being in a similar situation, the U.S. might not be so willing to allow American companies to ignore its laws in order to acquiesce to another nation’s demands.

If  UBS stood firm by making an agreement that doesn’t violate Swiss law or the privacy rights of those U.S. citizens,  maybe long-standing privacy protections will hold up for now.  But it is doubtful this is the case.  It is more likely that UBS has capitulated, at least to a degree, and the slope begins to slide into scary territory.  Unfortunately, some will frame this in class warfare terms, and declare that we should have no sympathy for folks with secret Swiss bank accounts.  Because its unfair, accordng to the feds, that they are cheating and getting out of paying taxes like the rest of us have to.  Except for the fact that we don’t know if that is completely true, and maybe the question we should be asking is whether the taxes we pay are fair at all.

Policy Peril Segment 3 – Hurricanes (updated 8/19/09)

by Marlo Lewis on July 30, 2009 · 5 comments

in Global Warming, Odds & Ends

Is global warming making hurricanes more destructive? Did global warming contribute to the devastation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina? Would Kyoto-style energy rationing help avert future weather-related catastrophes?

Well, just ask Al Gore! In An Inconvenient Truth, Gore claims there’s a “strong new emerging consensus” that global warming is increasing the duration and intensity of hurricanes (AIT, p. 81), he depicts New Orleans as a global warming victim (pp. 94-95), and the threat of increasingly powerful storms is a major part of the alleged “climate crisis” that Gore proposes to solve by restricting our access to carbon-based energy. [click to continue…]

Berlau says: “Paulson Must Be Held Accountable for Alleged Bank of America Threats”

by Gary Howard on July 16, 2009 · 1 comment

in Economy, Legal, Politics as Usual

CEI Director of the Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs, John Berlau, released a statement on former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s testimony before Congress (prepared version) on his alledged strong-arming of Bank of America during last year’s bank bailouts. You can read the original release here or see below.

Paulson Must Be Held Accountable for Alleged Bank of America Threats

Statement by CEI John Berlau

Washington, D.C., July 15, 2009—Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is set to testify July 16 before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on whether he pressured Bank of America about the bank’s deal to buy Merrill Lynch.  Bank of America (“BofA”) CEO Ken Lewis has testified that he felt pressured to do the deal by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

Statement of John Berlau on testimony tomorrow of former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

As much as President Obama is criticized, legitimately, for federal meddling in business and dictating who should serve on the auto industry boards, conservatives and others must never forget that it was Bush administration Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson that made the federal government go where it had never gone before in its dealing with private corporations. It is heartening that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is having a bipartisan hearing tomorrow in which Paulson will testify on these actions

Paulson exceeded his authority as Treasury Secretary on numerous occasions. When the government took over AIG in September, longtime company leader Hank Greenberg was locked out of negotiations, and Paulson replaced AIG’s CEO with Edward Liddy, who Paulson served with on the board of Goldman Sachs when Paulson was CEO.

Reports also indicate that Paulson strongly pressured healthy banks to take government money and give the government ownership stakes in the institutions, implicitly threatening negative regulatory actions if they didn’t take the deal. A set of Paulson’s “talking points” from a meeting with bankers, obtained through a Freedom of Information request by the group Judicial Watch, has him emphasizing to bank CEOs that “if a capital infusion is not appealing, you should be aware your regulator will require it in any circumstance.”

But the most disturbing allegation is the one that the committee will be exploring that Paulson and others including Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke pressured Bank of America CEO to deceive his shareholders and not report the extent of losses at Merrill Lynch at the time BofA was attempting to acquire it. According to testimony before New York state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, Lewis was seriously considering backing out of the deal, under a “Material Adverse Change” clause in the merger agreement, because of bigger losses than predicted on Merrill’s balance sheet. According to Lewis, Paulson said, “we would remove the board and management” if BofA did so. So Lewis and the BofA board backed down.

Lewis obviously failed his shareholders by not standing up to Paulson, but Paulson’s alleged actions were the most outrageous. Paulson had no authority to remove a board and CEO of a private company – that’s for shareholders to decide.

According to Cuomo’s report, “Paulson largely corroborated Lewis’s account.” Paulson will have a chance to give his side tomorrow, but his actions, if true, cannot be excused by any counterfactual of what would have happened if the merger had not gone through. The financial crisis was largely caused by breakdown in trust, and fostering mistrust at the government level will only prolong the crisis in confidence.

Paulson and others need to be held accountable, and the rule of law must be honored. If the allegations are true, Paulson probably violated many of BofA shareholders’s constitutional rights, including the 14th Amendment’s guarantees of due process and equal protection under the law.  A Bivens lawsuit, which is filed against government employees who abuse their authority and violate constitutional rights, may be appropriate for BofA shareholders to file against Paulson and others who allegedly threatened Lewis with removal if he didn’t deceive investors.

LibertyWeek 38: Pirate Warriors on Deck

by Richard Morrison on April 13, 2009

in CEI Projects, Podcast

Your hosts Richard Morrison and Cord Blomquist are joined by special guest co-host Jeremy Lott for a very swashbuckling Episode 38 of LibertyWeek. We start with the rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips from Somali pirates by the U.S. Navy and Special Forces, look into the murky finances of AIG CEO Edward Liddy in Scandal Watch, and figure out what ISPs are up to in Technology News. We also get an update on how West Virginia is about to become even more Wild and Wonderful, and finally we answer the call for wealthy, multilingual volunteers in Olympic News.

Remaining ‘Swiss’ No Longer An Option

by Gary Howard on March 6, 2009 · 1 comment

in Economy, International, Personal Liberty

In a running theme, I again cover the topic of the U.S. government’s heavy-handed dealings with swiss bank UBS.  A nod to my colleague John Berlau, whose letter in today’s Financial Times gives a nod to former ambassador Faith Whittlesey and her commentary in FT expressing concern over the Obama administration demanding the names of 52,000 Americans who do business with UBS.  As I stated in previous posts on this issue, these actions by federal authorities are setting a bad precedent for the privacy of American citizens.  As usual, I am left at the end my post with questions: When the government can demand to know every detail of your financial life, what is there to stop it from exerting control over it?

Stocks Climb as House Rejects Bailout

by Cord Blomquist on September 29, 2008 · 6 comments

in Bailout Watch

Though the bill may have been defeated for the wrong reasons—like the lack of freebies, giveaways, and handouts that many on the left had hoped for—the defeat of the bailout bill in the House has brought stocks out of their decent. The Dow Jones is now climbing.

But how can this be? How could a bill that was designed to save our economy, our country, and the world be the cause of the Dow’s drop today? Easy, the bill was introducing such incredible uncertainty into the market that investors were panicking.

It could also be that Wall Street—despite the recent bank closings—is still smarter than Washington. The reactions of investors suggests they realize the bill may have done more harm than good.

For more on why a defeated bailout bill is a very good thing and why the world doesn’t need saving, read John Berlau in today’s American Spectator.

Stay tuned to OpenMarket for John Berlau’s reaction to the bailout bill’s defeat. Also, check out our Bailout Watch page at CEI.org.