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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Many of the federal regulatory and tax laws include a “small business exemption” - politicians displaying an aversion to crippling a politically powerful constituency.  Often this is done by a cap - “This law will not apply to businesses having net annual sales less than some amount.”  Years ago, I saw one consequence of this law in the organization of the US scrap industry.  A prospering scrap firm would approach the cap ceiling and re-organize into two smaller businesses — sometimes…

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Remember the fuss when it was revealed that Sarah Palin had enquired about removing books from her town library? It would have been so much simpler if she’d just regulated them away on health and safety grounds. Because that’s the effect of the Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act, possibly the most ridiculous example of regulatory overreach this side of the EPA.

As the Headmistress explains over at The Common Room blog, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has explicitly rejected the arguments…

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