The late George Stigler, winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, is famous in part because of his work on “regulatory capture,” which occurs when interest groups use the coercive power of government to thwart competition and undeservedly line their own pockets. A perfect (and distasteful) example of this can be found in the Washington […]

Sometimes a picture really does tell a thousand words. Here’s a chart, based on data from the Philadelphia Fed, showing actual economic results compared to the predictions of professional economists. As you can see, my profession does a wretched job. Comparisons based on predictions from the IMF, OECD, CBO, and OMB doubtlessly would generate equally […]

Even though I’ve been in Washington for almost 25 years, I still get shocked by the deceit and double-talk that characterizes this town. A perfect example can be found in last week’s Wall Street Journal, which features a column by Karl Rove attacking President Obama for fiscal incontinence. I’m a big fan of condemning Obama’s […]

Politicians from high-tax nations hate tax competition. It’s hard to turn people into tax slaves, after all, if they can shift economic activity to a less oppressive nation. But this is old news. What is worth noting, though, is the lengths to which the statists will go to push their agenda.Euractiv.com notes that a new report […]

Appearing on Larry Kudlow’s show, Dan Mitchell debates this topic. More important, he asks the fundamental question of whether there should be any government intervention in housing markets. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXpcJkGcrXs

A new survey from International Living says that France has the highest quality of life, followed by Australia and Switzerland. The United States, meanwhile, is in seventh place, behind nations such as Germany, New Zealand, and Luxembourg: To produce this annual Index we consider nine categories: Cost of Living, Culture and Leisure, Economy, Environment, Freedom, […]

With Barack Obama planning big tax rate increases in America, it’s useful to see how that policy is working in the United Kingdom. According to the Mayor of London, the answer is not very encouraging. Many successful entrepreneurs and investors are fleeing for other nations, and now companies are joining the rush to the exit. […]

While American politicians are experts when it comes to squandering money, they may be just amateurs compared to the kleptocrats at the European Commission. The overall burden of government is heavier in Europe, so that certainly suggests that there are greater opportunities to waste money, but what makes the European Commission special is that it […]

In the ongoing contest to see which group of politicians can squander money in the most obscene fashion, it appears that the bureaucrats at the European Commission in Brussels might be surpassing their counterparts in Washington. Here’s a story from the UK’s Daily Telegraph, reporting that the European Commission is subsidizing a ski trip for […]

The Wall Street Journal has more details about the sordid redistribution of our money to the insiders at Fannie Mae and Freddie mac: …there’s still some ugly 2009 business to report: To wit, the Treasury’s Christmas Eve taxpayer massacre lifting the $400 billion cap on potential losses for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well as the […]