The Washington establishment rallied behind Ben Bernanke, so the Fed Chairman was confirmed for another term. But this is precisely why he is the wrong man for the job. As the Wall Street Journal opines, Bernanke is guilty of two sins. His track record on monetary policy is weak, indicating an insufficient commitment to protecting […]

When people ask me about global warming, or climate change, or whatever they’re calling it now, I freely admit that I’m not a climatologist and thus have no informed opinion on whether the planet is warming due to human activity (or whether this, on net, would be a bad thing). But I am somewhat familiar […]

Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz have a great column in USA Today explaining why we should let private companies be in charge of airline security. As a frequent traveler, I wish this would happen, but governments rarely give up power once they have expanded into a new area: After the underwear bomber’s attempted mass murder, […]

In a National Review Online article, Kevin Williamson notes that a proposed federal banking tax seems purely inspired by vilification politics, but will none-the-less put American banks at a very real competitive disadvantage in the global market: The new proposed tax on banks — 15 basis points on all liabilities — is not about revenue or […]

As reported by the Financial Times, Sebastian Pinera, the brother of Cato’s Jose Pinera, was elected President of Chile this weekend. The press is viewing Pinera’s election through the right-left lens of Latin American politics, but this is a bit misleading since Chile has remained a very pro-market nation during nearly two decades of supposedly […]

Do stores in low-income neighborhoods charge higher prices because of racism, or greed? That’s what some academics argue, but Tom Sowell points out that there are real economic factors that drive pricing decisions. The example below is about stores, but his IBD column also has a great example using financial services: Low-income neighborhoods tend to […]

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 […]

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

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 […]

Ever since the Supreme Court’s odious Kelo decision, which allowed a city in Connecticut to seize a woman’s home for the benefit of a politically-connected big corporation, there has been a deep concern that this would open the door to more examples of government-sanctioned theft. George Will is particularly (and appropriately) vicious in his analysis […]