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 […]

Great column by Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz on how markets really operate – and why government intervention either causes problems or prevents markets from fixing them. For those of you who care to get in the weeds, this is one of the reasons why the “Austrian School” of Hayek and Mises is better for […]

According to one estimate, freedom to purchase insurance policies issued in other states could save some families as much as 30 percent on their health policies. Unleashing the Constitution’s promise of unfettered interstate commerce is the most effective way of breaking up the inefficient oligopolies created by state politicians.

The Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation today released a new mini-documentary discussing how misguided government policies helped to create the housing bubble, which eventually led to the current financial crisis.