Back in 2009, I got very excited when President Obama stated, “No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top.” Did that mean he wanted to reduce America’s punitive and anti-competitive corporate tax burden? Or maybe even fix the entire tax code and install a simple and […]

I’ve periodically written about the overall cost of regulation, and I’ve also highlighted the onerous costs of proposals such as the Dodd-Frank bailout bill. This blurb from the IFC Review may give readers a sense of the regulatory onslaught facing financial institutions. Banks and other financial services firms had to deal with 60 regulatory changes each working […]

Taxes and spending are two of the most obvious burdens imposed by government, and I’m glad that many people are fighting against a political class that seems to have a limitless appetite for a bigger public sector. But politicians also can do great damage to an economy with mandates, regulations, and other forms of intervention. […]

Even when the results coincide with my views, I have a jaundiced view of polling data. In large part, this is because the answers often depend on how a question is framed. That being said, I periodically link to polling data about economic policy if I think we can glean some insight from the data. […]

I’ve written several times about a proposed IRS regulation that would force American banks to put foreign law above U.S. law. I’ve repeatedly warned that the scheme, which would force financial institutions to report the deposit interest they pay to foreigners, is bad economic policy, bad regulatory policy, and bad banking policy. My arguments have […]

I’m not a big fan of the European bureaucracy. Indeed, I was semi-serious when I stated that Brussels was the “most statist place on the planet.” Which is why I greatly enjoyed this speech by the head of Ryan Air, who ripped the bureaucrats a new you-know-what while speaking at an event sponsored by the […]

I’ve explained on many occasions how the financial crisis was largely the result of government-imposed mistakes, and I’ve paid considerable attention to the role of easy money by the Federal Reserve and the perverse subsidies provided by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But I’ve only once touched on the role of the Basel regulations on […]

I recently commented on some astounding numbers showing that each regulatory bureaucrat destroys 100 jobs in the productive sector of the economy. That’s obviously terrible news. Heck, it would be awful if each bureaucrat caused the destruction of 2 private-sector jobs. But here are some excerpts from a John Stossel column about how the bureaucrats […]

Last year, I reported on a study from the Small Business Administration that estimated that federal regulation costs the economy a staggering $1.75 trillion every year. But that number is so large that it’s hard to understand what it actually means, so let’s look at some new research to better understand the impact of red […]

Why impose a regulatory burden on a weakened banking sector when it has nothing to do with enforcing American tax law?