The Open Market Blog

• By: Gary Howard
• 09/23/2008

Time magazine contributors Andy Serwer and Allan Sloan give us an article in the latest issue meant to explain…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/23/2008

Treasury Secretary Paulson wants the American people to fork over $700 billion to bail out Wall Street, even though he admits that his…

• By: Julie Walsh
• 09/23/2008

I followed a link from one of Hans’ posts and found this must-read WSJ article by a former chairman of FDIC–“How to Save the…

• By: Fred L. Smith, Jr.
• 09/23/2008

These are troubled times for the global economy.  However, we’re working to clarify that the failure is not the market—nor, indeed, even in the most…

• By: Iain Murray
• 09/22/2008

Best short explanation of the mark-to-markets issue I have yet seen: Imagine if you had a $200,000 mortgage on a $300,000 house that you…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/20/2008

Bush is seeking $700 billion to buy "bad mortgages" in the largest bailout in history.  The proposal attempts to bail out the entire financial system, rather than individual…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 09/19/2008

In his Examiner column today, former CEI Brookes Fellow Tim Carney explodes the myth of AIG as a stalwart defender of free markets that…

• By: Iain Murray
• 09/18/2008

With the British financial markets in meltdown, most of the blame has attached to speculators. In a desperate attempt to be seen to be doing…

• By: Richard Morrison
• 09/17/2008

Some people seem to think that having a mind for business and profit means you must be some kind of money-grubbing miser. Far from it,…

• By: Cord Blomquist
• 09/16/2008

Check out me and Richard Morrison doing another episode of CEI’s weekly podcast, Liberty Week.  This week we cover: The “meltdown” on Wall Street…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 09/15/2008

Toronto city officials are considering some drastic measures to tackle what they see as a crisis of mounting piles of garbage. Reports the Toronto…

• By: Eli Lehrer
• 09/15/2008

Unfortunately, Congress needs to renew the National Flood Insurance Program sometime in the next few weeks. Right now, the program provides the only flood coverage…

• By: John Berlau
• 09/15/2008

The weeks leading up to a Presidential election have always been called the "silly season." But the attacks from bloggers and the media on vice-presidential…

• By: Cord Blomquist
• 09/12/2008

Rad Berky of NewsChannel 36 in Charlotte, North Carolina reports that fears of Hurricane Ike disrupting the supply of gasoline has…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/12/2008

On the front page of the Washington Post, writer Steven Pearlstein contradicts himself by writing that mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are being…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/11/2008

The Religious Left seeks to impose its authoritarian social agenda through lawsuits and other means.  They love speech codes, despite the fact that they are often…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 09/11/2008

…looks very different than it does in the United States. And by Miller, I mean Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.). In 2001, Rep. Miller and several…

• By: Iain Murray
• 09/11/2008

This summer has made it quite clear that the US is suffering an energy crisis. Not a great one yet, but definitely a harbinger of…

• By: Gary Howard
• 09/11/2008

As we learn from a Portfolio.com story by Zubin Jelveh, more erroneous proclamations about how horrible WalMart is for society have…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/11/2008

Public employee unions make the false claim that public employees are underpaid and undercompensated.  But the reality is just the opposite.  Not only are public employees…

• By: Julie Walsh
• 09/10/2008

The presidential election is in a dead heat, so every vote counts. Yet ACORN wants some votes to count more than once. The Association of…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 09/09/2008

Shopfloor.org draws a stark contrast between The New York Times‘s stated position on unions for other employers, and its own laying off…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/09/2008

Right now, the federal government, at a huge cost to taxpayers of perhaps $100 billion, is bailing out the two government-backed mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/08/2008

In California, where a referendum legalized medical marijuana, the state legislature has now gone much further and passed a bill, AB 2279, that would force…

• By: John Berlau
• 09/08/2008

There are many words -- and most them not nice -- to describe the new government conservatorship and planned bailout of Fannie Mae and…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/06/2008

When Congress authorized a taxpayer bailout of government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, supporters claimed that the mere authorization of a bailout would…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/06/2008

Congressional leaders want yet more budget-busting, deficit-expanding “stimulus” packages, using the slow economy as an excuse for proposals to bail out state governments…

• By: John Berlau
• 09/05/2008

As Open Market readers know, the Competitive Enterprise Institute recently helped achieve a very significant victory wrapped within a defeat at the DC Circuit Court…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/04/2008

Inflation is now a bigger economic problem than unemployment, argues the Wall Street Journal, and is a bigger concern to voters, too.  The Fed…

• By: Richard Morrison
• 09/04/2008

It’s official – Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has admitted to lying under oath and will be resigning within the next 14 days. Mr. Kilpatrick,…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/03/2008

The Justice Department is proposing 1,000 pages of new “guidance” expanding the reach of the Americans with Disabilities Act, at an estimated cost of $23 billion…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/03/2008

Earlier, I and Alex Harris criticized the Agriculture Department for banning a company from testing for mad cow disease.  The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 09/03/2008

Cuba punk rock musician Gorki Aguila Carrasco was spared jail this week, after the Cuban government arrested him on the ridiculous charge of “…

• By: Eli Lehrer
• 09/02/2008

P. Diddy, one of my heroes, has announced that he wants to bring down gas prices so he can fly coast to coast on…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 09/01/2008

Sorry about that!  That’s the British government’s reaction to the two-year delay in approving a drug that combats blindness.  Too expensive, dear chap … anyway,…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 08/30/2008

The consume’rs right to know. It’s hard to disagree with the nanny-state proposal now before the California legislature (I know, I know … what nanny-state…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 08/29/2008

Today, in time for Labor Day weekend, I’ve got two new articles out on current goings-on in organized labor. In The American Spectator, my…

• By: Gary Howard
• 08/28/2008

Today in the WaPo we see that plans by the University of Chicago to establish a research institute named after the late Nobel prize-winning…

• By: Iain Murray
• 08/28/2008

The Brookings Institution is the most establishment of establishment think-tanks. Old-fashioned, genteel, liberal, they do a lot of good work while at the same time…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 08/28/2008

In a move reminiscent of Minority Report, the Cuban government has arrested punk rock singer Gorki Aquila Carrasco, for charge of “pre-crime social…

• By: Gary Howard
• 08/27/2008

Some thoughts on why our side is losing in its efforts to promote and defend free trade:…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 08/26/2008

The scandal that broke at the largest union local in California earlier this month, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union, has…

• By: Gregory Conko
• 08/25/2008

It’s no surprise to many readers of this page, but governments in North America and Europe often funnel millions of dollars to activist groups that…

• By: Sam Kazman
• 08/25/2008

Will gas prices keep dropping? A recent drive I took ended with a very strange coincidence.  If…

• By: Hans Bader
• 08/23/2008

On Friday, a divided appeals court rejected a constitutional challenge to a powerful board set up by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to regulate the accounting industry. …

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 08/23/2008

…to promise much and deliver little, if anything — all the while making themselves feel just great. The Israeli news site Ynetnews.com reports: A…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 08/23/2008

An editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal gives “Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern credit for tenacity” in pressuring private equity firms. SEIU,…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 08/23/2008

In response to my two posts on the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), I got forwarded this story. Pro-union student activists, in a…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 08/23/2008

It can’t be true.  Canada, that paragon of health equality, the place where all health shortages are shared and shared alike, might have more private…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 08/22/2008

Union organizers try to recruit workers by saying that they’ll go to bat for them when things get tough for them. So it’s fair to…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 08/22/2008

Following up on my earlier post about The Los Angeles Times‘ investigation into allegations of financial malfeasance by the head of a California affiliate…

• By: Hans Bader
• 08/22/2008

Today, a divided D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-to-1 to uphold a provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, over a strong dissent by Judge…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 08/22/2008

This week, The Los Angeles Times featured a three–part series on suspicious dealings at a local of the 2 million-member Service Employees…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 08/22/2008

You’d better keep two or three dates open.  It seems that the National Health Service likes to cancel operations even after they are scheduled.  A…

• By: Hans Bader
• 08/21/2008

American immigration law is perverse, baffling, and dysfunctional.  It keeps out energetic legal immigrants who could make America richer and smarter, while encouraging unskilled illegal…

• By: Hans Bader
• 08/21/2008

Congress gave the phone companies immunity against the billions of dollars in lawsuits brought against them for cooperating with federal antiterror surveillance programs.  The ACLU and some trial…

• By: Hans Bader
• 08/20/2008

Federal “affordable housing” and “diversity” mandates helped spawn the mortgage crisis.  Additional evidence comes from a Washington Post story, which notes that  “even late in the housing bubble, Fannie…

• By: Hans Bader
• 08/20/2008

Maryland’s government, which recently raised taxes by record amounts to pay for more government spending, welfare, and public-employee salaries, is now pleading for a federal bailout,…

• By: Angela Logomasini
• 08/20/2008

According to news reports, New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg wants to build a wind farm to meet 10 percent of New York City’s energy…

• By: Angela Logomasini
• 08/19/2008

We keep hearing in the news these days that bottled water and tap water are basically the…

• By: Hans Bader
• 08/19/2008

Ted Frank has an entertaining and disturbing column in the Washington Examiner about how a compulsive gambler blamed his medication for his irresponsibility.  A jury…

• By: Hans Bader
• 08/18/2008

Not everyone is equally likely to get AIDS, notes former World Health Organization official James Chin in “Political Correctness Undermines AIDS Fight,” an editorial in today’s Washington Examiner.   As he points out, “We…

• By: John Berlau
• 08/17/2008

For more than two years, the Competitive Enterprise Institute has been involved in a constitutional challenge to the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, the giant…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 08/16/2008

The next time you hear someone complain about Americans who don’t get needed health care, think of Great Britain, where the government has decided that…

• By: Alex Harris
• 08/15/2008

I promised, and I shall deliver. As it's my last day as an intern at CEI, this is my last Philosopher's Corner post,…

• By: Alex Harris
• 08/15/2008

Who doesn't love a good half-litre? Over at the self-proclaimed “irreverant blog for food outlaws” Crispy on the Outside (which our own…

• By: Alex Harris
• 08/15/2008

The Federal Election Commission has held that bloggers are covered by the same rules as journalists, permitting them to write about candidates without their…