The Open Market Blog

• By: John Berlau
• 05/30/2008

Last week, I discovered a bizarre requirement for a fingerprint registrty in housing legislation that had just passed the Senate Banking Committee. In an OpenMarket…

• By: John Berlau
• 05/23/2008

Author’s note: See follow-up post “Are Borrowers Next?” Fingerprints are considered to be among the most personal of information, and fingerprint databases created and…

• By: John Berlau
• 05/07/2008

Many commentators, such as CEI’s Hans Bader, have done a diligent job tracking the costs to taxpayers of the mortgage bailout scheduled to be…

• By: John Berlau
• 05/05/2008

Many commentators, such as Open Market’s Hans Bader, have done a diligent job tracking the costs to taxpayers of the mortgage bailout scheduled to be…

• By: John Berlau
• 03/21/2008

I've been withholding comment about the Federal Reserve Bank's Bear Stearns intervention until I've had a chance to appraise the deal, including the extent of…

• By: John Berlau
• 03/05/2008

What happened in Washington state is frightening. It is further confirmation of a trend in eco-terrorism I report on in Eco-Freaks. Eco-terrorism…

• By: John Berlau
• 03/03/2008

Hans, it’s also wrong to refer to this Supreme Court as anti-investor. Two weeks ago, as I have noted, the Court unanimously ruled in…

• By: John Berlau
• 02/20/2008

A few weeks ago, the Supreme Court’s decision in Stoneridge v. Scientific-Atlanta was denounced by shareholder activists and much of the media as “anti-investor.” Why?…

• By: John Berlau
• 02/11/2008

I can’t remember a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that received more media coverage and broke more news events. As fate would have it,…

• By: John Berlau
• 02/07/2008

Eli, I agree with Michelle on this one. There is no justification for regulating the fares of either taxis or pick-up limousine services.

• By: John Berlau
• 02/05/2008

Hans, you are certainly right that the credit rating agencies goofed in giving their highest credit rating to mortgage-backed securities before these new instruments…

• By: John Berlau
• 01/25/2008

Iain, you're so right that it's not just bad policy, but bad politics, for Republican candidates not to challenge costly regulations aimed at fending…

• By: John Berlau
• 01/18/2008

After Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke basically said yesterday that making the Bush tax cuts permanent should be off the table for now, in…

• By: John Berlau
• 01/14/2008

For the past few political seasons, diehard political buffs will frequently visit one site to get the latest info on various races and campaigns:…

• By: John Berlau
• 01/04/2008

Today's jobs survey points to slowing growth, but we are still far from a recession. And as my CEI colleagues and I have said before,…

• By: John Berlau
• 01/03/2008

On New Year's Day, the SEC suffered a defeat, and I hailed it as a victory. Nothing unusual about that scenario, except this was not…

• By: John Berlau
• 12/28/2007

Anna Schwartz, longtime colleague of the late Milton Friedman and celebrated free-market economist in her own right, had some interesting things to say about…

• By: John Berlau
• 12/16/2007

While much of the media attention has focused on National Review‘s recent editorial endorsing GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, another of the magazine’s editorials may…

• By: John Berlau
• 12/06/2007

“Wall Street Falls on Mortgage Unease” read the headline of an Associated Press story posted on Yahoo Finance just after the markets closed on…

• By: John Berlau
• 11/26/2007

As the joke goes, there’s good news and bad news. Which would you like to hear first? Upon hearing no answer from the readers of…

• By: John Berlau
• 11/15/2007

Yesterday I had an article in National Review Online analyzing Rep. Barney Frank's answer to subprime woes. As I write, Frank's "Mortgage Reform and…

• By: John Berlau
• 11/01/2007

Talk about the blind leading the blind! Superbank Citigroup Inc. was supposed to be a big player in Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's "superconduit" to provide…

• By: John Berlau
• 10/29/2007

Today, I have a piece in American Thinker on how environmental regulations, much more than global warming, were likely a factor in the intensity…

• By: John Berlau
• 10/24/2007

Hans, excellent points about the folly of a government-organized bailout. Indeed the Dow had gone back to 14,000 the week before Paulson opened his…

• By: John Berlau
• 10/05/2007

Michelle, Excellent points about the lack of correlation in Australia between global warming and forest fires. And, for an in-depth look at what’s really…

• By: John Berlau
• 10/03/2007

At the OpenMarket, most of our writing is about law and policy. But ultimately, it's people that make the "open market" work. When market rules…

• By: John Berlau
• 09/17/2007

D.C. Councilman and former mayor Marion Barry, as well as some of his colleagues on the City Council, have a novel idea on how to…

• By: John Berlau
• 09/17/2007

Last night, in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said that on his first date with Andrea Mitchell, now…

• By: John Berlau
• 09/12/2007

I recently returned from my first visit to Columbia, Mo., since I graduated from the University of Missouri there 1994. I am a graduate of…