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The Improvisational Fed, and Unpredictable Regulations
Improvisation can be a wonderful thing when performed by talented hands—Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and the like. The Federal Reserve, especially for the past several…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Back to business as usual this week, with new regulations covering everything from Taiwanese orchids to student pilots. On to the data: Last week, 58…
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How to Get Rid of Obsolete Regulations
The House this week is considering H.R. 1675, the Encouraging Employee Ownership Act, sponsored by Rep. Randy Hultgren (R-Ill.). I’ll leave it to my colleague…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The big Snowzilla storm came and went, but still made its presence known in the Federal Register. For many documents, there is a lag of a…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
It was a short week due to both MLK Day and a large snowstorm in the DC area, but regulators still issued new rules covering everything…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Things sped up last week after 2016’s slow start. The Energy Department issued the year’s first two economically significant regulations, and other new regulations cover…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
After a record-setting 2015, 2016 got off to a slow start, with new rules covering everything from vending machines to Nebraskan sludge. Even so, it…
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Regulatory Reform in 2016 Starts Now
The House is voting on two pieces of regulatory reform legislation today, the Sunshine Act and the SCRUB Act. Both will likely pass, then it’s…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
2015 was a record-setting year, with the Federal Register reaching 82,035 pages. This breaks the previous record by more than 600 pages, or roughly the length of Moby…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
78 new regulations, from drones to ground beef.
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
There are just eight more editions of the Federal Register remaining to be published this year. With new regulations in the last week covering everything from truck…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
It was a comparatively slow week for regulations, though agencies still published new rules ranging from bright lamps to train doors. On to the data:…
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Ex-Im Is Back from the Dead, Kind of
On Friday, President Obama signed into law a five-year, $305 billion highway bill. Marc Scribner, CEI’s resident transportation expert, has his thoughts on the…
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Regulatory Dark Matter
How do regulations get made? Agencies have to follow specific procedures, first outlined in the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act. The trouble is that many agencies simply…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
With most of December still to go, the 2015 Federal Register is already the seventh largest ever, going back to 1936. It remains on pace to set the…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Despite a respite for Thanksgiving, the 2015 Federal Register is now on pace to set an all-time record page count. It began publication in 1936. New regulations…
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Douglass North, 1920-2015
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Much to Be Thankful For
Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and all of us have much to be thankful for. Over at Inside Sources, I have a Julian Simon-inspired take on the…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The number of new regulations on the year passed the 3,000 mark last week, and the Federal Register is nearly on pace to set an all-time record…
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Virtuous Capitalism in Theory and Practice
Government is responsible for billions and billions of dollars of corruption and corporate welfare. Considering the potential returns on investment compared to honest entrepreneurship, it…
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The Mild, Mild West: Regulation in America
Over at the newly launched U.S. edition of the U.K.-based CapX wesbite, Wayne Crews and I have a short primer on U.S. regulation: America…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Wednesday’s Veterans’ Day holiday made it a short work week, but the Federal Register still passed the 70,000-page mark, with new regulations covering everything from Flugzeugbaus to…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
New rules last week covered everything from relaxed grape handling to unclaimed funerary objects.
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The pace of new rules has picked up recently, with 80 or more final regulations and more than 2,000 Federal Register pages for the second straight week.
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Ex-Im Revival Passes the House
The House has passed Rep. Stephen Fincher’s Ex-Im revival bill, by the margin of 313-118. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has publicly said the Senate…
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Signs of Life for Ex-Im?
Last night the House of Representatives voted on a rare discharge petition, under which a controversial bill can skip the usual committee process and go…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
A normal week ended with a bang, with more than 450 pages of EPA regulations swelling Friday’s Federal Register to more than 800 pages (normal is around…
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Virtuous Capitalism, or, Why So Little Rent-Seeking?
The venerable Fred Smith and I have a new paper out today. Click here to read it. In the paper, we try to solve the Tullock…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
It was a short work week for the federal government due to the Columbus Day holiday. But agencies still found the time to publish new…
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Latest Ex-Im Revival Tactic: The Discharge Petition
One of the classic lines from the 1990 novel and 1993 movie Jurassic Park is that “life finds a way.” As with dinosaurs, so with government programs.