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New Antitrust Merger Bill Is Fatally Flawed
There is yet another antitrust bill in Congress. The Prohibiting Anticompetitive Mergers Act, sponsored by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Mondaire Jones…
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Correcting a Couple of Inflation Whoppers
Over at National Review’s Capital Matters site, I have a piece pointing out that today’s high gas prices aren’t caused by inflation. They’re caused…
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Antitrust Is Political
Antitrust regulation is just as politicized as other forms of regulation. Arizona attorney general Mark Brnovich’s just-announced investigation into investors whose politics he doesn’t like…
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Inflation Sets Another 40-Year High: Relief Is in Sight, with Caveats
Inflation set a new 40-year high in February. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased by 0.8 percent in February, which annualizes to 7.9 percent.
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The New Office Normal
What is the best workplace model for employers to follow as COVID-19 (hopefully) continues to wind down? In an Inside Sources op-ed currently being…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The Ukrainian people have proven more resilient that the Kremlin anticipated, though Putin’s invasion continued. President Biden gave his State of the Union speech. Employment…
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What Do Workers Want?
Pundits and politicians are talking about how to get back to normal as COVID (hopefully) winds down into an endemic disease like the cold or…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Congress avoided a government shutdown by passing a continuing resolution to fund the government through March 11. Meanwhile, agencies issued new regulations ranging from…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Russia invaded Ukraine last week. Meanwhile, agencies issued new regulations ranging from headlights to glucose monitors. On to the data: Agencies issued 44 final regulations…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Inflation reached an annualized rate of 7.5 percent, with prices going up 0.6 percent just in January. This is highest reading in 40 years.
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New Export-Import Bank President Has Opportunities for Reform
Reta Jo Lewis is about to become the next president of the Export-Import Bank. The Senate confirmed her nomination yesterday. Called Ex-Im for short,…
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Steel Tariffs against Japan Lifted, Kind of
President Biden is taking a small step toward tariff relief. Japan’s first 1.25 million metric tons per year of steel exports to the U.S.
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The U.S. government’s debt reached $30 trillion last week. Antitrust target Facebook lost users last quarter for the first time in its history,…
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Good News for Facebook Competitors, Bad News for the FTC’s Antitrust Case
Thursday brought some interesting news, none of which were kind to the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) antitrust case against Facebook. First, Facebook’s number of…
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The COMPETES Act Is a Bad Idea. Here’s What Congress Should Do Instead
The 2,912-page America COMPETES Act (H.R. 4521; the backronym is for ‘‘America Creating Opportunities for Manufacturing, Pre-Eminence in Technology, and Economic Strength’’) is the…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
GDP grew 5.7 percent during 2021, giving further evidence of a strong economic rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic. Even so, Congress is now considering…
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Better Ways to Fight Poverty than the Minimum Wage
Every January, states and cities across the country raise their minimum wages. There are also calls to raise the federal minimum wage, which has stayed…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
A major antitrust bill from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) is poised to hit the Senate floor without a proper hearing. Considering its contents, one…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, everyone. Inflation hit a 40-year high last week. Meanwhile, agencies issued new rules ranging from French dressing freedom to…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Teachers’ unions continued to make an eloquent case for school choice by shutting down schools in major cities like Chicago. The country also observed the…
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Retro Book Reviews: A Capitalism for the People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity by Luigi Zingales (Basic Books, 2012)
University of Chicago economist Luigi Zingales’s book A Capitalism for the People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity, which celebrates its 10th anniversary…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The Federal Register took Christmas Eve off, and here’s hoping everyone had a happy holiday season. One more week to go in 2021. The Food…
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Best Books of 2021: Keith E. Stanovich, The Bias that Divides Us: The Science and Politics of Myside Thinking (MIT Press, 2021)
Today’s political polarization isn’t just annoying; it’s damaging important cultural and family institutions. And tensions won’t deescalate until people figure out the root of the…
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Best Books of 2021: Ryan Bourne, Economics in One Virus (Cato Institute, 2021) and Caleb Fuller, There Is No Free Lunch (Freiling, 2021)
Economists are an unpopular bunch. One reason for this is that much of their job is putting parameters on people’s utopias. Spending more money…
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What’s Ahead for Regulation in 2022?
There are two questions about the coming year in regulation. The first is what will happen. The second is what should happen. What will likely…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Two big pieces of good news last week were the Senate’s decision to shelve the $1.7 trillion Build Back Better spending bill and the…
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Have a Regulated Holiday Season!
The Code of Federal Regulations is 185,984 pages long, according to my colleague Wayne Crews’s Ten Thousand Commandmentsreport. It consists of 50 titles spread…
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Senate Shelves Build Back Better Spending Bill, For Now
The Senate will not vote on the Build Back Better (BBB) spending bill this year, though they might take it up again next year.
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The number of new regulations this year topped 3,000, ending the week at 3,068, and the 2021 Federal Register topped 70,000 pages. Inflation went up…
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Inflation Increases to 6.8 percent, Misery Index Reaches 11
October’s inflation reading was the highest since the recession of 1991. November’s is the highest since the 1982 recession, at an annualized 6.8 percent.