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Baby Formula and Regulatory Failure
A lot of people are blaming free markets for the baby formula shortage. As the economist Jagdish Bhagwati might say, the problem with this is…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Inflation remained high at 8.3 percent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell was confirmed to a second term. A baby formula shortage is exposing the…
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What Is Core Inflation?
The new inflation numbers are out, and they aren’t pretty. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) went up 0.3 percent during April, and is up…
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Biden’s Inflation Speech: Top Domestic Priority
President Biden gave remarks on Tuesday declaring inflation his top domestic priority. Like many people, he seems not to understand that inflation is a…
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U.S. to Lift Tariffs against Ukraine for One Year: China Next?
In 2018, President Trump enacted a 25 percent tariff on Ukrainian steel, on what he claimed were national security grounds. They remained in place throughout…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The Federal Reserve took another small step to tamping down inflation, and the latest jobs report had mixed news. Agencies issued new regulations ranging…
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Fed Hikes Interest Rate: Bigger News on Bond Portfolio Mostly Neglected
The Fed this week announced a half percentage point hike in its federal funds rate. This is the right thing to do, but it…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The economy shrank at an annualized 1.4 percent pace in the first quarter of 2022. The Department of Homeland Security announced a new “…
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Sorting Out Some Confusion on Trade and GDP
While inflation is the biggest economic problem right now, trade policy is another reason why GDP shrank last quarter. It is also a common…
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GDP Shrinks: The Good and the Bad
The advance estimate for 2022’s first quarter gross domestic product (GDP) is in, and the news is not good. Adjusting for inflation, GDP shrank…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Air travelers no longer have to wear masks, although the decision is being appealed. Having solved all of the state’s other problems, Florida Republicans passed…
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The Updated Case for Free Trade
Trade is a core value of civilization. The very act of trade implies respect for people’s rights. Suppose you have something I want. I could…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet was sunk. Baseball season began, marking the unofficial start of spring. Agencies issued new regulations ranging from Potato…
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Inflation Rises to 8.5 Percent: Straining for Optimism
High inflation will likely be with us for a while, which means I’ll be writing a lot of posts like this. So, for the sake…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The Senate confirmed Ketanji Jackson Brown as the newest Supreme Court Justice. A rabid fox bit nine people on Capitol Hill, this time literally…
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FTC Merger Guidelines Update
All proposed corporate mergers above a certain size have to go through review by antitrust regulators. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Justice Department…
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Pay College Athletes
No March Madness tournament would be complete without at least one school being caught paying its players in violation of NCAA rules. This year, the…
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Antitrust Triangulation
Sometimes it’s useful to introduce useless bills. The Prohibiting Anti-Competitive Mergers Act , sponsored by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY),…
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Inflation and the Biden Budget
It is good that the Biden administration is beginning to take inflation seriously. Unfortunately, however, there isn’t much that the president and Congress can…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Ukraine continues to hold out against Putin’s unprovoked invasion. Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Jackson Brown had her Senate hearings. Meanwhile, agencies issued new regulations ranging…
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Amazon Antitrust Lawsuit Dismissed
Last year, District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon over its third-party seller program. On Friday, a judge…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The March Madness college basketball tournament began, continuing this month’s theme. Ukrainians continued to fight valiantly against Putin’s army, while ordinary Russian people are showing…
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New Anti-Merger Bill Not Indexed for Inflation
Yesterday, I wrote about four problems with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY)’s new antitrust bill, the Prohibiting Anti-Competitive Mergers…
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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…