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The Unfairness of the FTC’s Policy Statement Regarding the Scope of Unfair Methods of Competition
The latest in a stream of regulatory dark matter is the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) November 10, 2022 “Policy Statement Regarding the Scope…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The midterm elections happened, and most of us (sorry, Georgia) are finally free of misleading, scaremongering political ads. Inflation slowed down slightly. Meanwhile,…
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Not Your Grandfather’s Bank Branch
What should financial services do? And how should they look like going forward as they try to serve more people? Some presenters are the recent…
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Who’s Not Buying Electric Vehicles? Single Vehicle Households, for One
Proponents of electric vehicles (EVs) have little to say about the one-third of American households that own only a single car or truck. That isn’t…
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October Inflation Slightly Improves: Time for Less Politics and More Policy
Thank goodness the election is over. One of the frustrating parts of midterm season was that many people were more interested in how inflation would…
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Why Cops Should Be Chasing the Bad Guys, Not the Big Bucks
A recent episode of Archer featured a dialogue between two FBI agents, both riding on jet skis, chasing a wrongdoer’s boat. Agent One: Whoohoo!…
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We Need to Pay More Attention to AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most important emerging technologies today. It has the potential to revolutionize many industries and sectors, including health care,…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The Federal Reserve raised the federal funds rate again, though it remains less than the rate of inflation. Employment increased by 261,000 in…
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Federal Reserve Raises Interest Rate; Uncertainty Strengthens Case for a Policy Rule
As expected, the Federal Reserve raised the federal funds rate by 0.75 percentage points coming out of this week’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC)…
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A Dose of Reality Over “Zero-Emissions” Electric Vehicles
Far too many journalists sound like cheerleaders when the topic is electric vehicles (EVs). That’s why RealClear Investigations’ Zero Emissions From Electric Vehicles? Here’s…
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Retro Review: Jared Diamond—Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (Norton, 1997)
In 1972, Jared Diamond was researching bird evolution in New Guinea. While walking along a beach, he had an hour-long conversation with a local politician…
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Rules and Regulations Increase 45 Percent during Biden Administration
You’ve heard plenty from this quarter on broken disclosure and transparency in the Biden administration, which eliminated the “Deregulatory” designation for rules implanted…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Happy Halloween! CEI released the latest edition of Wayne Crews’s Ten Thousand Commandments report, which gives a big-picture overview of the federal regulatory state.
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NLRB Seeks to Gag Amazon Management
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) recently alleged that Amazon chief executive office Andy Jassy violated federal labor laws by publicly saying that he…
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Meta’s Drop in Stock Price Unlikely to Dissuade Antitrust Inquiries, but It Should.
“We don’t even know what it is yet.” That’s how the theatrical depiction of Mark Zuckerberg described “The Facebook” to his then co-founder Eduardo…
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Reining in Biden CFPB’s “Junk” Policies with Fifth Circuit Ruling
When the federal Fifth Circuit Court Appeals ruled last week, in Community Financial Services v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, that the funding structure of…
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Mandatory Union Fees are Junk Fees
The White House yesterday called up federal agencies to target “junk fees” charged to consumers, arguing that these hidden costs are exploitative and drag…
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New Whole-of-Government Initiative on Junk Fees Comes with Unintended Consequences
Today the Biden administration announced a new whole-of-government initiative on junk fees from airlines and other industries. The news comes on the same day…
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Talking Points on Biden’s “Whole-of-Government” Regulatory Escalations
Among much else, the 2022 edition of Ten Thousand Commandments presents a $2 trillion undercount of regulatory costs and showcases the march of rulemaking…
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Ten Thousand Commandments 2022 Released
The 2022 edition of Wayne Crews’s Ten Thousand Commandments report is out now. Now in its 28th year, it has its usual panoply of…
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Workers Should Be Able to Hear from Both Sides Before Union Votes
Workers at an Amazon fulfillment center in Albany, New York, opposed forming a union by a nearly two-to-one margin last week. It was the…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Just two more weeks until the relentless barrage of misleading election ads goes away. The Energy Information Administration warned that heating bills could get…
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Policy and Politics Are Different Things
What is more important this election: The culture wars or policy issues like inflation? In an op-ed as part of a point-counterpoint series from…
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Not a Policy Paper, Just a Thought: Anti-Merger Mania
What is the correct number of corporate mergers that should be allowed? The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) thinks it knows the answer: less. It has…
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Seizing the Ecomodernist Moment
I recently had the good fortune to attend Ecomodernism 2022, a conference hosted in northern Virginia by the Breakthrough Institute. The theme was “Deregulating…
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One Year on, FDA Sodium Guidance Still Wanting
It is the one year anniversary of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Guidance for Industry setting out goals to reduce sodium content in…
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Jason Feifer on Managing Change in Life and Society
I recently wrote a review of Build for Tomorrow, the new book from Entrepreneur magazine editor-in-chief Jason Feifer. The book is a…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Inflation took a turn for the worse and the January 6 Committee voted to subpoena former President Trump over his role in the…
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A Tough Winter Ahead for Heating Bills, According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration
High gasoline prices will soon have an equally unpleasant partner in the form of high energy bills this winter, according to the U.S. Energy Information…
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CPI Rises 0.4 Percent in September, 8.2 Percent over Past Year
September’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation numbers came out this morning, and they aren’t pretty. The month-to-month increase was 0.4 percent, after rising just…