The Open Market Blog

• By: John Berlau
• 09/15/2008

The weeks leading up to a Presidential election have always been called the "silly season." But the attacks from bloggers and the media on vice-presidential…

• By: John Berlau
• 09/08/2008

There are many words -- and most them not nice -- to describe the new government conservatorship and planned bailout of Fannie Mae and…

• By: John Berlau
• 09/05/2008

As Open Market readers know, the Competitive Enterprise Institute recently helped achieve a very significant victory wrapped within a defeat at the DC Circuit Court…

• By: John Berlau
• 08/17/2008

For more than two years, the Competitive Enterprise Institute has been involved in a constitutional challenge to the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, the giant…

• By: John Berlau
• 08/07/2008

Ain’t it something! Congress just got through with passing a multi-billion dollar bailout to the government-sponsored housing enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which…

• By: John Berlau
• 07/26/2008

The new book America’s Health Care Crisis Solved has been praised as providing a detailed, free-market solution for healthcare’s future. This it does, but…

• By: John Berlau
• 07/24/2008

Of all the unintended consequences of the housing bill that passed the House yesterday — of which there will likely be many — one of…

• By: John Berlau
• 07/23/2008

While pretty steep, $25 billion of our tax dollars isn’t the only thing many Americans could lose in the just-unveiled GSE bailout bill likely…

• By: John Berlau
• 07/18/2008

It is in times of national emergencies that measures infringing on privacy and civil liberties are advocated — and sometimes rushed through without even being…

• By: John Berlau
• 07/14/2008

The near-collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may have taken the markets and the financial media by surprise, but is something that CEI schlolars…

• By: John Berlau
• 06/18/2008

In the past few days, the subprime mess has morphed into a Congressional ethics scandal. Portfolio magazine has revealed that Senate Banking Comittee Chairman…

• By: John Berlau
• 06/16/2008

It's almost a Washington truism that anytime Congress creates a "trust fund" for a certain policy issue, the money flowing into this "trust fund" will…

• By: John Berlau
• 06/09/2008

The business media is abuzz about a speech and Financial Times op-ed today by Federal Reserve Bank of New York President Tim Geithner calling…

• 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…