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Biden’s budget: A continued attack on reliable energy and freedom
President Joe Biden’s FY 2025 budget request of $7.3 trillion is exactly what Americans should have expected: increased spending and taxes. A budget…
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New student loan proposal is regressive, politicized, and won’t stop rising prices
President Biden this week unveiled a new student debt relief proposal. It would cancel student debt for up to 153,000 people who incurred $12,000…
Blog
Red tape? More like chains, thanks to deficit spending and subsidies
Federal subsidies and grants are infamous for having strings attached. That’s nothing new, but those strings are increasingly chains. Businesses are being seduced into corporate…
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Johnson-Crapo’s Reemergence Ruins Reg Relief Bill
Last year, an overhaul of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac called Johnson-Crapo—named after then Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) and Ranking Member Mike…
Blog
Least Transparent Administration Closes Records on Fannie and Freddie
This Sunshine Week, the administration that swept into office promising to be the “most transparent” in history was just judged by a major news service…
Blog
Obama Administration Learned Nothing from 2008 Financial Crisis, Mortgage Expert Says
Ed Pinto had a depressing and revealing op-ed in The Wall Street Journal Friday about how the Obama administration is artificially creating markets for risky mortgages, using…
Blog
Main Street Fights Dodd-Frank’s Chipping Away at the Constitution
“Wall Street Chips Away at Dodd-Frank,” blared a recent front-page headline in The New York Times about bipartisan measures that have passed the U.S. House of Representatives…
Blog
Obama Should Help Borrowers by Shedding Dodd-Frank, Not Pumping FHA
“If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” So said Ronald Reagan in 1986. Reagan was describing the unintended effects of…
Blog
Liberals and Conservatives Challenge Overreach of Dodd-Frank’s FSOC on MetLife
As CEI brings suit before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals tomorrow challenging the constitutionality of unaccountable bureaucracies created by the Dodd-Frank “financial reform” law…
National Review
Obama’s Peanut-Brained Attack on MetLife
This article was originally published at the National Review on November 6, 2014. One day while sitting on the roof of his doghouse, Snoopy supposedly…
Washington Examiner
Fannie, Freddie Investors Undaunted by Court Loss
A representative of Fairholme Funds, one of the activist hedge funds that brought the lawsuits in both the District and Federal Claims courts, told the…
Blog
Lesson from Ex-Im Fight: More Agencies Should Have Sunsets
Congress hasn’t voted just yet on the Continuing Resolution that includes the Export-Import Bank’s reauthorization. But we already know that it will pass this week,…
Blog
Dueling Ex-Im Commentary
A vote on the Continuing Resolution, which includes the controversial Export-Import Bank reauthorization was originally scheduled for today, but has been pushed back to next…
Blog
Don’t Tie Ex-Im Renewal to Government Shutdown
It appears Congress will decide the Export-Import Bank’s short-term fate this week. There are several bills with different reauthorization terms, and Rep. Justin Amash and…
Newsmax
Oversight Council Declares MetLife Too Big to Fail
“Good grief!” That’s what Charlie Brown, star of comic strip Peanuts and cartoon spokesman for the MetLife insurance firm, might say about the government’s actions…
Blog
Ex-Im Update
Congress comes back from its annual August recess next week. One of the top items on its agenda is deciding the Export-Import Bank’s fate. Ex-Im…
Blog
The Ex-Im Bank’s Unilateral Disarmament Fallacy
One of the weakest arguments against free trade is the "unilateral disarmament" fallacy--that a country should refuse to liberalize its trade policies until other countries…
Blog
The Case for Closing the Export-Import Bank
Over at American Banker’s BankThink blog, I have a piece making the case for closing the Export-Import Bank, mostly on corruption grounds: The…
Blog
Subprime Auto Concerns Caused by Government Intervention
Should we worry about a crisis in subprime auto loans? That question has been asked in the financial media lately. My answer is yes, with…
Study
Ten Reasons to Abolish the Export-Import Bank
This year’s Ex-Im Bank reauthorization is gearing up to be an even bigger fight. Here's 10 reasons why the Export-Import Bank should be abolished.
Blog
Cronyism and the Export-Import Bank
Over at Rare, I have a piece on the cronyism angle of the Export-Import Bank debate. The Senate will likely vote this on month on whether…
Blog
Obama Drives Up Tuition at Taxpayer Expense by Expanding Pay As You Earn Program
If you wanted to encourage wastefully run colleges to ratchet up their tuition at taxpayer expense, you couldn’t come up with a better way than the…
Blog
Ex-Im Reauthorization Fight: Release the Reagan
The Export-Import Bank is up for reauthorization in September. If the vote fails in Congress, the Bank and its $140 billion portfolio will cease to…
Blog
Cantor’s Loss a Warning Shot to Supporters of Ex-Im Bank and Johnson-Crapo
Defying conventional wisdom as he often does, Pulitzer prize-winning pundit George F. Will disputed the notion that in the wake of the shocking primary loss…
Blog
Laughing All the Way to the Export-Import Bank
The Kronies are back with a video about the Export-Import Bank, one of the federal government’s largest corporate welfare programs. While the video is less than…
Blog
When Hedge Funds Meet Pension Funds
Are hedge funds dangerous? Depends on who you ask — and where you look. For most investors, they’re no riskier than other assets — just…
Blog
Johnson-Crapo Is Fannie and Freddie on Steroids
Today, after delays and much opposition from many quarters on different grounds, the Johnson-Crapo housing finance overhaul is set to be voted on by the…
Blog
Johnson-Crapo Delayed; CEI-Coordinated Coalition Letter Cited as a Factor
Today, in a surprise move, the Senate Banking Committee postponed the vote it had been set to mark up for Johnson-Crapo. Reports vary as…
Blog
CEI Podcast for April 23, 2014: Reforming Fannie and Freddie
Senior Fellow John Berlau argues that a bill from Senators Tim Johnson and Mike Crapo intended to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would only…
News Release
Conservative and Free-Market Leaders Urge Senate to Reject Johnson-Crapo Housing Finance Overhaul
Washington, D.C., April 23—The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) in a coalition of 26 public policy leaders sent a letter to members of the Senate Banking…
Blog
Johnson-Crapo Is Phony Fannie-Freddie Reform
Ever since the phrase appeared in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet," and its variations, have…
Blog
The “California Rule” and the “The Fall of Pacific Grove”
In my previous post, I described the "California rule," which puts state governments in a legal straitjacket when trying to reform underfunded public pensions.
Blog
How the “California Rule” Holds Back Pension Reform
These days, local governments announcing bankruptcy seems like routine in California. Since the onset of the 2008 financial crisis, many state and local governments have…
Blog
To Enact Pension Reform, Make Good Policy Good Politics
In my previous post, I looked at some basic principles that should guide state policy makers when tackling pension reform. Now, we turn to the…
Blog
Who Wants to See Their State Go Broke?
Few people would raise their hands when asked that question. But actually putting a state's financing on sound footing is difficult in practice. That makes…
Blog
“The bill doesn’t come due until well after the legislators who wrote the check have left office”
Thus describes an Illinois state Senator the challenge states face in reforming their public employee pension systems. Given that reality, it's astounding reform would ever…
Blog
Bad Highway Policy Is a Bipartisan Affair
Two major pieces of surface transportation policy news dropped this week. President Obama is readying the release of his budget, which will contain over $300…
Blog
No Obamaloans at the Post Office!
While Sen. Elizabeth Warren may proudly brand herself a populist, in her latest crusade, she is casting her lot with fat cats. Warren wants to…
Blog
CEI Experts on the State of the Union
ECONOMIC MOBILITY Iain Murray, Vice President for Strategy: “The fact is: Today’s America is divided between those who work…
Newsmax
Auto Bailout Gives Away Chrysler
As 2014 opened, Detroit was bankrupt, but they were cheering the five-year-old U.S. auto bailout in Italy. That’s because after being the beneficiary of billions…
Investor's Business Daily
Taxpayers Losers In Fiat-Chrysler Deal
And for what? Yes, they kept a U.S. company in business. But now it's an Italian company. This prompted John Berlau, a senior fellow at…
Blog
The Great Italian Auto Bailout — Courtesy of U.S. Taxpayers
At the beginning of 2014, Detroit may be bankrupt, but they're cheering the five-year-old U.S. auto bailout in Italy. That's because after being the beneficiary…
Blog
The Volcker Winter Storm — Bad Rule, Worse Implementation
On a snowy day in Washington, several federal agencies packed some mean regulatory snowballs that will most likely overshoot their supposed destination of Wall Street…
Blog
Volcker Rule Curbs Useful, Profitable Proprietary Trading, Not Risky Lending
The government just approved a regulation called the Volcker Rule to curb proprietary trading by banks -- even though such trading did not cause the financial crisis,…
Blog
Mel Watt Fails Taxpayer, Privacy, and Transparency Tests
Former Rep. Mel Watt, D-N.C., failed his procedural confirmation vote today to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees the government housing entities Fannie…
Blog
Public Pensions Are Not Property
Across the nation, state and local governments in dire financial straits face great difficulty in their efforts to bring their budgets under control. Pensions are…
Blog
J.P. Morgan Settlement Rips Off Taxpayers and Investors, Punishes Some Alleged Victims
Recently, The Washington Post reported that J.P.Morgan will pay $13 billion to settle lawsuits against it by the federal government and two…
Blog
Shut Down Fannie and Freddie Permanently
Cross-posted from Newsbusters.org “U.S. Government Shutdown Threatening Housing Recovery,” screams the Oct. 2 headline of a shutdown scare screed in Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Wade…
Blog
Ignoring the Government’s Role in the Financial Crisis, Five Years Later
When it comes to reporting on the 2008 financial crisis, many journalists are experts at ignoring the elephant in the room: the government's role in…
Blog
New Estimate: Public Pensions Underfunded by $4.1 Trillion
One of the challenges in addressing the underfunding of public pensions is determining how big the funding gaps are. Estimates vary because of disagreement over…
Blog
Detroit’s Pension Fight: Coming to a City Near You?
The bankruptcy of Detroit is an unusual event, but its uniqueness lies mainly in its severity. Municipal governments across the nation are struggling to bring…
Blog
ALEC Puts Forth Ideas for State Pension Reform
Public awareness of the scope of the state public pension crisis seems to be growing every day. That's a welcome development, in that it has…
Blog
Federal Income-Based Repayment Plan Encourages Skyrocketing Law School Tuition
A recent item in The Washington Post explains "how Georgetown Law gets Uncle Sam to pay its students’ bills," averaging $158,888 over three years,…
Blog
Not With Banks, Not With Retailers, But With Freedom
In explaining my policy positions, I often find myself pointing out I am neither pro-business nor pro-bank, but pro-market. My Competitive Enterprise Institute colleagues and I…
Blog
Detroit Bankruptcy Focuses Attention on Public Pensions
For people watching it from afar, the bankruptcy of Detroit — the biggest municipal bankruptcy in American history — may have brought a sense of…
Huffington Post
Want to Revive Glass-Steagall? Try This Wall of Separation Instead
A debate is raging on the left, the right, and even in libertarian circles on the best way to escape from the Too-Big-To-Fail quagmire. These…
Blog
On Dodd-Frank’s 3rd Anniversary, “North Star” is Further Out of Reach
Over the weekend, President Obama hailed the third anniversary of the enactment of the Dodd-Frank “financial reform.” In his weekly radio address, the president…
Blog
The Government’s Wasteful Obsession with Subsidized Homeownership
The government has spent vast sums of money promoting homeownership through subsidies, tax exemptions, and bailouts. For example, in prosperous Alexandria, Virginia, certain people who…
Blog
The Economist on “the muddle-headed world of American public pension accounting”
As state governments across the nation struggle to address a public pension underfunding crisis they can no longer deny, The Economist is the latest…
Blog
Historian: Housing Nominee Mel Watt Helped Spawn the Subprime Crisis
In the Daily Caller, historian and presidential biographer Charles C. Johnson writes that “Housing nominee Mel Watt helped create the…
Blog
Obama: A Sweet Pension for Himself, But Not For America’s Savers or Investors
In The Washington Post, Allan Sloan points out that while President Obama wants to cap American citizens' IRAs at $3 million or substantially…
Blog
New York Times: Obama Administration Discrimination Settlement Was “Magnet For Fraud” That Enriched Trial Lawyers
A page 1 New York Times story today describes how the Obama administration, despite opposition from civil servants, radically expanded a legal settlement that…
Blog
Amtrak And The Progressive Sleight Of Hand
Progressives have always assumed that if something is good, it must be provided through coercive force by a central government. This is illustrated in progressive…
Blog
Cyprus Is A Lesson For U.S. Policy Makers: Too Big To Fail Is Not Inevitable
American financial regulators could take a lesson from their European counterparts. The recent EU bail-in/bailout of Cyprus, despite its dangers, shows that reducing moral hazard…
Blog
What Cyprus (Initially) Got Right — Remembering The 2008 WaMu Capital “Run”
There's no shortage of criticism of the Cyprus "bail-in" -- the one-time tax the government had proposed levying on insured and uninsured depositors to rescue…
Blog
Dallas Fed’s Fisher And CPAC’s Fishy Too-Big-To-Fail Event
If the Conservative Political Action Conference’s (CPAC) organizers wanted a speaker or panel on the causes of the financial crisis and what to do about…
Blog
SEC Charges Illinois With Securities Fraud And Lets It Off With A Warning
This week, Illinois became only the second state in U.S. history to by charged with securities fraud by federal regulators (New Jersey was the first,…
Free Beacon
Fannie Motors
“It’s becoming Fannie Motors,” said Competitive Enterprise Institute finance scholar John Berlau, referring to the government-backed housing lender Fannie Mae. “They’re still using our tax…
Blog
Stirrings of Pension Reform in Montana
Pension obligations’ strains on state budgets have made pension reform a priority for state policy makers across the nation. Over the last couple of…
Blog
CalPERS: Model Of Pension Dysfunction
Few state governments are as in as much fiscal trouble as California's, so it's not surprising that few state pension funds have been as mismanaged…
Blog
Payback? Government Targets S&P And Egan-Jones, Not Moody’s Or Fitch
Why not Moody's? Why not Fitch? Of all the questions raised about the U.S. government's strange case against Standard & Poor's—a lawsuit that actually asserts that…
Blog
Thrifty People Punished Yet Again By Obama Administration
When I bought my home, I chose a mortgage that was within my means. That meant buying a little two-bedroom house, and using much of…
Blog
New Jersey State Senate Pushes Union Giveaway in Project Labor Agreement Bill
The extent and huge costs of the damage from Hurricane Sandy to New Jersey should make rebuilding the worst affected areas…
Blog
Qualified Mortgage Rule Is One Of Many Dodd-Frank Boots To Drop
The first thing that should be said about today's "qualified mortgage" rule is that it is just one of many new regulations the Consumer Financial…
Blog
Basel III Cliff May Be Averted, But Dangers Still Loom For Main Street Banks
After numerous criticisms from U.S. community banks and lawmakers of both parties, the international committee in charge of the Basel III bank capital agreement…
Blog
GM Stock Sale Doesn’t End Damage Of Government Motors
Below is my statement released today on the government’s planned 15-month sale of its remaining General Motors stock: On Wednesday, the government announced a plan to sell its…
News Release
Taxpayers Get Terrible Deal on GM Stock
Washington, D.C. – December 20, 2012 – John Berlau, Senior Fellow for Finance and Access to Capital, had the following to say about the…
News Release
TAG Bank Bailout Fails in Senate, Taxpayers Win
Washington, D.C. – December 13, 2012 – On behalf of taxpayers and future generations burdened by the nation’s debt, the Competitive Enterprise Institute rejoices at…
Blog
Obama’s Low-Quality College Bailout Will Fuel Skyrocketing Tuition
We wrote earlier about perverse federal financial aid policies that encourage colleges to jack up tuition. Recently, the Obama administration came up with something even worse.
Letters
Free-Market Coalition Letter Against TAG’s Unlimited Deposit Insurance
As the Senate prepares today to vote on extending unlimited deposit insurance for non-interest bank accounts, 14 leaders and scholars of conservative and free-market groups signed a…
News Release
Coalition Tags TAG Bailout as Regressive and Economically Disastrous
Washington, DC, December 10, 2012 – As the Senate prepares today to vote on extending unlimited deposit insurance for non-interest bank accounts, 14 leaders and scholars…
Blog
The Hostess Bankruptcy And The Threat Of A PBGC Bailout
On Friday, November 16, Hostess Brands announced it was shutting down operations after the Bakers, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM), which rejected…
Blog
The Basel Cliff — Basel III’s Poisonous Recipe For The Economy
As if the "fiscal cliff," with its prospects of looming tax hikes, were not enough, big and small banks—and in turn consumers and businesses who…
Trib Live
Chrysler, Fiat deal backfires
John Berlau is the senior fellow for finance and access to capital in the Center for Economic Freedom at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington,…
Blog
FEMA’s Wasteful “Disaster Socialism”
In the Washington Examiner, Shikha Dalmia of the Reason Foundation notes that FEMA has been as slow after Superstorm Sandy as it was after…
Blog
Auto Industry Expert: “Romney’s Plan Also Would Have ‘Saved’ Detroit”
Earlier, we noted that the auto bailouts temporarily look more successful right now than they likely will be in the long-run since Toyota's bogus safety issues,…
Blog
Chrysler And The Cratering Credit Rating Of Fiat
My piece yesterday in The Daily Caller, "The Real Fiat Scandal," spotlights the real threat to Chrysler's prospects in the immediate and long term: Fiat's cratering…
Blog
Did Bush Save General Motors? Obama Messed Up Chrysler
If you accept the dubious logic the federal government "saved" the auto industry (which requires ignoring other things that rescued General Motors, such as the…
Blog
On Halloween, Euro Politics Fit Right In
All the usual characters are present this Halloween night across the Atlantic. But European leaders doing the trick-or-treating aren’t getting the sweet sugar fix they…
Blog
Southern European Bailouts Must Focus On Reform
As European leaders meet in Brussels this week for a summit on the future of European integration, bailouts for the south will be heavy on…
Blog
Mother Nature And Good Luck, Not Big Government, Saved General Motors… For Now
There are lots of claims that the federal government saved the American auto industry by bailing it out. (Never mind that Ford didn't get…
Blog
Suffocating Athena: Public Sector Unions Kill Greek Salvation — Again
On October 1, the Greek government unveiled an austerity package that aims to reduce public spending by $15 billion (11.5 billion euros) for 2013-2014,…
Blog
The Real Spanish Bank Bailout Cost: 113 Billion Euro
Don’t be fooled by the optimism overflowing from the stress test of Spain’s banking system released on Friday. American Consultancy Oliver Wyman, which performed the…
News Release
Report on Spanish Banks Underestimates Cost of Potential Bailout
WASHINGTON, D.C., October 1, 2012 — A report last week said Spain’s banks could require as much as 53.74 billion euro in bailout funds,…
Blog
State Pension Bailout Threat
The state pension underfunding crisis has grown so severe that it has prompted most U.S. states to cut benefits, according to calculations by The…
Blog
The European Central Bank’s Losing Game Of Chicken
European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi is losing a game of chicken with the Euro Area’s distressed peripheral countries. Earlier this month, Draghi announced…
Blog
California Pension Reform Plan A Step In The Right Direction But Not Enough
California Governor Jerry Brown (D) yesterday announced a pension reform agreement, which if approved by the legislature, likely will help narrow the Golden State’s…
Blog
CEI Podcast for August 23, 2012: Bailouts as Corruption
Senior Fellow Matt Patterson argues that when government is big and powerful enough to dispense favors like bailouts, special interests will flock to Washington to…
Blog
New Moody’s Standards Give Clearer Picture Of Public Pension Crisis
The public pension funding crisis has led to a vigorous debate over how those pension liabilities are valued and how large they are. The debate…
Blog
Is Government Motors Headed For Bankruptcy Again?
The tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer money spent on the auto bailouts did not fix the automakers' underlying problems, but rather helped…
Blog
My Fox News Interview On GM’s Losses To Taxpayers And Obama’s Auto Dealer Job Shaft
On Tuesday, I was on Fox News’ “Special Report with Bret Baier” answering Doug McKelway’s questions on the Treasury Department’s upward revision of taxpayers' losses…
Fox News
Taxpayer losses tied to auto bailout rise
From Doug McKelway's article on Fox News: John Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute argues the stock decline reflects the liability of the…
Blog
Maryland’s Public Pension Debacle Is Likely to Repeat Itself
The Maryland public employee pension system announced this week that it had achieved a dismal return rate on its investments of 0.36 percent — a…