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Free the Economy podcast: Understanding the national debt with Thomas Savidge
In this week’s episode we cover whether Americans feel better off than they were four years ago, why we have more billion-dollar…
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Can moderators ask debate questions that don’t presume a progressive policy agenda?
Numerous policy issues are shaping this year’s first presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, as well as the entire campaign atmosphere. These include…
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Freddie Mac second mortgage funding could foment financial crisis
The 2008 mortgage meltdown and financial crisis never fails to be invoked whenever there is any pushback to excessive financial regulation. Progressives regularly bring up…
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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…
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New Regulations Threaten To Wipe Out Community Banks
The new Basel III capital requirement regulations are supposed to strengthen the international financial system, with their avowed effect being to: improve the banking…
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Billions of Tax Dollars Spent Raising False Hopes Among Homeowners
The Obama Administration's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) gave "banks $1,500 bonus payments and servicers $1,000 bonus payments for each loan modification they processed. This…
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Pension Fund Activism Threatens Workers’ Retirement Security — And Taxpayers
While the underfunding of union pensions cannot be ascribed to any one cause, there is one that is troubling because it is so avoidable: pension…
Blog
To Fix The PBGC, Free Its Premiums
Setting the heavily underfunded Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) on a sound financial footing has got to be one of the toughest jobs anywhere. The…
Blog
The Coming Public Pension Meltdown
While the impact of the Governmental Accounting Standards Board’s (GASB) new public pension reporting requirements won’t be known for some time, some indications of its…
Blog
Unions: Political by Nature
Two items in The Wall Street Journal today highlight a feature of organized labor that distinguish it from other special interests: Unions, as they have existed in…
Blog
Former GAO Auditor: Public Pension Underfunding Worse than Pew Estimates
This week, GASB approved new standards that would require state pensions that are less than 80 percent funded to base income projections on lower — more…
Blog
Highway Bill Would Continue Pension Underfunding Shell Game
As if the Senate Highway Bill (S. 1813) could not become more of a lumbering monster, along comes its Section 40312, which allows "pension…
News Release
Threat of Pension Fund Bailouts Lurks in Senate Highway Bill
Washington, D.C., June 27, 2012 – Hidden in the ever-expanding Senate Highway Bill (S. 1813) is a provision that would make the already serious…
Blog
The Growing Threat of a PBGC Bailout
Everyone hates a bailout. Or at least that's what everyone says, until circumstances force some business leaders to seek them and politicians to grant them…
Blog
Will New GASB Rules End States’ Fuzzy Pension Math?
Today, the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) voted to approve new government accounting standards that will provide a clearer picture of the liabilities taxpayers across the…
Blog
Bailouts Won’t Save Europe, Only Reform Will
As European leaders panic over bailouts for Southern Europe, they miss an important reality. Comprehensive structural reform is the only long-term solution for recovery. Perversely, bailouts…
Blog
To Reform Public Pensions, Reform GASB Rules
Many public pension plans in the United States make riskier investments than plans in Canada and Europe, according to a new study by researchers…
Blog
Auto Bailouts Incurred Extra $26 Billion in Unnecessary Expenses Due to Political Favoritism by Obama Administration
In a new report, labor economist James Sherk and bankruptcy-law professor Todd Zywicki found that taxpayers lost billions in the auto bailouts…
Blog
In New York, a Private/Public Sector Union Rift
The fact that government employee unions have been at the center of budget debates across the nation underscores their outsize influence on state and local…
Blog
Government Lost Tons of Money in the Auto Bailouts, Despite Benefiting from Blind Luck
As John Lott notes, “Having just $34 billion to show after a $100 billion-plus investment would get a chief executive of any private company…
Blog
European Lessons for America
George Will warns that America’s system of competitive federalism is threatened by our own “Greeces.” (“In Illinois the bills are coming due,” April 27). Europe…
Fox News
Forget France, the Greek Elections Are the Beginning of the End for Europe
While much of the world’s attention was concentrated on France’s presidential election last Sunday, the real action was in Greece. French President-elect François Hollande may…
Blog
FDR on FDIC
Robert Samuelson’s column (April 8, 2012) discussing President Franklin Roosevelt’s reservations about the longer term implications of Social Security should not be surprising. In…
Blog
Multiemployer Pensions, the Tragedy of the Commons, and the “Last Man Standing” Rule
The “tragedy of the commons,” as described by the late ecologist Garrett Hardin, generally refers to the depletion of a finite resource caused by…
Blog
Some Good News on Pensions, for a Change
Over the last four years, state governments across the nation have been trying to bring their labor costs under control, especially pensions, which are now…
Fox News
The JOBS Act and the Maxine Waters Test
Call it the Maxine Waters test of political moderation. Late last week, this test was failed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Senate Majority…
Blog
Government Persecutes the Innocent, Turns Blind Eye to the Guilty, Rewards Corrupt Business Models
The federal government spent years persecuting a company lawyer who dutifully uncovered and disclosed wrongdoing by a company employee, as I discuss below. But…
Blog
Student Loans: America’s Next Debt Bomb
I understated things earlier when I wrote that the student loan bubble “may” explode in taxpayers’ faces, as law professor Glenn Reynolds pointed…
Blog
If PBGC Cannot Go On Taking Over Pensions, It Will Stop
Herbert Stein’s law — “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop” — is being proven right once again. This time, what cannot go…
Blog
Structural Factors of the Municipal Pension Crisis
Public employee pensions are sinking local governments. Over the last four years, they have even pushed some municipalities into bankruptcy -- from Vallejo, California, to Central…
Blog
Ma Bell Is Long Gone, but Her Pension Costs Remain
AT&T is asking the Communications Workers of America (CWA), which represents a large segment of its workforce, for benefit concessions, as it tries to rein…
Blog
Bloomberg News: “Boom-Era Property Speculators to Get Foreclosure Aid”
"The Obama administration will extend mortgage assistance . . . to investors who bought multiple homes before the market imploded, helping some speculators who drove…
Blog
A New Wall of Separation: End Corporate Welfare
In his famous letter to the Danbury Baptists, Thomas Jefferson declared the Constitution erected a “wall of separation between church and state.” The Father of…
Forbes
The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation’s Real Crisis
On February 1, American Airlines—which declared bankruptcy last November—announced plans to end defined benefit pensions as part of its Chapter 11 restructuring plan. If approved…
Blog
$26 Billion Mortgage Settlement Rips Off Investors to Trim Banks’ Massive Costs of Bailing Out Deadbeat Borrowers
The $26 billion mortgage settlement announced yesterday is bad news for “bond investors including pension funds, according to Pacific Investment Management Co.’s Scott Simon,”…
Blog
Time to Pay Your Neighbor’s Mortgage, Again
The Justice Department, state attorneys general, and the biggest banks have reached an agreement to provide at least $26 billion to delinquent mortgage borrowers and…
Blog
More Bailouts for Speculators and Delinquent Mortgage Borrowers from Obama Administration; More Taxpayer Money for Certain Banks
In his State of the Union address, President Obama, a consistent supporter of bailouts and crony capitalism, hypocritically railed against them, proclaiming, “no…
Blog
Enr1 Goes Belly Up; Yet Another Solyndra
"After spending $55 million of a $118.5 million grant from" the U.S. "Department of Energy, Ener1, an Indianapolis-based maker of batteries," has just "declared…
Blog
Obama State of the Union Proposal Could Increase Mortgage Costs, Shrink America’s 401(K)s
AEI's James Pethokoukis says that the mass-refinancing plan proposed by President Obama in his State of the Union address would "result in higher financing…
Blog
Obama’s False Claims about Outsourcing and Corporate Taxes in the State of the Union Address
President Obama has spent billions of dollars in taxpayer money on subsidizing foreign firms through his failed "green energy" programs, so it was…
Blog
Eleven More Solyndras in Obama Clean-Energy Program
There are 11 more Solyndras in the Obama administration’s clean-energy program, reports CBS News. These companies are in financial trouble — five have already…
Blog
New York Times Documents the Case for Freedom
It’s not every day that the front page of The New York Times has two articles that highlight the importance of limited government, but today’s…
Blog
Abandoning the Future: The Ruinous Consequence of Debt
Mere months after President Obama and Congress last tussled over the debt ceiling, the United States has once more reached its legal borrowing limit. But it still…
Blog
Fannie and Freddie Helped Spawn the Mortgage Crisis, and So Did Affordable Housing Mandates
In a recent letter in The New York Times, I noted the role played by the government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in…
Blog
Profits and Losses
Capitalism is a system of both profit and loss. Wishing losses away would have consequences quite different from Bhidé’s good intentions.
Blog
Rhode Island’s Bold Pension Reforms Point the Way Forward
To describe pension reform, Utah State Senator Dan Liljenquist put it best: "This is not a conservative-versus-liberal issue, this is a reality issue." Liljenquist…
Blog
Public Pensions Fuel Government Growth
The straitened finances afflicting state and local governments across the nation have brought unprecedented scrutiny to government employees’ compensation, particularly pensions. As pro-market critics have…
Forbes
SEC Charges Against Former Fannie and Freddie Execs
Blog
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Were Into Subprime Lending, and Lied About It
"One of the regular claims from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac apologists . . . is that the two entities were blameless" for causing…
Blog
Memo to Gingrich: Credit Unions are Not GSEs
Let me begin this post with a disclaimer, of which many of our readers are already aware. The Competitive Enterprise Institute and OpenMarket.org do not…
Blog
Taxpayer-Subsidized Housing Booms and Busts: You’re Paying to Prop Up My Home Value, While Yours Collapses
In Washington, D.C., the region where I live, massive federal spending on government workers and contractors props up home values. My small, 60-year-old two-bedroom home,…
Forbes
Where’s the Money to Save the Euro Coming From? Not Us!
Markets rallied last week on news of central bank intervention to ease indebted European governments’ liquidity problems, but the central problem remains. Europe is in…
Blog
On 10th Anniversary of Enron Collapse, Time for Sarbanes-Oxley to Go
Ten years ago today, Enron Corp. filed for bankruptcy. Today, with all of its dealings with banks, it would probably have been deemed "too big…
Forbes
Enron Bankruptcy 10 Years Later: Before Bailouts Were Big
Forbes
What the Super Committee Could Have Learned From Italy
One of Thomas Jefferson’s rules for living was, “Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.” As an American and as a “cittadino”…
Forbes
Driving a Bad Bargain on GM Bailout
Blog
Fannie and Freddie’s Double Outrage — Millions in Bonuses and Subsidies for Millionaire Mortgages
Yesterday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing on the granting of nearly $13 million in bonuses for executives of Fannie…
News Release
Fannie-Freddie Outrages: Bonuses and Subsidies for McMansions
Washington, D.C., November 16, 2011 — As the House Oversight Committee holds a hearing on the granting of nearly $13 million in bonuses for executives…
Blog
Cronyism: Obama Administration Showers Your Tax Dollars on Shifty Wall Street Operator and Liberal Donor
In a corrupt deal, the Obama administration is paying a shifty Wall Street operator's firm an extravagantly inflated price for an unneeded vaccine, at a…
Blog
Fred Weekly: Occupy Wall Street
In the latest episode of “Fred Weekly,” CEI President Fred Smith discusses the Occupy Wall Street movement and why the protesters ought to be targeting…
Blog
Bailout for Underwater Mortgage Borrowers Is Illegal and Economically Illogical
Economist Mark Calabria says Obama’s new $7.4 billion plan to let underwater mortgage borrowers refinance at investors’ expense is illegal and won’t help the…
Blog
Obama-Fannie Regressive Refinance Ripoff for Taxpayers and Middle-Class Investors
President Obama is announcing his plan today to bypass Congress with new government intervention to save the housing market through the entities that destroyed it: Fannie…
Blog
Blame Not Banks — But Big Box and Big Government — For Free Checking’s Demise
Read it and weep, but don't say OpenMarket didn't warn you. Thanks to Dodd-Frank's Durbin Amendment, price controls on interchange fees --…
Forbes
White House Wants Bailout Tax
Blog
Obama Wants a GM Bailout Tax on Bank and Insurance Customers
For all the talk about fairness and equity with the so-called Buffett Rule, there is one sneaky loophole in the Obama revenue proposal that…
Texas Insider
Is Administration Going to Use GM to Distract from Solyndra Failure?
Blog
Obama’s “American Jobs Act” Is A Wasteful “Blue-State Bailout,” Researchers Say
In the The Wall Street Journal, two researchers call Obama’s proposed “jobs” bill, the $450 billion “American Jobs Act,” a “blue-state bailout in…
Blog
Fannie-Freddie’s Hypocritical Suit Against Banks Making Loans that GSEs Helped Create
"U.S. is set to sue dozen big banks over mortgages," reads the front-page headline in today's New York Times. The "deck" below the headline…
Blog
Massive Justice Department Attack on Banks?
A monumentally-destructive Justice Department attack on banks may soon occur. Earlier, I wrote about how the Obama Justice Department is now forcing banks to…
Blog
Obama Administration: Time to Pay Your Neighbor’s Mortgage
The Washington Times yesterday had an editorial, "Paying Your Neighbor's Mortgage," about the costly new bailout advocated by political appointees in the Obama administration,…
Blog
Obama Justice Department Forces Banks to Make Risky Loans, Planting the Seeds of a Future Financial Crisis
The Wall Street Journal today writes about how the Obama administration is repeating the "mistakes of the past by intimidating banks into lending to…
Blog
More Bailouts, Urge Left-Leaning Journalists
Left-leaning journalists are urging more mortgage bailouts to try to increase consumer spending, since they erroneously think that inadequate consumer spending is the principal cause…
Blog
How Many Billions to Bail Out Borrowers Who Fraudulently Took Out Liar Loans?
The government is looking into the possibility of bailing out underwater mortgage borrowers, including speculators and McMansion owners. It’s also seeking to…
Blog
USPS Bailout on the Horizon
Before we even come close to paying off our current government-sponsored enterprises (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) or recoup taxpayer dollars from Federal bailouts (General Motors…
Blog
Government Promoted the Risky Non-Traditional Mortgages that Triggered the Financial Crisis
Ed Pinto, who was an executive at Fannie Mae long before it went into the toilet and nearly took the financial system down with it,…
Blog
Obama Administration Crafting Yet Another Bailout: Speculators and McMansion Owners May Benefit
As if America didn't already have enough bailouts, the Obama administration is planning yet another -- one that could enrich "McMansion homeowners and property…
News Release
Court Strikes Down Dodd-Frank Proxy Rule
The Competitive Enterprise Institute hails today’s decision of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals striking down the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) proxy…
Blog
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Nominee Richard Cordray Supports Price Controls and Borrower Bailouts
Last Thursday, before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau architect Elizabeth Warren insisted that her priority was not to ban certain…
Texas Insider
Let’s Not Repeat Mortgage Mistakes
You write that the Obama administration decided last year to let “the market sort things out” regarding America’s housing woes in lieu of government intervention.
Blog
Fannie Mae Played a Bigger Role in the Financial Crisis than Previously Thought
In the Wall Street Journal, Peter Wallison, who prophetically warned against the risky practices of mortgage giant Fannie Mae, describes the key role…
Blog
The Few, The Proud, The Greek Liberals (It’s Lonely Being a Libertarian in Greece)
As the crisis in the eurozone continues to spiral out of control, I’ve sometimes thought about what must be going through the heads of…
Blog
Voodoo Economics Behind Government Demand for Mortgage Write-Downs by Big Banks
In 2010, Obama administration allies proposed a trillion-dollar bailout for those lucky mortgage borrowers whose loans were owned by the government-backed mortgage giants Fannie…
Texas Insider
Bailout a bust?
Texas Insider
Let’s Face the Truth: The Stimulus and Bailouts Failed
You’d think last Friday’s terrible jobs numbers would cause honest elected officials to admit that their economic policies have failed. They would tell the American…
Blog
Failures of Auto Bailouts Hidden by Deceptive Accounting and Bogus Jobs Figures
Mounting evidence shows that the auto bailouts weren't worth it. They have been far more costly, and less successful, than claimed, as even liberal…
Blog
Liberal Economist Peter Diamond Withdraws from Contention for Federal Reserve
MIT’s Peter Diamond has withdrawn his nomination to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. I earlier explained how Diamond’s nomination by…
Texas Insider
Obama’s Funny Auto-Jobs Math
‘The auto industry has added 113,000 jobs over the past two years.” So proclaimed President Obama in his speech Friday at the Chrysler-Fiat…
Blog
Even Liberal Washington Post Casts Doubt on Auto Bailouts
"Only 16 percent of executives in the auto industry" support the Chrysler bailout, according to the Washington Post’s editorial today. I think the bailout…
Blog
Obama’s Chrysler Fiat — Missing Jobs Under the Hood
“So far the auto industry’s added 113,000 jobs over the past two years.” So proclaimed President Obama in a speech at the Chrysler/Fiat plant in…
Blog
President Obama’s Speech Perpetuates Bailout Payback Myth
In his speech just completed at a Toledo, Ohio Chrysler plant, President Obama continued the government PR work on behalf of bailed out auto…
Texas Insider
Watchdog questions GM bailout repayment
Texas Insider
The Plan to Spin the Car Bailout as a Positive for Obama
Legal Brief
CEI’s FOIA to Treasury on Auto Bailout
Full Response Available in PDF Documents released by the U.S. Treasury Department indicate that General Motors and the Obama Administration coordinated PR…
Texas Insider
Obama Admin. Knew GM Lied About Paying Back Taxpayers
Texas Insider
Barack Obama, Democrats Call the Auto Bailouts A Success, But Did They Work?
News Release
Delayed Release of Auto Bailout Documents by Treasury Dept. Reveals Cozy PR Relationship
Washington, DC, June 2, 2011 – Documents released last week by the U.S. Treasury Department indicate that General Motors and the Obama administration coordinated their…
Blog
Barney Frank Used Influence with Fannie Mae, the Failed Mortgage Giant Bailed Out by Taxpayers
Former House Banking Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) tenaciously opposed efforts to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage…
Blog
The Auto Bailouts: Still A Huge Loss for Taxpayers, and a Failure in Stemming Unemployment
Columnist Shikha Dalmia explains how the auto bailouts are a huge money loser for taxpayers and the economy as a whole, despite recent earnings…
Blog
AIG Bailout’s True Costs to Taxpayers, Innovation, and Competition
The Treasury Department today is patting itself on the back for finally selling some of the government's shares in American International Group, with Treasury…
Blog
Temporarily Buoyed by Japanese Earthquake, General Motors Looks for Profit Overseas
"GM sees China as a road to profit," reports the Washington Post today. "GM last year sold more cars in China than in the…
Blog
New CBO Pension Report: Underfunding Could Be Higher
That state and local governments face serious pension funding problems isn't a particularly controversial contention. However, the question of how much they're underfunded by is…
