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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…
Blog
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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Op-Eds
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”…
Citation
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 --…
Citation
White House Wants Bailout Tax
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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…
Blog
Political Bailouts for Underfunded Union Pensions
While the nation's attention has focused on government employee unions' fight to retain their collective bargaining privileges, unions in the private sector are in an…
Blog
Peter Diamond’s Nomination to Fed Benefits from Double Standard
Liberal economist Peter Diamond is likely to be confirmed to a powerful position, despite issues far more severe than those that blocked the confirmations of…
Blog
Big Company With Ties to White House Paid No Taxes; GE Also Got Corporate Welfare and Bailout on Special Terms
“The top corporate tax rate in the United States is 35 percent, one of the highest in the world,” but General Electric, whose CEO was…