The Competitive Enterprise Institute believes the proper role for government is to provide consumers with accurate, unbiased guidance that informs consumer choice. But, whether it is the substances we prefer, how we entertain ourselves, what dietary habits we maintain, or how we pursue personal health, consumers ought to have the right to make decisions for themselves.
Consumer Freedom Issue Areas
Featured Posts
Blog
The market has spoken: Consumers define the relevant video market
Washington loves drama, and recent debates over video industry consolidation have delivered plenty – billions of dollars at stake, congressional theatrics, and political posturing. But…
Study
The Environment, the Law, Markets, and the Path Forward
Introduction The Pharos Foundation at Jesus College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford, invited me to speak at an on-campus forum in May.
Blog
Red tape, green bribes: Deregulation as an anti-corruption strategy
Corruption in politics is often thought of in narrower terms, such as bribes, kickbacks, or high-profile scandals with millions of dollars of fraud. However, political…
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Blog
New ABC Show Glorifies Failed Immigration Policies, Drug War
ABC is debuting its new show “Homeland Security USA” tonight at 8pm eastern time. Presumably the show is intended to make us all proud…
Newsletter
Obama’s Energy Plan, New York’s Obesity Tax and the End of Global Warming Alarmism
Barack Obama’s choice for Secretary of Energy plans to focus on expanding sources of “clean” renewable energy. New York Gov. David Paterson proposes raising taxes…
Blog
Jail Time for Conflict of Interest?
David Bruggeman at Prometheus has what I think can only be described as an extreme view of conflict of interest: An Emory University Researcher…
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Legal Terrorists on the Loose
One can appreciate the difficulties faced by people with disabilities when they attempt to navigate streets and stores. But government legislation has unfairly turned a…
Blog
Madoff: Hiding in Plain Sight, Thanks to SEC
Contrary to popular belief, Madoff's $50 billion Ponzi scheme was subject to to a variety of financial regulations, something he actually used as a selling…
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Fewer Toys for Christmas
Small toy manufacturers may go out of business thanks to the “Consumer Product Safety Act of 2008,” which Congress hastily passed in response to…
Citation
The 2008 Year in Poker
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Bush Auto Bailout Illegal, Bailout Supporter Admits
Clinton Administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who supports bailing out the Detroit automakers (whose unionized workers are paid $70 an hour), nevertheless points out…
Blog
How Do Regulations Stack Up as a Small Firm Grows?
Tomorrow, electric utilities and green groups team up at the National Press Club to ask for billions of new spending on what they term energy…
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Taylor Tells of Tol’s Ton Toll
Jerry Taylor of Cato has an excellent summary of what the scientific literature tells us about the social cost of carbon emissions, drawing on…
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Fed Chairman Uses Incompetent Ratings Firms for Bailout
“Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke is basing hundreds of billions in emergency lending on credit ratings from companies that gave AAA grades to toxic…
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Credit Card Price Controls Harm Consumers
The Wall Street Journal editorial got it exactly right: The Federal Reserve cut rates to historic lows Tuesday, but today it…
Blog
The Value of a Dollar
Yesterday the dollar reach a 13-year low against the Euro as the Federal Reserve continues to pump new money into the system. All of this…
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Bailouts Unconstitutional Failures
Jacob Sullum’s recent column argues that Bush’s auto bailout plan is an unconstitutional violation of separation of powers. We earlier argued that it was…
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Paulson’s Bailout Was a Scam
National Review editor Rich Lowry, who mistakenly supported the financial system bailout because he trusted the Bush Administration, now realizes that he was deceived by…
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No Regrets Greenery for Kids
In recent days I’ve been heavily exposed to commercials featuring the Nickelodeon network’s teen stars advocating The Big Green Help, including, Lord help us,…
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Fed Cuts Rates, Punishing Thrift, and Impoverishing Savers
The Federal Reserve has just cut the federal funds rate for loans to banks to an unprecedentedly low rate — ranging from 0.0% to…
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The Cloverfield Monster of the Internet
Earlier posts today dealt with the hoo-ha over Net Neutrality. By coincidence, an anonymous colleague put the following old 1996 quote by Sen. James Exon…
Blog
Why Not a Wal-Mart Bank?
Seems like every business these days is becoming what’s called a “bank holding company” — seeking the shelter of the federal government’s deposit insurance and…
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Jay Leno Riffs on the Bailout
A new viral email, claiming to be jokes written by Mr. Leno, adds a bit of humor to the financial crisis. As business and government…
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Federally Sanctioned Propaganda Machine
Apple's 1984 "Big Brother" ad An article over at Ad Age brings up an angle on the whole…
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Auto Bailout Smoke and Mirrors
Mickey Kaus, a moderate Democrat, explains how the proposed auto bailout contains little leverage for the proposed “auto czar” to really cut the excessive…
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Auto Bailout – Destroying Detroit by ‘saving’ it
In a famous quotation from his 1986 address to the annual White House Conference on Small Business, President Ronald Reagan quipped that “government’s view…
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Unbelievable Gall from the New York Times
As economists and the Wall Street Journal have noted, the Community Reinvestment Act was an important ingredient of the financial crisis, by pressuring…
Blog
Censorship and Bailouts for the Rich
George Will has an interesting column on how the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” that many liberal lawmakers want to reimpose in order to shut down…
Newsletter
Bottled Water for the Homeless, Challenging NAFTA and Green-on-Green Violence
North Carolina officials pass out winter aid kits to the homeless. Barack Obama’s presumptive pick for trade representative suggests that the U.S. should renegotiate the…
Blog
Feds to Flush Billions More Down the Toilet, Destroying Jobs
The Treasury Department wants the federal government to effectively buy up all mortgage loans in America, by selling treasury bonds to buy up mortgage-backed…
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Berlau on Air America today — debating deregulation on Thom Hartmann
Today at noon Eastern time, I will enter the lion's den. I will be live in the New York City studios of liberal network Air…
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Wealth-Creating Alternatives to Pelosi’s Destructive Infrastructure “Stimulus”
Well, who can possibly be surprised by the revelation that “The federal government's economic stimulus package will include investment in broadband Internet infrastructure and…
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This week’s Least Objectionable Bureaucrat
My occasional “Least Objectionable Legislator Award” (no prize) takes a detour today and goes to a bureaucrat instead. So the LOL Award (pun intended, I…
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Stimulus as if Capitalism Mattered
Those dispensing the "Bailout to Nowhere" proceeds seemingly answer to no one (here's one article behaving as if this were unexpected and surprising). Today…
Newsletter
Online Poker, Auto Workers and Public Works Programs
60 Minutes reports on fraud in the world of online poker. The president of the United Auto Workers union makes a public plea for a…
Blog
Banks Sued No Matter What They Do
Banks get sued for discrimination no matter what they do. If they don’t make enough loans in low-income, predominantly minority neighborhoods, they get accused of “redlining,”…
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Stimulus Follies
President-elect Obama wants a massive stimulus package of $700 billion or more. But previous attempts to artificially stimulate the economy have generally been failures. …
News Release
Internet Poker Cheating Is Government’s Fault, CEI Says
A Competitive Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow says that the recent 60 Minutes reports about online poker cheating scandals show the foolishness of efforts to…
Blog
Holiday foods and natural carcinogens
I always enjoy the Thanksgiving Holiday Dinner Menu from the American Council on Science and Health. It lists the natural carcinogens…
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Will Obama go after farm bill pork?
Cutting some of the pork in the 2008 farm bill may be on President-elect Obama's plate. In his press conference November 25 to…
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America the Ungovernable
With respect to the ongoing series of bailouts, my colleague Iain Murray pointed out that some sensible British commentators note that one of the ways…
Blog
Fitzgerald v. Barnstable School Committee: School Board Virtually Concedes Vast New Liability
There's an interesting case pending in the Supreme Court, Fitzgerald v. Barnstable School Committee, that could make Title IX irrelevant in many cases, by creating…
Citation
the libertarian movement
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Student Eye Opener
Cheers to Dewey Crowley for his eye-opening article in the Bowdoin College paper The Bowdoin Orient. His piece on bottled water should be…
Blog
Too Bad Daschle Isn’t at SEC — Backed Sarbanes-Oxley Relief
President-Elect Barack Obama just nominated former Senate Democratic Leader Tom to be his Secretary of Health and Human Services. Much is being written about Daschle…
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Daschle: Good, Wrong, and Terrible
President-elect Obama has named Tom Daschle to head the Department of Health and Human Services. By some measures the largest department in the government,…
Newsletter
Ethanol Subsidies, Sarbanes-Oxley and Bottled Water
A broad-based coalition calls on Congress to phase out subsidies for ethanol production. A federal Appeals Court rules on a Constitutional challenge to the Sarbanes-Oxley…
Newsletter
Green Week on NBC, Hillary at State and Taxing Casinos
NBC Universal and corporate parent General Electric launch seven days of environmentally-themed programming with “Green Week.” Political observers predict that President-elect Obama will nominate Sen.
Blog
From Each According to his Profitability…
That seems to be the motto of Illinois, at least of those legislators who decided to tax casinos in order to prop up…
Blog
Pure Hype about Bottled Water
The company producing Pur Filters is touting the fact that its filters can remove trace pharmaceuticals and even some (but they don’t guarantee it…
Blog
To Blame Laissez-Faire, Anti-Market Media Must Do Better
Like many of us at CEI, it looks like my former boss Phil Gramm isn't interested in helping anybody pretend that today's financial crisis was…
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Championing civil liberties — mostly
I’ve been a closet admirer of Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI) since he singlehandedly opposed the Patriot Act in the Senate. According to…
Blog
Ugly Vegetables and Fruit Again to be Sold in Europe!
Amazing. The European Union actually responded to criticism. About one-fifth of European produce has to be dumped because it doesn’t mean minimum EU standards, which…
Blog
Lame Duck Flies in the Face of Americans’ Rights
The Bush administration is arguable one of the most wildly unprincipled in the history of the white house. They have acquiesced to or…
News Release
CEI Blasts New Banking, Internet Gambling Regulations
Washington, D.C., November 13, 2008—In its final weeks, the Bush administration is trying to rush through ill-considered regulations aimed at preventing Internet gambling. Two Competitive Enterprise Institute…
Blog
To President-Elect Obamaâ€â€Freeze Gov’t Regulations this Winter
Yesterday I called for a major “Deregulatory Stimulus.” Alongside---with financial, health care, energy efficiency, “green job” and other mandates likely in an Obama Administration---the…
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EU Lifts “Ugly” Fruit and Vegetable Ban
The European Union has rescinded its ban on some “ugly” fruits and vegetables. AP reports: The European Union bid adieu Wednesday to rules that…
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Are liberal groups’ lobbyists banned from transition team?
On Tuesday, John Podesta, the head of President-elect Obama's transition team, said that lobbyists will be banned from working on the transition team…
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Reject political stimulus, embrace “Deregulatory Stimulus.” And do it FAST.
Facing an economic downturn and an election, politicians of both parties sought to stimulate consumer demand—and some business investment—through political action. They promised that if…
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Defending the free market — “Yes, we can!”
Matt Welch’s Reason piece “Back to the Barricades —Free Markets are Under Attack Again” is a good read, if not…
Tech Policy Central
CEI Blasts New Banking, Internet Gambling Regulations
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Bailouts Mushroom, Impoverishing Taxpayers
The federal government is expanding its bailout of AIG to $150 billion, well above its originally-predicted cost, and planning to bail out…
Blog
An Agenda for the Monday a.m. Obama and Bush Meeting
Since the President and President-elect start spending quality Oval Office time together today, and since the incoming admistration's advisors can't settle on either pushing…
Blog
Banana Entrepreneurs Should Follow the Cocoa Initiative
Last Wednesday, The New York Times ran an appealing story on the rise of an Ecuadorian Quichua community from…
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No “Technology Czar,” Please
Like everybody else in town, we're pondering the implications of the transition to the Obama Administration for various policy areas here at CEI. On the…
Blog
Is Autism Really Linked to Rainfall?
Here's a headline today from The Onion — no, no, I mean, from Reuters: “Autism Linked with Rainfall in Study.” Seems…
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America to Lurch Left?
The Weekly Standard‘s Fred Barnes has a scare story in today’s Wall Street Journal. He warns of a lurch to the left if Barack…
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A Whole Lot of Qualification Going on
A new RAND Corporation study that purports to show a link between teen pregnancy and viewing TV shows with strong sexual content seems just…
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Supreme Court Considers Tort Preemption for Medicines
Diana Levine suffered from chronic migraine headaches for many years. So, in April 2000, when she went to a local clinic to get treatment,…
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FreeRoots
Some of the brightest minds in the online conservative movement — John Hawkins, Patrick Ruffini and Mark Tapscott — are discussing what…
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Depressed by Regulation in America? Look at Europe!
You’ve got to love the Europeans. They demonstrate that things always can get worse. For instance, think about the epidemic of stupid farmers who use…
Blog
O’Grady hits Obama’s trade policy
More good reads in the WSJ today. Mary Anastasia O’Grady in her column in the Wall Street Journal provides a sharp contrast between…
Newsletter
Home Sales Rise, Voter Fraud Accusations and Another Ban on Bottled Water
Existing home sales rise 5.5% in September. Groups around the country preemptively prepare for the possibility of voter fraud. Bottled water faces a ban by…
Blog
The Road to Serfdom–Illustrated!
Thanks to CEI colleague Gary Howard for sending along The Road to Serfdom in Cartoons; I’d forgotten all about this capsule version of Hayek’s…
Newsletter
Stimulus Redux, Benefits of Bottled Water and the Pro-Poverty Left
Senators consider a second round of taxpayer-financed economic stimulus. Bottled water producers attempt to work constructively with environmental groups that have called for additional taxes…
Letters
Coalition Letter on the Finalization of Rules Relating to UIGEA
Full Document Avalible in PDF Dear Ms. Dudley: We are deeply concerned about the regulations you have received from Treasury concerning the…
Blog
Let’s hear it for Death, Poverty and Ignorance
Grist seems gleeful that New Scientist thinks “our economy is killing the Earth.” According to New Scientist: Consumption of resources is rising…
Newsletter
Banning Bottled Water, Disaster Insurance and the Mortgage Meltdown
The U.S. Conference of Mayors votes to endorse banning the sale of bottled water across the country. Florida’s Hurricane Catastrophe Fund could face a shortfall…
News Release
Campaign Targets Unfair Political Assault on Bottled Water
A new petition drive demands that politicians not continue plans to ban the product for safety workers and consumers. The campaign comes in the wake of…
Blog
Chicken soup for the soul — and high blood pressure
A food and health tip for these trying times: we all know that chicken soup is good for the soul . . . and for…
Blog
New Regulation in MD a Halloween “trick”?
Unfortunately, this is not a Halloween joke— the Maryland Parole and Probation Division is completely serious. Sex offenders in Maryland are being told that…
Blog
Unstoppable SuperState Stimulus, Part 2
Today’s Wall Street Journal highlighted a new $300 political stimulus campaign. Keynesian demand-management has re-conquered economics as surely as Fall 2008 has cemented…
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Green Spin and Bottled Water
Americans are well aware of the power of political “spin” during election years. But political spin is nothing compared to “green spin,” perpetrated by environmental…
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It wasn’t bailout that caused Monday’s market surge — 3 other factors
Since the $700 billion bailout was first proposed, whatever the stock markets did, much of the press took that as a sign that the market…
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Let Uncle Sam’s People Go!
One of most outrageous features of the federal social welfare state is that Uncle Sam doesn’t want you to be independent. For instance, if you would…
Blog
The Swiss are Nuts … About Plants’ Rights, Anyway
I've visited Switzerland several times. I've always believe the Swiss to be rational, level-headed people. Far more sober than so many Europeans. They've managed to…
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The international mark-to-market contagion — sending global markets in a downward
Bailouts. Global interest rate cuts. More bailouts. Global government liquidity injections into banks. Direct government buying of commercial paper. And even more types of bailouts.
Blog
The World is About to End … Again!
Climate alarmists are in good company. After all, for centuries at least, and probably since the beginning of humanity, some people have worried about the imminent…
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Obama denigrates Delaware in debate
Poor little Delaware. In every presidential election since 1992, she has been in the “blue” column voting for the Democratic candidate. She has long had…
Blog
More Bailouts on the Way
At last night’s debate, Senator McCain floated a horrible idea: to have the government buy up bad mortgages and then write off part of…
Blog
NEW VIDEO: Global Warming and Eco-Imperialism
Coming from the UK, CEI Senior Fellow Iain Murray knows a little something about the history of political empires. Today, however, we find ourselves…
Blog
Deregulation Wasn’t to Blame for Financial Crisis
Even the reliably-liberal BBC says that deregulation wasn’t the cause of the financial crisis. Other liberal journalists like Washington Post columnist Sebastian Mallaby have…
Blog
Market down on bailout — Don’t compound damage with overregulation of ‘Main Street’
Today -- five days after a courageous independent vote against Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's $700 billion bailout for Wall Street -- the U.S. House of…
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Bailout Bill Grows More Bloated, Ignoring Alternatives
There are alternative approaches to the bailout that would cost taxpayers less. But instead, Congress is expanding the bailout bill to stuff it with more…
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Bailout Bill Gets More Expensive and Dangerous
The politically dangerous $700 billion financial system bailout bill is getting even more expensive as supporters load it up with pork to get wavering…
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Bailout Bill Is A Threat to Democracy
At least in its original form, the $700 billion bailout bill was unconstitutional because it gave the Treasury Secretary boundless discretion to buy, or…
Newsletter
Bank Insurance, Banning Wine Coolers and Rationing Meat for the Planet
Members of Congress consider raising the federal bank insurance limit for individual deposits to $250,000. Utah bans flavored alcoholic malt beverages from grocery and convenience…
Blog
Deregulation Didn’t Cause the Financial Crisis, But It Might Help Solve It
Banking expert Peter Wallison explains why deregulation didn’t cause the financial crisis, while Steven Malanga explains how government regulators foolishly pressured banks to drop prudent lending…
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Investing in Communal Failure: The Current Economic Crisis as a Result of Regulation
Unfettered greed is the suspect many point at to explain the current economic crisis. To some extent, they are right, but it isn't irrational…
Blog
BREAKING NEWS: Bailout Vote Fails in House
The House of Representatives just voted down the $700 billion corporate finance bailout, despite earlier urging from President Bush to push the measure…
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Bailout Bill Just Got Worse, But Congress May Approve It Without Reading It, Based on Misleading Claims
The bailout bill has been larded up with additional welfare that will increase its cost, but the House will likely approve it today without…
Blog
Bailout Bill Drafted by Senator Dodd Is a Scam on Taxpayers to Bankroll Left-Wing Extremists
The $700 billion bailout of the financial system just got worse, thanks to a rewrite by Senate banking committee chairman Chris Dodd. If the government…
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Welfare Added to Bailout to Appease Liberals
The cost of the $700 billion bailout bill, criticized as unconstitutional by legal scholars, is rising, as Congressional leaders demand new handouts for deadbeats (and…
