As early as today, the House is set to approve Rep. Barney Frank’s (D-MA) financial regulation bill intended to prevent future Wall Street bailouts by granting regulators sweeping new powers to control firms deemed “too big to fail.” But as Heritage Senior Research Fellow David John explains below, the Frank bill actually encourages future bailouts by signaling to markets that the targeted firms guaranteed against failure, thus enabling risky business decisions. Worse, by empowering the FDIC to seize and close failing financial institutions, while also establishing a fund enabling the …
Forget the dire economic consequences of a Copenhagen climate change treaty for a second and think about the fraud involved. Carbon Trading Fraud Take the European Union, for instance, which implemented a carbon trading scheme analogous to a cap and trade system. And it has been fraught with fraud. French officials are investigating a $230 million carbon trading fraud scheme and this is only the tip of the iceberg in what is a startling revelation and huge blow to the climate talks in Copenhagen: Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement …
More than 25 U.S. senators, led by Oklahoma Republican Jim Inhofe, are calling for an independent investigation of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in the wake of the Climategate scandal. Inhofe, ranking member on the Environment and Public Works Committee, outlined several reasons for an independent investigation in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is among those who signed the letter. Speaking at The Heritage Foundation this week, Inhofe said he had no confidence in the United Nations’ conducting an investigation of its …
Liu Xiaobo, one of the primary drafters of the Charter 08 manifesto by Chinese intellectuals calling for protection of human rights, comprehensive political reforms, and a democratic government in China, has had an official case filed against him for “inciting subversion of state power.” Liu, a veteran of the 1989 Tiananmen movement and an influential writer, has been detained a year without charge. Now the strong likelihood of his conviction sends a message to other Charter 08 signatories broadly and other human rights activists that the Chinese government will do …
Senator Reid seems comfortable with clandestine negotiations in order to ensure passage of any type of health reform. This course, aside from being politically dubious and whimsical, is fiscally reckless, and with its passage, will continue to add to the debt that will straddle future generations with a significant amount of fiscal stress. As with the previous health reform bills, the assumptions and parameters the Congressional Budget Office must use will likely score this new bill as deficit neutral. Yet, the price tag for the overall bill will not changed, …
Senators Lieberman, Graham, and Kerry have come forward with a bold, new proposal on global warming… or not. Here is Senator Lieberman’s description of the “new” proposal: “You remember the artist formerly known as Prince?” Lieberman said. “This is the market-based system for punishing polluters previously known as ‘cap and trade.’ “ Who will be punished under this re-badged clunker? The Center for Data Analysis estimated that cap-and-trade legislation will cost the economy $7-9 trillion in lost national income and lead to millions of lost jobs (even after credit for …
Next week Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is expected to attach a provision to the Department of Defense appropriations bill that would increase our national debt limit by $1.925 trillion. This debt limit raise would authorize the U.S. Treasury to borrow as much as $14 trillion, which is 30% higher than the $10.8 trillion limit that was in place when President Barack Obama took office. Defending the unprecedented size of the debt limit, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) told The Examiner: “There is no doubt the debt ceiling will have to …
Does Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance violate the Constitution? Interesting question. Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution says that: No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State. An emolument is a prize arising from office or employment, usually in the form of compensation or perquisites. By everyone’s …
The financial reform bill that is currently before the House would give regulators virtually unlimited power over “too big to fail” financial institutions. Those are large, complex and usually international entities whose failure could cause such a shock to the interconnected financial system that others would be endangered. Under the House bill, if one of them does get into trouble, the FDIC would step in to reorganize and run the financial institution until it could be closed or sold. The FDIC has done an acceptable job closing small and medium …
Creating a new “Consumer Financial Protection Agency” (CFPA), as proposed in the financial regulation bill now before the House, would raise costs for consumers, reduce the number and type of products available to them, increase the micro-management of financial services firms, and greatly increase the confusion caused by differing and conflicting consumer laws in the different states. A far better approach has been proposed as an amendment by Rep. Walter Minnick (D-ID). His amendment would coordinate the consumer activities of existing state and federal financial regulators by creating a coordinating …
