The newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) took a step forward today to getting its first director, as the Senate Banking Committee voted 12–10 to confirm Richard Cordray in the post. Even before the vote, however, President Obama raised the stakes. Referring to Bank of America’s decision to impose …
What’s wrong with this picture? Last night, President Obama told Congress that the nation desperately needs to spend more on infrastructure in order to create jobs and to get the economy moving again. But only last month, his regulators aggressively moved to thwart private-sector plans to invest tens of billions …
Will the last one to leave the post office please turn out the lights? Things are looking pretty grim at the Postal Service. In a report made public today, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) proposed cutting 220,000 positions, leaving its workforce—which once ranked with Indian Railways and the People’s Liberation …
“When all else fails, blame Bush.” This seems to be the operating principle of the current Administration. Case in point: At a conference on innovation earlier this week, Cass Sunstein—the head of OMB’s regulatory review office—tried to deflect criticism that the Obama Administration was responsible for a “tsunami” of regulation …
Four months after President Obama called for a government-wide initiative to identify outdated regulations that are stifling the American economy, the first results are in. As announced today by Obama “regulatory czar” Cass Sunstein, agencies have identified a wide-ranging set of regulations to roll back, promising some welcome savings for …
“We received confirmation this morning…that Chrysler Group repaid, with interest, by wire transfer to the United States Treasury and by bank transfer to the Canadian government, every penny that had been loaned less than two years ago.” That simple statement by Chrysler (and Fiat) CEO Sergio Marchionne that Chrysler had …
On December 21 last year, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), led by chairman Julius Genachowski, voted 3–2 to impose “neutrality” regulations on the Internet. At the time, dissenting commissioner Robert McDowell noted that the day—quite literally—was the “darkest day of the year.” The regulatory winter, however, may prove to be …
Do regulatory costs matter? Not quite, according to the January 14 “Fact Checker” column on WashingtonPost.com. The column, by Glenn Kessler, criticizes Heritage’s recent “Red Tape Rising” report, which documented the growing cost of federal regulation in fiscal 2010. Noting that the study has been prominently cited by Rep. Darrell …
