Whenever conservatives push for developing more domestic energy, liberals respond by saying increased oil production, whether from the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) or Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), would have no effect on prices. And they always trot out the same Energy Information Administration reports predicting that opening up ANWR would decrease the price of a barrel of oil by only 41 cents by 2026. For liberals, such precise predictions of commodity prices decades from now only build faith in the government’s numbers. Conservatives know better. Conservatives know that if …
The Heritage Foundation on Tuesday released the above chart headlined U.S. a Nonstarter in Nuclear Power. The point of the chart was to show those who continue to question the value of nuclear power that other countries are making concrete decisions and moving forward in earnest. Unfortunately, some felt the chart sent the wrong message. By not explicitly putting the U.S. on the chart, they argued, we misrepresented the status of nuclear power’s comeback here. It’s true that 17 utilities and consortia are in the permitting process to build up to 30 new …
Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae own or guarantee a combined $5 trillion worth of mortgages. To put the size of that liability into perspective, remember that total U.S. federal debt is $9.5 trillion and total U.S. gross domestic product is $14 trillion. They are simply too big to fail. The trouble that Freddie and Fannie are in, however, is not a failure of capitalism. Fannie and Freddie are both artificial government creations that use their big government advantages to distort the free market. They are both remnants of the Great …
In 1979, Robert Schuettinger and Eamonn Butler wrote a book called “Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls,” detailing 4,000 years of disastrous attempts by government to control market prices. Tomorrow, the House Judiciary Committee will vote on adding a 41st century to that litany of failure. The target: credit card “interchange fees.” Interchange fees are the fees paid by one bank to another, and passed on to merchants, as the price for processing a credit card purchase. They are set by credit card associations, such as MasterCard and Visa …
District of Columbia v. Heller: What’s Next? – Cato Unbound District of Columbia v. Heller, the final opinion of the Supreme Court’s 2007-08 term, Justice Antonin Scalia re-wrote Second Amendment jurisprudence… (tags: Second Ammendment) Replacing Housing Risk With Dollar Risk - Red State As of Sunday night, the US government, speaking through Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, has committed to guarantee the value of securities issued by the government-sponsored … (tags: Housing) Classic Demagoguery - Cafe Hayek Sen. Dick Durbin’s letter today is classic demagoguery. He presumes that his motives are purer than …
In retrospect, allowing two government sponsored entities to leverage their government granted advantages into a massive duopoly that could destroy the entire American housing market, probably wasn’t such a good idea. If only someone had warned Congress about the problem. Oh wait, someone did. Heritage scholar Ron Utt wrote in 2005: The real problem is the concentration of risk in the hands of two massive and privileged companies that now dominate America’s housing finance markets. Ironically, Fannie Mae’s management has attempted to use the prospect of such risk to protect …
Heritage scholar David John makes the case for splintering Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in light of their recent financial troubles. From the New York Post: WITH the Treasury and Federal Reserve in effect promising to keep Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac afloat, the mortgage giants’ crisis seems to be over. But the fundamental cause is still there – and without fundamental reform, we may very well endure a repeat performance in a few years. … while private stockholders own both Fannie and Freddie, they’re really government creations that differ …
It’s hard to find a voice outside the Midwest or Archer Daniels Midland buildings that support the use of biofuels and ethanol as a means for filling gas tanks. Environmentalists and especially world hunger groups are adamantly expressing their concern about the unintended consequences of biofuels policy. Christopher Booker and Richard North have a terrific piece in the Telegraph discussing the unique story of biofuels and how this policy went from pipedream to absolute disaster. It chronicles the history of biofuel policy and how its implementation has led to rising …
The World Trade Organization released a report today titled Trade in a Globalizing World. From the Executive Summary: International trade is integral to the process of globalization. Over many years, governments in most countries have increasingly opened their economies to international trade, whether through the multilateral trading system, increased regional cooperation or as part of domestic reform programmes. Trade and globalization more generally have brought enormous benefits to many countries and citizens. Trade has allowed nations to benefit from specialization and economies to produce at a more efficient scale. It …
The ACLU is at it again. The most recent post on the ACLU blog attacks me for defending the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) tactic of searching laptops at the border. The purpose of the searches is to prevent criminal activity. In one recent case, officers found a traveler’s computer loaded down with child pornography. The ACLU criticism seems strange, since all that I did was point out that the courts have ruled that officers have a legal right to conduct these searches and that since malicious actors including criminals …
