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The Truth About Hedge Funds and the Financial Crisis

Editor’s Note: Reason columnist Veronique de Rugy appears weekly on Bloomberg TV to separate economic fact from economic myth.Myth 1:Hedge funds are highly leveraged.Fact 1:The market exposure of most...

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Joe Bast on Whether R's or D's are Better for the U.S. Economy

Joe Bast, president of the Heartland Institute in Chicago, has two well-written and highly accessible thumbnail summaries of the economic policies of recent presidents in the last two issues of The...

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Nuclear Power's Unchanging Plight

Just as congressional Republicans and the Obama administration had been pushing nuclear power, the disaster in Japan arrived to complicate matters. Proponents of atomic energy fear an unfair, crippling...

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The Triumph of Politics Over Economics

At the very start of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, David Stockman debunked the myth that Reagan and the modern Republican Party were dedicated to small government.In 1981, the 35-year-old Stockman gave...

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AT&T, T-Mobile and a Maturing Wireless Industry

As AT&T is braces for a battle royale with regulators over its move to acquire T-Mobile from Germany’s Deutsche Telekom for $39 billion, it might be wise to remember that cellular phones, although...

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CBO's Take on the Obama Budget Confirms It's Just As Bad As You Thought

The Congressional Budget Office released its preliminary analysis of the President's proposed 2012 budget today, The verdict? It's a mess. Were the budget to be enacted as proposed, the federal...

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How Drug Cops Go Bad

If you browse the website of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), you will notice a conspicuous theme: The war on drugs is corrupting America's cops.LEAP, a group of current and former cops,...

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Failing Upward in Criminal Justice

When the SWAT team came for Richard Paey in 1997, officers battered down the front door of the Florida home he shared with his wife and their two children. Paey is a paraplegic who uses a wheelchair...

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Hey Congress! There are Consequences Down the Road

Over at Mercatus Center, Veronique de Rugy put together this frightening graph showing the projected composition of federal spending from 2010 to 2084 using data from the Congressional Budget Office’s...

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Government's Work Is Never Done

"When," humorist P.J. O’Rourke has asked, "can we quit passing laws and raising taxes? When can we say of our political system, ‘Stick a fork in it, it’s done’?... The mystery of government is not how...

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Why a Sports Stadium Can't Save Baltimore (or Other Cities)

Okay, I admit I got caught by Marta Mossburg'ssatirical riff on Baltimore's economic development policies published in the Baltimore Sun on March 15th. I should have looked at the headline, which...

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States Are Finally Turning Their Backs on Cigarette Taxes

After increasing cigarette taxes no fewer than 105 times in the last decade, it looks like states may finally be tiring of pounding smokers with higher rates every time budget trouble rolls around. The...

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Jefferson Quotes on Debt and CBO's 2012 White House Budget Analysis

CBO's preliminary analysis of President Obama's budget proposal is out this month and it has a sharp critique: According to CBO's projections, if all of the President's budgetary proposals were...

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America's Richest 10% Carry More of the Tax Burden Than Anywhere Else

One of the most popular (and powerful) fiscal conservative talking points when the President pushed to raise taxes on the wealthy last fall was that they already pay quite a bit. In 2009, for instance,...

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Is the Great Stagnation Real?

In his new book The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better, George Mason University economist and New York Times...

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Obama's War of Choice

In December 2007 The Boston Globe asked 12 presidential candidates about military action aimed at stopping Iran from building nuclear weapons. "In what circumstances, if any," the Globe asked, "would...

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Time to Break Up Detroit (and Other Declining Cities)?

The City of Detroit has lost 25% of its population since 2000, the largest drop of any major city in the U.S. With just 713,777 residents, Detroit's population has fallen to a level not seen since 1910...

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A War We Don't Need

Contrary to pithy bumper-sticker truisms, war is occasionally the answer. But can anyone explain why it's the answer now? At the moment, at least, polls insist that Americans are generally supportive...

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Do Countries Where the Rich Pay More in Tax Also Have More Income Equality?

Yesterday I commented on the 2008 OECD study that shows the richest 10% of Americans pay more in tax, relative to their share of income, than anywhere else in the developed world. That story has been...

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2010 Highlights in State Government Privatization

Bacon's Rebellion In my last Bacon's column, I offered an overview of notable recent trends in local government privatization, and I'd like to continue that theme in this column by focusing on state...

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The Rosy Scenario System

President Barack Obama is a budgetary optimist. When he announced his budget proposal last month, he framed it hopefully, as a welcome return to fiscal sanity and a path towards a better tomorrow. It...

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A Treasury GSE Management Failure

With taxpayers already shelling out $150 billion to bailout Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the government supporting 90 percent of the mortgage financing market, it's time for the Treasury Department...

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Obama's Fatal Attraction to War

It's a good thing we didn't elect John McCain in 2008. A McCain victory would have meant an escalation in Afghanistan, a third war in the Middle East, and a president sending U.S. forces into harm's...

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End Corporate Welfare

In America today, the biggest recipients of handouts are not poor people. They're corporations.General Electric CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt is super-close to President Obama. The president named Immelt...

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New at Reason: Treasury is Ignoring Their Legal Requirement to Approve or...

When Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were given their charters, Congress required that the Treasury Secretary review and approve each issuance of debt by the GSEs. While there has been no change in the law,...

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Housing Market in Total Freefall

Housing numbers released in the past few days are almost all at their lowest level on record. Whether it is new or existing home sales, building permits, or prices, the housing market simply sucks. And...

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(Video) The Future of the American Dream and Housing Market

Last night, I appeared on RT to discuss the future of the housing market and how the American Dream is changing. See here for more on this week's dismal housing numbers.Also, see here for our paper on...

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Notes from the Underground

By 1962, Georgia State University historian John McMillian writes in his new book, Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America, corporate...

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Hypocritical Bureaucrats Stifle Entrepreneurship in Colorado

Seven months ago the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) denied start-up firm Mile High Cab Company the right to compete in metro Denver’s taxicab market. According to David Migoya of The Denver...

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New York City's Changing Economic Landscape

For most people outside of New York City, Manhattan is the iconic image of the urban life. An insightful article at NewGeography.com by David Giles, however, points to the organic complexity of this...

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Obama's Consistency Problem

On Tuesday, three days after the U.S. launched military action against Libyan forces, President Obama got around to articulating a rationale for doing so."The core principle that has to be upheld...

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The Truth About Nuclear Power

Editor’s Note: Reason columnist and Mercatus Center economist Veronique de Rugy appears weekly on Bloomberg TV to separate economic fact from economic myth.Myth 1: Nuclear power is a cheap alternative...

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7th Annual US P3 Infrastructure Forum

Reason is a co-sponsor of InfraAmericas’ 7th Annual US P3 Infrastructure Forum, which will be 14-15 June 2011 at The Grand Hyatt, New York. The theme is New Governors, New Legislators and New Market...

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Boston Globe Advocates for Taxi Deregulation

The Boston Globe (March 25, 2011) has come out in favor of deregulating taxicabs in Boston. Boston, like many large cities, uses "medallions" (permits to drive taxis) to limit the number of cabs that...

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Sleeping Reagan Air Traffic Controller Shows FAA's Failures

 The incident at Reagan National Airport in which two airliners landed after midnight without any assistance from the control tower illustrates a long-standing flaw with the Federal Aviation...

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Six Product Flameouts to Haunt Your Dreams

As Washington technocrats get hot and bothered by the growth of Google, Facebook and Apple, demanding more and more regulation as a check against their march toward inevitable Internet dominance, maybe...

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The Fogh of War

Some people don’t know what country President Barack Obama was born in. I don’t know what country he’s president of.When he’s talking about trade agreements, Obama is as parochial as a UAW shop...

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CEA Chairs Highlight Importance of Tackling the Deficit

By now, you've probably already heard of yesterday's editorial on the national debt co-authored by ten former heads of the Council of Economic Advisors. In case you haven't, here's the...

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Lost in Libya

He came slithering out of his hole on Wednesday, wearing his trademark skullcap and desert sarong, to declare that Libya is being attacked by “fascists,” something upon which he and Glenn Beck appear...

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Warren Buffett on Public Pensions

During a recent appearance on CNBC's "Squawk Box," investor extraordinaire and "Oracle of Omaha" Warren Buffett discussed a wide variety of fiscal and economic issues. One of the topics Buffett...

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Does Transit Spur Economic Development? Maybe "Yes," Maybe "No"

The Center for Transit-Oriented Development has published a report, Rails to Real Estate, on the potential economic development benefits of light rail. For a positive, pro-transit view of the study,...

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State of the State: Louisiana in 2011

This is the seventh of a ten-part series on the 2011 State of the State (SOTS) speeches in states with the ten worst projected relative budget deficits for FY 2012. Budget data is from the Center on...

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An Aerial Tour of Honolulu's Rail Boondoggle

The web site HonoluluTraffic.com has a very useful and informative aerial tour of the "light" rail line envisioned for O'ahu. The tour traces the proposed rail line, which will be elevated, following...

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The Canadian Model for Our Future?

The Atlas Economic Research Foundation recently announced the winner of its Sir Antony Fisher Award as a new book lauding the Canadian economic model as the way of the future: The Canadian Century:...

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CA Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher Co-Authors Budget Reform Bill

California Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher (R-San Diego) has co-authored a new budget reform bill intended to bring greater accountability and sense to the budgeting process. Senate Bill 14 (see the...

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Wisconsin, Unions, and Collective Bargaining

It seems the public-sector union collective bargaining issue is far from over in Wisconsin or the rest of the country. Legal wrangling continues over whether or not the law passed by Republican...

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Obama and the Ghost of '68

In 2008, Democratic voters had their pick of many candidates for president—from Hillary Clinton to John Edwards to Joe Biden. Why did they choose Barack Obama?After all, he had less experience in...

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Banks Start Limiting Debit Card Programs, Time for a Durbin Swipe Fee Watch

We are going to start a Durbin Amendment of Consumer Benefits Watch. The limits on interchange fees (aka swipe fees) built into the Dodd-Frank law are bound to have significant impact on the banks...

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The Next Barrage in Housing Finance Reform Battle

House Republicans are finally moving forward with legislative action on reducing the government's role as primary supplier of mortgage finance. The first step will be to start moving a series of...

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Japan's Nuclear Nationalism

Nuclear advocates are dismayed that radiation fears over Japan’s Fukushima plant might kill an industry that has a better safety track record than virtually any other. But the public in Japan and...

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