FreedomTalks

I can’t believe the Treasury Department just sent out this advisory.
Paulson to Visit Treasury Printing Facility in Kansas City Next Week to Observe Stimulus Checks Rolling off the Presses
Washington, DC–Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr. will tour a Treasury Department printing facility in Kansas City next Thursday to observe the first mass production printing and […]

Art Brodsky of Public Knowledge has a long and thoughtful piece on net neutrality, written largely in response to a column I wrote on the issue for the Spectator, as well as to a recent Washington Times piece by FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey. Brodsky claims that what’s at stake is nothing less than “freedom,” and, […]

Mortgage lending giant Countrywide Financial is in serious trouble– its credit rating was cut to junk on Friday and there are new signs that Bank of America may walk away from its acquisition deal. (ht Calculated Risk) The problem for taxpayers is that Countrywide has direct access to the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet through […]

Senate Republicans introduced a proposal to go forward with a number of energy reforms that should’ve been instituted long ago, but, with energy prices on the rise, are especially pressing now. Here are a couple of things the bill would do, as listed in the Reuters report:
- Allow states to petition the federal government to […]

What do former senior Fed officials think of the Bear Stearns bailout? At least one is convinced it was a bad move indeed. From the WSJ:
The Federal Reserve’s rescue of Bear Stearns Cos. will come to be seen as its “worst policy mistake in a generation,” a former top Fed staffer said.
The episode will be […]

How bad are biofuels?  I’ve had my say. The Washington Post gets down and dirty:
Across the country, ethanol plants are swallowing more and more of the nation’s corn crop. This year, about a quarter of U.S. corn will go to feeding ethanol plants instead of poultry or livestock. That has helped farmers like Johnson, but […]

Looks like the Dodd credit card bill is poised to move its way through the hallowed halls of Congress. Given the topsy-turvy mortgage market, anything remotely related to the credit industry is bound to make a pretty fat target for legislators looking to prove their consumer-friendly bona fides through legislation. Not that the two are […]

Fourteen years ago when she was First Lady Hillary Clinton unloaded a health-care plan on the country. Complex, confusing, and restrictive, the thousand-page proposal outlined a radical overhaul of the nation’s health system, and a small band of grassroots activists quickly rose up to successfully oppose it. At 1,342 pages, it was the Hindenburg of […]