rdan The Logan Act has remained almost unchanged and unused since its passage. The act is short and reads as follows: Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any […]

by Linda Beale(cross posted with ataxingmatter) What’s Your Top Ten List for Tax Reforms? Tax Prof’s ongoing discussion of potential tax reforms to be suggested to the Volcker Commission got me thinking what my own “top ten” would be. I’ll list them here, but I invite readers to provide their own as well. (Much of […]

rdan Trent Lott demonstrates pretty normal behavior for people who think they are prepared and are not…I guess he did not need to sign a waiver of never regretting not buying public backed insurance. Of course, how that gibes with the rhetoric of no public option and ‘taking responsibility’ is very human…it tends to change […]

rdan Adam Smith’s Lost Legacy, a blog maintained by Gavin Kennedy who resides in Edinburgh, Scotland, is a wonderful gem to visit to take a thorough look at the broad extent of Smith’s writings. He makes a wonderful defense of Adam Smith that rescues his reputation as a thinking man instead of the one dimensional […]

by Rebecca(cross posted at Newsneconomics) Prof. Jim Hamilton at Econbrowser (thanks Mark Thoma for the link) addresses one of the Fed’s standard methods of draining liquidity from the banking system: reverse repurchase agreements. Basically, the Fed will transfer some of its assets to the banking system via short-term loans taken out with its Primary Dealers, […]

by Linda Beale Linda Beale writes at ataxingmatter: Health Care Reform or a boondoggle for private insurers? The Baucus proposal for health care “reform” doesn’t include a public option. And the Senate Finance Committee voted this afternoon-by 15 to 8–to reject the Rockefeller proposal to add a public option “community choice health plan’. See Hershenson, […]

rdan The PEW economic policy department task force report suggests we take a better look at other models of regulation, perhaps to Australia. In this short paper we look at the structure of international financial regulation in teh context of their response to the crisis in order to see what lessons there may be for […]