Cato Event Podcast

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals—known as the second-highest court in the land—has ruled in the case Halbig v. Burwell that the IRS regulation authorizing tax credits in federal exchanges was invalid. But at the center of the Halbig ruling is checking presidential power. President Obama, like an autocrat, thought he could levy taxes on his own authority. The decision also shows that the Affordabl...

From Cato University 2014: Summer Seminar on Political Economy The Cato Institute’s premier educational event, this annual program brings together outstanding faculty and participants from across the country and, often, from around the globe in order to examine the roots of our commitment to liberty and limited government, and explore the ideas and values on which the American republic was founded...

While accounts of the 2008 Financial Crisis differ across the political spectrum, almost all accounts contain some role for our mortgage finance system. Although efforts were made in the Dodd-Frank Act to improve mortgage standards, these requirements were modest at best and ignored the vast guarantees and moral hazard behind our current system. Join our panel to discuss the history of our current...

Four years after the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Financial Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) was signed into law, there are many open questions about what the Act has achieved and what lies ahead for the U.S. financial system. This two-day conference, hosted jointly by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and the Cato Institute, explores some of the most hotly debated aspects of financial...

Four years after the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Financial Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) was signed into law, there are many open questions about what the Act has achieved and what lies ahead for the U.S. financial system. This two-day conference, hosted jointly by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and the Cato Institute, explores some of the most hotly debated aspects of financial...

Four years after the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Financial Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) was signed into law, there are many open questions about what the Act has achieved and what lies ahead for the U.S. financial system. This two-day conference, hosted jointly by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and the Cato Institute, explores some of the most hotly debated aspects of financial...

Four years after the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Financial Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) was signed into law, there are many open questions about what the Act has achieved and what lies ahead for the U.S. financial system. This two-day conference, hosted jointly by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and the Cato Institute, explores some of the most hotly debated aspects of financial...

Four years after the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Financial Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) was signed into law, there are many open questions about what the Act has achieved and what lies ahead for the U.S. financial system. This two-day conference, hosted jointly by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and the Cato Institute, explores some of the most hotly debated aspects of financial...

In an era of fiscal constraints and concerns about direct military involvement abroad, helping others defend themselves is an attractive option to address America’s global security concerns. Efforts to train, equip, and advise partner nations are elements of foreign internal defense (FID) policies. But when is FID a smart tool? Does FID produce more effective and self-sufficient partners, at lower...

In Licensed to Lie , attorney Sidney Powell takes readers through a series of disturbing events, missteps, and cover-ups in our federal criminal justice system. According to Powell, the malfeasance stretches across all three branches of our government — from the White House to the U.S. Senate, to members of the judiciary. Even worse, the law itself is becoming pernicious. Americans can now b...

George F. Kennan was the eminent U.S. foreign policy strategist of the 20th century. Kennan was the author of the famous “X” telegram, which outlined a policy of containment for dealing with the Soviet Union. Although once the Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, Kennan would renounce the way his doctrine was applied, critiquing the Washington foreign policy establishment for its m...

A unanimous Supreme Court recently declared that that our networked mobile devices merit the highest level of Fourth Amendment protection against government searches, since these devices often contain more sensitive information than even “the most exhaustive search of a house” would reveal. Yet increasingly, the vast troves of personal data they contain are synched to "the cloud,” where the outdat...

Launched in early 2013, “Operation Choke Point” is a joint effort by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the bank regulators to limit access to the bank payments system by various businesses. Initially targeted at small-dollar nonbank lenders, Choke Point has grown to cover a variety of legitimate, legal businesses that just happen to be unpopular with DOJ, such as gun dealers and porn stars. Init...

In Unstoppable , famed political activist Ralph Nader calls for an alliance of principled libertarians, conservatives, and progressives against a corrupt and overreaching Washington establishment. Although long an iconic figure on the political left, Nader here seeks to bridge ideological divisions by identifying opportunities for left-right cooperation. According to Nader, the possibilities for j...

In Money: How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy , Steve Forbes and coauthor Elizabeth Ames explain how the lack of any anchor for the U.S. dollar after President Nixon closed the gold window in August 1971 has increased uncertainty and put us on a pure discretionary government fiat money system. The Federal Reserve, now in its 100th year of operation, has become a central...

   On April 2, the Supreme Court issued its latest blockbuster ruling on campaign finance, McCutcheon v. FEC , striking down the "aggregate" contribution limits on how much money any one person can contribute to election campaigns (leaving untouched the "base" limits on donations to individual candidates or party committees). Within days of the decision, while pundits and activists were...

Jon Stewart once derided economists' prose as being so boring that “it turned my brain off,” but it doesn't have to be that way. Pioneers in academia, the creative arts, and nonprofits have found new and provocative ways to communicate the timeless ideas of economic liberty. Amity Shlaes, the bestselling author of The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression , and Paul Rivoche, a profe...

In a May 9 preliminary decision, the U.S. International Trade Commission determined "there is a reasonable indication that a U.S. industry is materially injured by reason of imports of sugar from Mexico that are allegedly subsidized and sold in the United States at less than fair value." As a result, antidumping and countervailing duty investigations into the questions of domestic injury, dumping,...

The United States, argues Barry R. Posen, has grown incapable of moderating its foreign policy ambitions. Since the collapse of Soviet power, it has pursued a grand strategy that has tended to overreach, generating a host of failures and encountering many unexpected difficulties along the way. In this new book, Posen explains why the dominant view among the nation’s foreign policy elites, what he...

Attorney General Eric Holder’s Department of Justice has faced much criticism in the past six years. From “Fast and Furious” to the surveillance of Fox News reporter James Rosen, Holder has attracted the ire of congressional Republicans, and even some Democrats. In 2012 Holder became the first sitting cabinet member in American history to be held in contempt by Congress.  In thei...

In his new book Immigration Economics , author and noted immigration scholar George J. Borjas will discuss how immigrants affect the wages of American workers, government budgets, and virtually every other aspect of the American economy and workforce. Professor Borjas brings his years of research and his own voluminous work to bear on this issue–reaching some controversial conclusions along the wa...

In an article that went viral in 1989, Francis Fukuyama advanced the notion that with the death of communism history had come to an end in the sense that liberalism — democracy and market capitalism — had triumphed as an ideology. Fukuyama will be joined by other scholars to examine this proposition in the light of experience during the subsequent quarter century. Hosted on Aca...

In an article that went viral in 1989, Francis Fukuyama advanced the notion that with the death of communism history had come to an end in the sense that liberalism — democracy and market capitalism — had triumphed as an ideology. Fukuyama will be joined by other scholars to examine this proposition in the light of experience during the subsequent quarter century. Hosted on Aca...

When law in America can be made by executive “pen and phone” alone — indeed, by a White House press release — we're faced starkly with a fundamental constitutional question: Is administrative law unlawful? Answering in the affirmative in this far-reaching, erudite new treatise, Philip Hamburger traces resistance to rule by administrative edict from the Middle Ages to the present. Far f...

Financial history is characterized by a consistent fear of bank runs, especially during times of crisis. The financial crisis of 2007-09 was no exception. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission identified no less than 10 cases of runs. Those runs were a major consideration in the shifting policy responses that authorities employed during the crisis. In the early stages, troubled institutions faci...