Author Archive | Todd Zywicki

The WSJ has an interesting article today on the Target credit card security breach. As the article notes, the US card system is less secure than elsewhere in the world, most notably Europe, which has a “chip and PIN” system, which has a computer chip embedded in the card and requires the purchaser to insert a PIN […]

I’ve noted previously, I have a forthcoming paper with former Comptroller of the Currency Robert Clarke that examines competition between payday lending and bank overdraft protection. The central point is easy to grasp–payday lending and overdraft protection are products offered by different providers but which compete for the same customers. And evidence indicates that in […]

A little while back I read Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion and had the opportunity to meet him and hear him speak at a book party in NYC. I’ve been meaning to say a few things about it and the recent appearance of a piece […]

Denizens of Boston may be interested in the premiere of a new radio show this weekend, “Real Clear Radio Hour with Bill Frezza” brought to you by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.  It will air from 10:00-11:00 AM on Bloomberg radio’s WXKS 1200AM & WJMN 94.5FM-HD2.  You can also find it on several Internet services (at the […]

President Obama boasted during the Presidential campaign that the taxpayer bailouts of Chrysler and GM saved “Detroit” (a particular locution that he wisely doesn’t use any more, as I noted yesterday). But as John Berlau also observed yesterday, with respect to the Chrysler bailout it might be more accurate to say that it “saved Turin,” […]

Over the past few weeks Fiat finished buying Chrysler and the government sold its final stake in General Motors. I have a summing up of the “The Corporatist Legacy of the Auto Bailouts” at the Law and Liberty blog today.

I was recently interviewed as part of a forthcoming web documentary on the decline and bankruptcy of the once-great city of Detroit. The trailer for the film is here. The production team was excellent and smart and I expect the movie to be terrific. Here’s a photo just before being interviewed.

A shout out to GMU Law alum Josh Blackman, one of Forbes’s “Top 30 under 30” for law and policy.  Way to go Josh!  Except it makes the rest of us feel awfully old…. Josh’s blog is here.

Richard Reinsch has announced that John McGinnis will be joining the Law and Liberty Blog, making it even more of a must-read blog than it is already.  

Steven Harper sent me an interesting response to my post yesterday on his essay in The Chronicle Review.  Here it is in full (I apologize for not having first noticed it in March–I just came across it the other day when a friend emailed it to me and I had assumed it had been more […]

Steven J. Harper has an essay on the popping of the law school bubble. The lawyer bubble began to form when vital institutions—law schools and the American Bar Association—abdicated their responsibilities in favor of misguided metrics and insularity. Law-school deans are supposed to be the profession’s gatekeepers, but far too many have ceded independent judgment in […]

I have a book review essay at the Liberty Law Blog on Taleb’s new book, AntiFragile. I use the central point of the book as a jumping-off point to discuss how Taleb’s insights might be applied to strengthen the financial system and make it more resistant to panics and crises. Josh Blackman adds a few thoughts […]

One of the most influential books that IHS introduced me to when I was in college was Bruno Leoni’s Freedom and the Law (available in pdf here). So I was delighted to have been invited to participate in a program celebrating Leoni’s 100th birthday today at the Cato Institute. Alas, we have been snowed out. […]

There’s a new poll by Harris Interactive taken on behalf of the Community Financial Services Association of America (CFSA), a payday lenders trade association.  Some interesting results: 84% of those surveyed said it was easy to repay the loan (52% said “very easy”) 95% said the understood “well” or “very well” how long it would take […]

My co-authors Geoff Manne and Julian Morris have a column today in Canada’s National Post “Why Canada’s debit card system doesn’t need any more controls.”  It is based on our recent study issued through the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.