Author Archive | Todd Zywicki

My former colleague and sometimes co-author Max Stearns has an op-ed defending the constitutionality of Obamacare in the Baltimore Sun here (co-authored with Leslie Meltzer Henry).  If you know Max’s work you’ll recognize the argument about interstate coordination here. Update: I’ve corrected my error on Professor Henry’s first name.  My apologies.

Paul Roderick Gregory describes an imaginary interview by Chris Wallace of Steven Rattner on the auto bailouts.  Here’s the thing that Rattner never quite seems to address–even if it is believed that government direct lending was necessary to provide DIP financing (which I doubt, but will accept for the sake of argument) there is nothing […]

In an article several years ago I noted several of the unusual bedfellows made between certain industries and environmental groups: The presence of these “gains to trade” politics may explain the otherwise puzzling financial support of industry for environmental interest groups. For instance, in recent years members of the waste treatment industry have pumped hundreds of […]

My two cents on the recently0announced robo-signing settlement: “The ‘Robo-Signing’ Settlement: Seeds of Recovery, or Chaos?”

A couple of weeks ago I participated in a Federalist Society Teleforum on CFPB with Wayne Abernathy, Jo Ann Barefoot, and Arthur Wilmarth.  If you missed the live show rest easy because now it is available for easy downloading as a podcast here.  I thought it was a very useful discussion not only with respect […]

The Bill of Rights Institute and Fantasy SCOTUS have combined to design a new Fantasy SCOTUS program aimed at high school teachers and students.  The BRI Badge is here.  The Teacher sign-up is here.  Looks like a lot of fun for teachers and students. (As readers probably know, I am on the Board of Directors […]

A few weeks back I noted the great new blog and website sponsored by Liberty Fund.  In addition to the blog (which features Mike Rappaport and Mike Greve) the site also has a “Liberty Forum” section with extended deliberation of a particular topic.  Last week the topic was behavioral economics and its implications for liberty […]

Interesting column by James Grant on the short but severe post-WWI Depression of 1920-21: Our Great Recession ended 2½ years ago, according to the official cyclical timekeepers, but you wouldn’t know it by a glance at the news. Zero percent interest rates and $1 trillion in “stimulus” notwithstanding, the U.S. economy can hardly seem to […]

That’s the report–but that’s not what the facts seem to indicate as noted by James Taranto: The interview aired on “Nightline” some 90 minutes after the debate ended, and the bombshell turned out to be a dud. The supposed big revelation–that “he wanted an open marriage,” as she, not he, put it–turned out in context […]

I’ll be on Freedom Watch with Andrew Napolitano tonight talking about the government’s “Voluntary Guidelines” for marketing food products to children and adolescents.  My segment will appear at about 35 minutes after the hour.

Comes now the newest–and certainly one of the most welcome–additions to the blogging universe: Libertylawblog.  Featuring my friends Mike Greve and Mike Rappaport.  Sponsored by Liberty Fund, this is the law analogue to Liberty Fund’s immensely popular economics blog econlog.  I see posts by other authors there as well (including our own Ilya Somin), so […]

So asks the WSJ today: The problem is that the Senate does most of its work by unanimous consent—meaning without objection from present Members and without a vote or quorum. Even a single Senator alone on the floor (or “as a practical matter” one from each party) can use this process to modify the standing […]

Leaving aside the constitutional questions, there is a potential statutory problem with the legality of the Cordray appointment under Dodd-Frank.  Section 1066 of Dodd-Frank provides that the Secretary of the Treasury is authorized to perform the functions of the CFPB under the subtitle transferring authority to the CFPB from the other agencies “until the Director […]

There will be a memorial service in honor of our late GMU colleague Larry Ribstein tomorrow (Wednesday) at George Mason Law School at 4:00 p.m.  Information is here.

So it turns out that simply eliminating the supply of payday lending doesn’t actually eliminate demand.  Who would’ve thought it?  According to this story (which simply reports what has already been known to be the case), whenever state laws eliminate bricks-and-mortar payday lending many of those consumers simply substitute to online payday lending.  Indian Tribes […]