Author Archive | Todd Zywicki

Apparently Glenn Beck’s been thinking about the 17th Amendment too.  A short mention in this video and a mention on his website (was this perhaps the text of a short discussion he had on it).  Update: Here’s a longer clip with Beck’s analysis at the beginning.  He’s actually got it basically right, both on the […]

The “Repeal the 17th Amendment” t-shirt!  Two styles: Black and white.  (I don’t know this vendor, so I am not recommending it one or the other.  I just like the shirt.) Update: Sorry, I see there are few other places that have them here and here (I just stumbled across the other one first and […]

I reveal the answer in this Washington Times column today.

Gene Healy says yes.

I was delighted to be invited to contribute to an important new book that has just appeared: Lessons from the Financial Crisis: Causes, Consequences, and Our Economic Future.  It is a collection of 78 short essays on various elements of the financial crisis.  The Table of Contents is available on the Wiley Publishing website.  I […]

The published version of my auto title lending paper has just been published by the Loyola Consumer Law Review.  Although the topic may seem somewhat obscure, this turned out to be one of the most interesting papers I’ve done in awhile.  In particular, I was really surprised by the range in the type of people […]

I posted on this awhile back.  But in light of the renewed interest in payment card fees as a result of the Durbin Amendment to the financial regulation reform bill, I thought I’d post again.  There will be a half-day conference next week at the Willard Hotel on the economics and regulation of payment card […]

Charles Murray has an extremely insightful review of the two new biographies of Ayn Rand in The Claremont Review of Books.  Murray captures, I think, many of my own ambivalent feelings about Rand’s work, both pro and con.

I argue in today’s Washington Times that the Durbin amendment to the financial regulatory reform bill that imposes price controls on debit and prepaid card interchange fees will be bad for consumers, has nothing to do with the purported purpose of the bill, and seems to be nothing more than a payoff to a politically […]

Philip Morris goes green (via The Onion): Executives at Philip Morris USA this week unveiled Marlboro Earth, a new eco-friendly cigarette that gradually eliminates the causes of global warming and environmental destruction at their source…. “I leave work three to five times a day to stand outside and help the environment,” said longtime smoker Sam […]

The Conglomerate Blog is doing is 5th annual junior scholars workshop.  Here’s the call for papers.  It is open to untenured scholars in the general area of business law.  It is a good thing and if you are a junior business law scholar it is a great chance to get some good comments on a […]

As everyone knows, the purpose of the financial regulation reform bill is to prevent another financial crisis from occurring.  That must be why Senator Richard Durbin felt it so urgent to attach an amendment to the Senate version of the bill that places new price controls on the interchange fees that can be charged on […]

here.  (Video interview).

This column by Brian Johnson has been getting a great deal of attention since it was published Wednesday (as of today it is still the fifth most widely-shared piece on the Washington Times website).  With all the other problematic stuff in the bill, I haven’t focused in detail on the various privacy issues that Johnson […]