Author Archive | Todd Zywicki

I sat down yesterday with Ryan Young of the Competitive Enterprise Institute on my recent paper, “The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Savior or Menace?”  You can listen here.  It is about 15 minutes.

The annual Federalist Society Lawyers Convention will be in Washington, DC, on November 14th through November 16th. This year’s group of speakers includes five VC bloggers: Jonathan Adler, Randy Barnett, John Elwood, Nick Rosenkranz, and Eugene Volokh.

I’m the coauthor on a brand new paper just released today by the Ottawa-based Macdonald-Laurier Institute, “Credit Where It’s Due: How Payment Cards benefit Canadian merchants and consumers, and how regulation can harm them.”  The report is co-authored The report is co-authored by myself, Ian Lee, Geoffrey A. Manne, and Julian Morris.  

News has been trickling out over the past few weeks about the extraordinary data-mining operations that Randy noted awhile back. At least when the NSA snoops it is doing so to prevent terrorism (which, I hasten to add, doesn’t mean that it should be allowed to do so).  It isn’t clear why the CFPB needs […]

I’ve frequently expressed concern that the legacy of Dodd-Frank will be to promote artificial consolidation of the banking industry by driving small banks out of business and making large banks even more “Too Big to Fail.”  This is for two reasons. The first reason would be if Dodd-Frank perpetuates the so-called TBTF subsidy.  This is the […]

A couple of weeks ago I posted on an exchange between George Leef and Joshua Silverstein on the wisdom of grade inflation in law school. They’ve continued the debate, most recently on the pages of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.  Josh’s column is here and George’s is here.

I’m returning to my old stomping grounds of Mississippi this week, where I spent two wonderful years last century (1996-1998). On Thursday, I will be at Mississippi College School of Law speaking on “The Financial Crisis and the Rule of Law.”  My old friend and colleague Matt Steffey will provide commentary on my remarks.  That […]

So you may have read that there is a new card affiliated (not quite sure how to describe the relationship) with the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Occupy Card, a new prepaid card product. The only problem? The  experts at Cardhub.com have reviewed the card and aren’t all that impressed. The card turns out to be much more […]

So I’ve spent the past week in Warsaw, Poland, attending the European Law and Economics Association meetings and visiting the city. Although my family is Polish I’ve never visited the country. Perhaps my most distinct impression is how surprised I am at how middle class and prosperous the country seems, just 25 years removed from […]

So apparently liberals don’t like Ted Cruz (nor do establishment Republicans either from what I read).  But I think one of the more amusing things I’ve read so far is this one by Josh Marshall, who admits that he doesn’t really remember Ted but his wife does and–here’s his big news hook–all of Josh Marshall’s […]

Last year I mentioned a legal challenge to a new right to work law in Indiana.  The opinion has now come down and Asheesh Agarwal has a commentary here.

I’m doing an essay for the George Mason Journal of Law, Economics, and Politics and one of the issues I will touch on is Robert Bork’s time teaching at GMU.  First, I’m trying to establish when he taught at GMU.  I have it that his last year was 1991-92 but I’m not sure how long […]

From The Atlantic–better customer service and lower prices (for many) than banks: As part of my research as an urban policy professor at The New School, I recently spent four months working weekly, eight-hour shifts as a teller at RiteCheck, a check cashing business in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the South Bronx. I wanted to […]

I’ve just started reading John Lott’s new book Dumbing Down the Courts: How Politics Keeps the Smartest Judges Off the Bench and this review caught my eye because it discusses one of my law school professors, Lillian BeVier, who was nominated for the 4th Circuit back when I was in law school at UVA.

Joshua Silverstein says yes, George Leef says no. Law students overwhelmingly agree with Silverstein.  (That’s just a joke).