Author Archive | Todd Zywicki

John Truslow has a good op-ed on the 17th Amendment in Roll Call.  Nominally it is about the process for filling vacant Senate seats, but it also lays out the more general case for repealing the 17th Amendment. I had a short essay on the topic of Senate Vacancies in the Heritage Guide to the […]

This whole week on “Uncommon Knowledge” Peter Robinson is interviewing Judge Silberman. The first entry, on Heller and the Second Amendment, is available here.  The second, on the Second Amendment and incorporation, is on The Corner today.  Judge Silberman will be covering a wide range of other issues this week–and if you know Judge Silberman […]

It looks like major modifications to the CFPA are on the table, including eliminating many of the most troubling elements, such as the “plain vanilla” proposal, the consumer comprehension tests, and the application to non-financial firms. Details here.

Some of the provisions of the the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 are now effective. CEI’s Hans Bader has an excellent summary of some of the unintended consequences of this “consumer protection” measure–well, actually, most of them, such as the return of annual fees, was fully predicted: In response to the […]

I have a piece of political commentary on President Obama and health care reform on Forbes.com today, “Obama’s Ailing Popularity: The health care debate is tarnishing the president’s reputation.”

I can vouch that Allison is a far better law professor than violin player. The amicus brief filed by Allison and several other professors (both law and political science) is here.

A friend of mine asked me who were some famous federal judges who never sat on the Supreme Court. Learned Hand came to mind first. Are there others? I suggested Henry Friendly and John Minor Wisdom as possibilities, but even those I wasn’t confident of. Any others? I am not including state judges who were […]

Yesterday I testified in the House Financial Services Committee on the Obama Administration’s proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency. My testimony is here. As you probably inferred from my WSJ column last week, I am not a fan of the proposal. The full list of testimony is available here as well as an archived webcast for […]

First Things is conducting an online survey of religion on college campuses. Looks like they are soliciting responses from current students and recent grads. The survey is here if you are interested in participating.

My latest Wall Street Journal contribution, “Let’s Treat Borrowers Like Adults: The problems with a financial products safety panel” is available here. The basic point of the piece is that there were a lot of bad loans that were made over the past decade (duh). But the primary problem with these loans was the combination […]

As I understand the situation, as things stand now, secured creditors in the GM bankruptcy case are slated to get paid in full on their claims. In Chrysler they got about 30 cents on the dollar. Does anyone know why secured creditors are getting paid in full in one but not the other? Whatever the […]

FTC Commissioner J. Thomas Rosch takes on Josh Wright for several of Josh’s blog posts on Truth on The Market. Josh responds with a long post here. In my view, Josh gets the better of the exchange, but I congratulate Commissioner Rosch on being willing to read, and engage, his critics. I wish more public […]

I recently read Russ Roberts’s new novel, The Price of Everything: A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity. For those who don’t know Russ’s work, his novels are quite unusual. He writes novels that are designed to illustrate economic themes and concepts. Russ is an unusually clear and lively writer–especially for an academic economist–and he actually […]

According to FIRE, Bucknell’s administrators aren’t fans of satire. The first one is pretty clever: Bucknell’s recent forays into censorship began on March 17, 2009, when BUCC members stood at Bucknell’s student center and passed out fake dollar bills with President Obama’s face on the front and the sentence “Obama’s stimulus plan makes your money […]