Follow Up on Bank Secrecy Act Data
Nicholas AnthonyLast week, I wrote about how there is a lack of official statistics regarding the effectiveness of the Bank Secrecy Act and how what little information exists is troubling.However, a few folks were kind enough to point out that the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) defines money laundering under a broad umbrella, so I wanted to follow up to make sure readers had the full picture available. The figure below provides the complete list of subcategories that FinCEN d efines as money laundering in its suspicious activity report (SAR)statistical database.Much like I explained last week, the ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 5, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Nicholas Anthony Source Type: blogs
Five Rotten Reasons to Oppose Infant Formula Trade Liberalization
ConclusionThe legislation introduced by Senators Mike Lee (R ‑UT), and Bob Menendez (D‑NJ), and Representatives Adrian Smith (R‑NE), and Don Beyer (D‑VA), is a refreshing change from the seemingly ubiquitous political messages for onshoring and isolationism. Last year’s formula crisis was a glaring reminder of the risks of protectionism and Americ an parents should not have to continue paying the price to protect a handful of dairy farmers. (Source: Cato-at-liberty)
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 5, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Gabriella Beaumont-Smith, Alfredo Carrillo Obregon Source Type: blogs
A New Underground Market in E ‑Cigarettes Will Soon Begin Flourishing in Australia
Jeffrey A. SingerWriting in the Australian journalThe Quadranta year and a half ago, I criticized the Australian government ’s plan to prohibit residents from purchasing e‑cigarettes without first getting a state‐licensed health care practitioner’s permission slip (aka, a prescription). I wrote:It makes no sense to require medical permission slips for consenting adults to ingest nicotine via e ‑cigarettes when doing so through combustible tobacco requires no such official nod. It makes even less sense when substances of equal or greater addictive potential are legally available without a prescription. ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 5, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs
Friday Feature: Sweetwater Schol é
Colleen HroncichLike many creative educational options, Sweetwater Schol é is evidence that necessity is the mother of invention. Despite a career working to advance educational freedom and school choice, Randan Steinhauser’s original education plan for her children was pretty typical. “When it came time for my husband and I to buy a house, the first thing we loo ked at was the local school district,” she recalls. “I grew up in public school. My husband did, too. So, I’m fighting for school choice for other families. But I never thought of it for myself.”When her oldest daughter was one, Randan had twins. ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 2, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Colleen Hroncich Source Type: blogs
The Rights We Give Up under “Marsy’s Law”
Walter OlsonI ’vewritten before about the set of state constitutional amendments known as “Marsy’s Law,” promoted as a bill of rights for crime victims. While the details vary from state to state, common provisions found in the package can deprive persons accused of crimes of information that is of legitimate use in mounting their defense, seal off access to information about crim e that the public has valid reasons to want to know, and even in some states work tosuppress the identities of police who shoot civilians, so long as the officers allege that they were themselves victimized as part of the episode. In an ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 2, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Walter Olson Source Type: blogs
Is the Bank Secrecy Act Effective at Stopping Crime? No One Knows
ConclusionLater at the oversight hearing, RepresentativeWarren Davidson (R ‑OH) said,Give us some metrics. …Give us the evidence.…How do you measure the effectiveness? …Show me a case where what you collected resulted in a solved crime.…I’m looking for cause and effect. If you want to keep spying on American citizens, you’re going to have to show why.Between therequests from the public andcongressional inquiries, FinCEN is certainly aware of the pressing need to supply statistics on the effectiveness of the financial surveillance it oversees. At this point, however, it ’s clear that Congress needs to doub...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 2, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Nicholas Anthony Source Type: blogs
Glacier Northwest v. Teamsters: The Supreme Court Gets Concrete
Walter OlsonInGlacier Northwest, Inc., v. Teamsters, decided today, the Supreme Court showed a good measure of consensus and civility in settling a potentially contentious issue in labor law: whether a company is entitled to sue a union that has so arranged its strike so as to put the company’s equipment, as well as its perishable inventory, at risk of destruction. Eight Justices led b y Justice Amy Coney Barrett said the company was entitled to sue, while Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the only dissenter, said the dispute should properly be heard by the National Labor Relations Board. Along the way, the Justices br...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 1, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Walter Olson Source Type: blogs
Krugman Misses the Mark on CBDCs —Again
Norbert Michel andNicholas AnthonyThis AprilForbes column describes why central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are a fundamental issue related to Americans’ freedom and much bigger than just politics. It argues that New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, famous forbeing wrong aboutthe Internet, was wrong for claiming presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis was merely playing politics with CBDCs.Nonetheless, Krugman hasdoubled down. AsCrowdfund Insider explains, now he ’s taken toTwitter to re ‐promote his original opinion pieceand to liken DeSantis ’s warnings about CBDCs to former presidential candidate Rick Santo...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 1, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Norbert Michel, Nicholas Anthony Source Type: blogs
Brookings Paper Is Not Concrete Evidence That a “Hard Landing” of the Economy Is Inevitable
Norbert Michel andJai KediaLast week atBrookings, Ben Bernanke, former Fed chair, and Olivier Blanchard, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, released an empirical study of the inflationary episode that followed the COVID-19 government shutdowns. According to the authors, the supply constraints caused by the pandemic shutdowns were initially a main factor, and the “easy fiscal and monetary policy” that followed made things worse.While this conclusionshouldn ’t surprise anyone, it ’s their prediction for the economy’s outlook that generatedsome buzz.Specifically, Bernanke and Blanchard conc...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 1, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Norbert Michel, Jai Kedia Source Type: blogs
Misleading Debt Limit Deal Math Counts Phantom Savings
Romina BocciaWithin mere days of the X ‑day deadline for when the federal government would run out of wiggle room to keep borrowing under the statutory debt limit, the President’s and House Speaker McCarthy’s negotiators released theFiscal Responsibility Act (H.R.3746). Here ’s what you need to know to judge its impact on addressing the U.S. debt problem:Waives the Debt LimitThe bill suspends the debt limit until January 1, 2025. A suspension acts like a waiver. The bill temporarily eliminates the debt limit, allowing for unlimited borrowing for about a year and a half.It ’s curious that Republicans agreed ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 1, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Romina Boccia Source Type: blogs
Domestic Benefits from Foreign Tax Havens
Adam N. MichelForeign investment in low ‐tax countries complements U.S. production and expands global investment.Low ‐tax countries are often derided for either attracting illusory corporate profits without changing true investment behavior or for attracting international investment to the detriment of usually higher‐tax countries. However, research consistently finds that when multinational businesses i nvest abroad, they also increase investment at home.For example, Mihir Desai, C. Fritz Foley, and James Hinesfind that“one dollar of additional foreign capital spending is associated with 3.5 dollars of ad...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 31, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Adam N. Michel Source Type: blogs
The Continuing Effort to Deny that Libertarian ‐ish Voters Exist
David BoazHere we go again. David Leonhardt of the New York Timesdredges up a poorly designed chart from 2017 that purported to show that there are very few “fiscally conservative, socially liberal” American voters. At the time Karl Smithpointed out some basic design flaws in the analysis. Emily Ekinsnotedthat determining the number of liberal, conservative, libertarian, and populist/ communitarian/statist voters depends very much on the definitions you start with and the issues you choose. She concludes: “The overwhelming body of literature, however, using a variety of different methods and different defin...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 30, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: David Boaz Source Type: blogs
Affirmative Action in College Admissions
This article appeared onSubstack on May 30, 2023, and an earlier version appeared under Jacob Winter ’s byline in theHarvard Undergraduate Law Review.In a few weeks, the Supreme Court will announce its decision in two cases it heard last fall, one against Harvard and the other against the University of North Carolina. Both suits challenge race‐based affirmative action in college admissions. In each case, a group called Students for Fair Admiss ions (SFFA) argues that the universities’ admissions policies unlawfully discriminate against Asian Americans.The case against UNC rests on two issues. Under the Fourteen...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 30, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey Miron, Jacob Winter Source Type: blogs
More Evidence That Opioid Policymakers Keep Aiming at the Wrong Target
Jeffrey A. SingerA new study released earlier this year adds more evidence to the mountains of evidence that policymakers trying to solve the overdose crisis have been aiming at the wrong target.Researchers from the Dartmouth University School of Medicine recently published in theAnnals of Surgery the results of a prospective clinical trial of 221 opioid naïve surgical patients prescribed opioids at discharge and followed for one year after surgery. Eighty‐eight percent of the patients had cancer‐related operations. Their surgeons prescribed opioids for pain control when they discharged them home from the hosp...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 30, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs
How the World Trade Organization Can Get Its Groove Back
James BacchusIn this, the third year of his presidential term, President Joe Biden is clearly not making trade —much less trade liberalization—a priority. For the most part, his trade policy is a less strident echo of that of his predecessor, Donald Trump, and, in trade, his has been, as I have previously described it,the reign of polite protectionism. To the extent that he and his administration are negotiating on trade at all, they are negotiating trade deals that cannot truly be called trade deals. Witness therecent announcement of a supply chain coordination agreement with 13 other countries as the first tangib...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 30, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: James Bacchus Source Type: blogs
