Remember the Puerto Rico debt crisis? It was only last February that a deal had been worked out between the island government and the holders of debt issued by the Puerto Rico…
By Benjamin Zycher | November 21, 2017
They have failed to convince Congress—even Congresses controlled by the Democratic Party—to impose limits on US greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, despite decades of effort, political threats, and grandstanding. Given the election of Donald Trump, they are losing their efforts to…
By Benjamin Zycher | November 2, 2017
I take a back seat to no one in my condemnations of subsidies and other policy distortions of state and regional electric power markets, a stance that I have maintained for decades.…
By Benjamin Zycher | October 20, 2017
Never let a crisis go to waste, say the politicos, a stance adapted for its purposes by the permanent regulatory bureaucracy: Never let a corporate scandal go to waste. That…
By Benjamin Zycher | October 18, 2017
A rotten apple spoils the barrel, as the old saying goes, and because of regulatory politics and the incentives of agency officials, the spoilage often proceeds unimpeded even if the rotten…
By Benjamin Zycher | August 20, 2017
Principles are to be found in many places, a blessing in the Beltway where principles are needed on a daily basis. One such principle is enshrined in the appropriations clause…
By Benjamin Zycher | August 20, 2017
The climate obsessions of the Obama administration yielded a substantial myopia with respect to the other central goals of energy policy, the cost and reliability of the electric power system…
By Benjamin Zycher | August 7, 2017
Sometimes leftist environmentalists have a point. For instance, they argue that oil subsidies are wasteful and should be abolished. Unfortunately, they typically pollute their sound argument with gross inconsistency and…
By Benjamin Zycher | August 3, 2017
California is the center of the political campaign to induce pension funds and others to divest from fossil-fuel investments, justified as a path toward environmental improvement. Unsurprisingly, a new study finds that divestment would lead to…
By Benjamin Zycher | June 21, 2017
It’s been a long and winding road toward the resolution of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority bonded debt. It totals $9 billion, the largest single component of Puerto Rico’s overall debt of about…
By Benjamin Zycher | June 21, 2017
This piece originally appeared as “NY attorney general is the ‘Energizer Bunny’ of Exxon deceit” in The Hill. When last we observed New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s pursuit of ExxonMobil, he…
By Benjamin Zycher | June 15, 2017
My colleague Alex Brill has continued the widespread practice of economists pretending to be politicians with his short new essay arguing for a “carbon” (greenhouse gas) tax as a “permanent” replacement for…
By Benjamin Zycher | June 8, 2017
Now, this is entertainment. “This” is The Washington Post’s Fact Checker “analysis” posted online less than four hours after President Trump ended his speech announcing the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate…
| June 6, 2017
Mr. Trump yesterday announced that he would withdraw the U.S. from the international climate agreement reached in Paris in late 2015, but would seek to renegotiate it so as to achieve…
By Benjamin Zycher | June 2, 2017
There is a time to weep and a time to laugh. And the recent letter from ExxonMobil urging President Trump not to exit the Paris climate agreement provides a time for both, with a…
By Benjamin Zycher | May 30, 2017