August 4, 2015
Crude Oil Exports and the Price of Gasoline
Government policies virtually without exception create economic distortions, so that policy reform can yield results highly counterintuitive. That is the case with the emerging effort to end the current U.S. ban on the export of crude oil, enacted as part of the 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act. The ban was justified as a tool…
June 17, 2015
Time to End Federal Interference with Free Trade in Crude Oil
The current ban on exports of U.S. crude oil was enacted as part of the 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act, and was justified on the basis of two fallacies. First: That the 1973 Arab OPEC oil “embargo” was the cause of higher oil prices and the gasoline lines and other market disruptions experienced in…
June 10, 2015
Puerto Rico’s Debt Crisis and the Siren Song of After-the-fact Bankruptcy
Sometimes debt burdens become deeply burdensome. And if you’re the debtor, wouldn’t it be nice to find a way to avoid hard decisions by reneging on past agreements on repayment, that is, to change the rules after much of the game has been played? A bill before Congress, the “Puerto Rico Chapter 9 Uniformity Act…
June 7, 2015
The EPA’s ‘Clean Power’ Mess
‘Flexibility” is the advertised hallmark of the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed Clean Power Plan, which by 2030 would reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants by 30% from 2005 levels. The central feature of the plan is a forced shift away from inexpensive coal-fired power. Not to worry, says EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy: “With EPA’s…
April 21, 2015
Earth Day and the Celebration of Suffering
In honor of this 45th anniversary of the first Earth Day, let us recall the wisdom of Dogbert, that noted political philosopher and sage observer of the human condition: “You can’t save the earth unless you’re willing to make other people sacrifice.” As the old saying goes, truer words were never spoken. Earth Day brings each year…
February 5, 2015
The EPA on Keystone XL: Ideology Trumps Analysis
The State Department Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (FSEIS) on the Keystone XL pipeline, published a year ago, concluded, reasonably, that the pipeline would have virtually no impact on global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or climate effects even under the most extreme assumptions. After all, the pipeline would transport 830,000 barrels per day of heavy oil-sands crude from…