The Federal Financial Forum

The decision of the President to delay the EPA ozone standard is based upon the concept of centralized regulatory review. Centralized regulatory review, Presidential oversight of federal regulatory agencies, is often considered a defining component of the regulatory state although the Executive, Congressional and Judicial Branches of government continue to spar over control of the regulators.

There are two alternative views of the origins of centralized review.

One view of the origin of centralized regulatory review is set forth in probably the most quoted paper on the subject written by then Professor, now Justice, Elena Kagan in Presidential Administration in which she concludes: “The sea change began with Ronald Reagan’s inauguration”.

Rules Needed to Define Unfair Practices

Google, Facebook and Twitter have much in common.  All three web-based service firms have pioneered or reinvented their primary area of expertise.  All three companies are American businesses that have changed how the world uses the internet.  All three companies act as platforms bringing together different sets of users. Of particular note, all three companies provide their primary services to consumers for free.

Also of note, all three firms are reported to be either under FTC investigation (Google and Twitter) or the subject of a petition to the FTC to be investigated (Facebook).

(Reuters) – Global financial regulators are likely to impede growth rather than foster it unless they are better policed, an economist warned policymakers on Saturday.

While regulatory reform since the 2007-09 financial crisis has given added clout to government regulators, the concentration of power is likely to do more harm than good unless the regulators themselves are subject to proper oversight, Brown University economist Ross Levine said in a paper presented at the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank’s annual meeting here.

“As more responsibilities are heaped on official regulatory agencies, it is unclear whether they have either the capabilities or the incentives to properly shape the incentives of financial systems,” he said in the paper.

From: The New Republic 

Richard A. Posner

If the notion that we are merely living through the aftereffects of a mere “recession” that ended in 2009 sounds somewhat ridiculous, that’s because it is. If we were being honest with ourselves, we would call this a depression. That would certainly better convey both the severity of our problems, and the fact that those problems have no evident solutions.

From: Washington Post

By Zachary A. Goldfarb and Neil Irwin

Barely two years after the financial crisis ended, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke were back at it about a week ago. They were working the weekend phones with their counterparts in Europe, urging them to use overwhelming force to contain the continent’s spreading debt crisis, which was unnerving markets on both sides of the Atlantic.

Geithner and Bernanke could speak with authority. As two of the architects of the United States’ own financial rescue starting in 2008, they had eschewed half-measures, instead marshaling hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out the banks and successfully head off a new Great Depression.