Cato Event Podcast

In the wake of the financial crisis, commentators have suggested a transaction tax (Tobin tax) on financial markets. The potential consequences of such a tax could be hazardous to the financial markets affected, as well as to the economy. Professor Wang, in a recent Cato paper, reviewed the relevant theoretical and empirical literature and applied these findings to estimate the possible impact of a transaction tax on U.S. futures market activity as well as its utility as a potential source of tax revenue. Wang showed that a transaction tax on futures trading will not only fail to generate the expected revenue, it will likely drive business away from U.S. exchanges and toward untaxed foreign markets. Our panelists will discuss the implications of this paper as well as general issues related to any proposed financial transactions tax. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The basis for EPA’s increasingly expensive regulation of greenhouse gases is their “Finding of Endangerment” from carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. With regard to the climate of the United States, it is largely based on one document, called “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States,”, published by the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP).Patrick J. Michaels, director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute, recently completed a landmark document in precisely the same format as the important USGCRP one, except it includes the vast volume of the scientific literature that the USGCRP somehow neglected to include in their work. Michaels will provide a very informative and entertaining examination of the outright misinformation, disinformation, and ignored information that permeates the document that serves as the basis for EPA’s ever-tightening regulatory approach to atmospheric greenhouse gases. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With immigration reform once again on Congress’s near horizon, many proposals take as a given that there should be “internal enforcement” of immigration law through federal background checks on all workers. But the E-Verify system and proposals for a national E-Verify mandate are shot through with complications and challenges. Costs to businesses and workers will mount. Citizens, both natural-born and naturalized, will have to appeal to the federal government for the right to work. And identity fraud will drive E-Verify to become a biometric national identification system capable of use well beyond immigration control. Join us for a discussion of E-Verify’s many perils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The euro crisis has exposed deep structural flaws in the functioning of the common currency and put pressure on the cohesion of the European Union as a whole. Stagnant growth, and rising unemployment and public dissatisfaction are threatening to undermine the European project. Conventional wisdom holds that deeper political integration is needed in order to preserve and strengthen the European Union. However, an increasing number of analysts argue that current problems in Europe are symptoms of a unification process gone too far. Frits Bolkestein and Luke Coffey will discuss the reform proposals and identify powers that are currently exercised in Brussels but could be repatriated to the member states. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Richard Gamble's book, In Search of the City on a Hill: the Making and Unmaking of an American Myth, helps make sense of exceptionalism's evolution. Gamble traces the “city on a hill” metaphor, from Puritan leader John Winthrop, who took it from the gospels, to its reincarnation in the 20th century as an explicitly political idea at the heart of foreign policy debates.Historians Walter McDougall, the author of Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World since 1776, and Derek Leebaert, the author of Magic and Mayhem: The Delusions of American Foreign Policy from Korea to Afghanistan, will provide commentary. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.