Category Archive

The sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the response of regulators have reignited debates about federal deposit insurance and its dangers. First, some background information. On Friday, March 10, 2023, Silicon Valley Bank was shut down, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was appointed receiver. On the following Monday, the FDIC said in a press release that “today [the FDIC] transferred all deposits—both insured and uninsured—and substantially all assets of the former Silicon Valley Bank of Santa Clara, California, to a newly created, full-service FDIC-operated ‘bridge bank’ in an action designed to protect …

Two large regional banks failed within a period of only two days, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) on March 10, and Signature Bank on March 12. Both banks had a combined aggregate asset size of $319 billion as of Dec. 31, 2022, with SVB and Signature ranked as the 16th- and 29th-largest banks in the United States, respectively, based on total assets of $209 billion for SVB and $110 billion for Signature. The failure of SVB is the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history, behind only the failure Washington Mutual in September 2008. So, are the …

Do you know where to find the world’s best investment managers? If you ask most people that question, they’ll guess places like Wall Street in New York. Or London. Or any of the world’s great financial centers. But the real answer is Washington, D.C., where you will find the greatest concentration of the world’s best investment managers working inside the halls of the Capitol building. The most well-known among them are elected members of the House of Representatives and the Senate. At least, that’s the only explanation that does not involve allegations of insider trading …

The Food and Drug Administration is often said to save patients’ lives by only allowing safe and effective products into the US healthcare system. Numerous research articles written over dozens of years strongly indicate it doesn’t—quite the opposite.  But the agency’s recent decision to make Narcan (naloxone hydrochloride) an over-the-counter medication is a rare and desperately needed in this direction.  Narcan is a unique agent that can stop and help reverse the effects of an opioid overdose—even opioids containing other dangerous substances such as fentanyl. Opioid misuse and overdose have become increasingly common since the beginning of the US opioid …

Phillip Washington, Biden’s pick to head the Federal Aviation Administration, has withdrawn his nomination. The White House official attributed the action to “an onslaught of unfounded Republican attacks,” Those who watched the March 1 hearing have cause to wonder.  Washington, who was part of the Biden transition team, could not answer basic aviation safety questions such as: “What are the operational limitations of a pilot flying under basic med?” “What causes an aircraft to spin or stall?” “What are the six types of special-use airspace that appear on FAA charts?” “What are the three types of …

Nearly three years ago, I asked in a blog post for The Beacon whether the new Biden Administration would accomplish the seemingly impossible task of lowering insulin prices. At the time, President Biden was more so focused on re-instating components of the Affordable Care Act undone during the Trump Administration.  Many were upset with President Biden for not forcing insulin producers to lower their prices. I disagreed, arguing that the repeated failures of numerous administrations to make insulin cheaper strongly implied more political action is a lost cause in pursuit of lowering drug prices. However, at the end of the post, I …

Almost 50 years have passed since the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 became law. The act governs how elected officials are supposed to draft and approve a budget every year. Under the law, that process is supposed to go like clockwork. To say it doesn’t go like clockwork is an understatement. What does happen like clockwork are missed deadlines, rushed stopgap or omnibus spending bills to keep the federal government from shutting down, and debt ceiling crises. Debt ceiling crises rank among the fakest of political events in Washington, D.C. There is a kabuki theater element to the performative brinkmanship that takes …

The year 1776 is certainly a landmark year in history, and one of the reasons why is Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations,” which first appeared in print that year. In 1976, to commemorate the book’s bicentennial, University of Chicago economist and Nobel Prize winner Ronald Coase wrote a pair of essays that discuss two of Smith’s great works—“The Theory of Moral Sentiments” and “The Wealth of Nations”—and their continued importance. This year marks the 300th anniversary of Adam Smith’s birth, and Coase’s essays once again make a fitting tribute. Here, I comment especially on …

Venezuela’s opposition has been seriously weakened in the last few months. Part of the reason is that Nicolás Maduro’s brutal dictatorship has survived every attempt to topple it with support from Cuba, Russia, Iran, and to some extent China. But some responsibility lies with the leaders of the opposition themselves, who have devoted an inordinate amount of time to internecine power struggles and, in some cases, engaged in acts of corruption that have tarnished its image. As the head of a National Assembly in which the opposition held the majority after the parliamentary elections of …