Silicon Valley Bank’s spectacular failure demonstrated a fatal flaw in the U.S. system of deposit insurance: The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s coverage limit of $250,000 appears insufficient to prevent bank runs. But raising or eliminating this cap, as some commentators suggest, would create incredible moral hazard. Instead, the FDIC should reduce risk like an insurer would, by pricing it and spreading it around.

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Democrats say Social Security is untouchable and have roped Republicans into saying the same. They also constantly lament the gap between returns to capital and labor. Stock buybacks and even dividends have come under fire, with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer saying that buybacks—already subject to a new surtax—should be banned. Democrats’ dogged attachment to government-run investing undermines the goal of helping workers save for retirement. And fixing Social Security could help solve the capital-labor returns problem.

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Wildfire has hit Assemblymember Damon Connolly’s (D-San Rafael) Northern California district particularly hard in recent years, including the devastating Glass and LNU Lightning Complex fires in 2020, the Nuns and Tubbs fires in 2017, and the Valley fire in 2015.

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How it is that Illinois, a jurisdiction not typically associated with a strong commitment to free-market principles, came to be the first state in the nation to allow its insurance rates to be regulated entirely by open competition is something of an accident of history.

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One major way by which the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) seeks to attract foreign investors is the Pioneer Certificate Incentive. This exempts businesses that introduce substantially more advanced technology, skillsets, or know-how from corporate tax or taxes them at a concessionary rate of 5 or 10 per cent for five years. The Pioneer rate is a large discount relative to the normal corporate tax rate of 17 per cent.

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Remember the hysteria when Japanese investors bought Rockefeller Center and threatened the American car industry with obliteration? Recent commentary served as the latest example in a long line of xenophobic scare tactics by claiming that “foreign adversaries” are funding “frivolous litigation” to “weaken critical industries” or to obtain trade secrets or intellectual property.

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The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX)—named for its chief sponsors, former Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D–Md.) and former Rep. Mike Oxley (R–Ohio)—was intended to restore trust in the transparency of publicly traded companies after the collapses of WorldCom and Enron Corp. revealed that their auditors had certified financial reports that overstated the firms’ assets and massively understated their liabilities.

But, of course, “transparency” isn’t quite the same thing as prudential safety and soundness. In the insurance space, more specifically, transparency doesn’t necessarily equal solvency.

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As the calendar flips to 2023, among the scores of new laws taking effect are a pair of legislative mandates that would, for the first time anywhere in the country, require firearms owners to obtain and maintain liability insurance. What remains to be seen, however, is whether either measure will survive Second Amendment challenges, particularly given the standard handed by the U.S. Supreme Court in its June 2022 New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen decision.

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Consumer legal funding’s sole purpose is to help individuals and families alleviate cash-flow problems after an accident, while seeking compensation for injuries through lawsuits.

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