Usha Rodrigues and Mike Stegemoller have penned an interesting article, “Placebo Ethics,” assessing the effect of one of SOX’s disclosure provisions: The required immediate disclosure of waivers from a company’s code of ethics, found in Section 406 of the law.  The article is concrete, informative, empirical and well-written.

Read the full piece here. 

Well, it looks like Congress is going to attempt to enact the Senate’s health care bill using the reconciliation process. President Obama certainly suggested as much in Thursday’s Health Care Summit, downplaying the significance of such a move and suggesting it may be necessary in order to “move forward.”

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Abstract

This essay criticizes the Federal Trade Commission’s defense of its use Section 5 of the FTC Act in the Intel case. The FTC’s (and particularly Chairman Leibowitz’) claims that the error cost concerns that figure prominently in recent Supreme Court Sherman Act cases ought not to apply, and are not intended to apply, to government enforcers are misguided and dangerous.

The EU has launched its preliminary investigation of Google’s search engine and search advertising businesses.  From the Financial Times…

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My wife makes me subscribe to the New York Times, and occasionally it is worth it. Take this recent essay by Roger Cohen. It is difficult to get past the faux-intellectual babble — “As it is, everyone’s shrieking their lonesome anger, burrowing deeper into stress, gazing at their own images” — but if you can resist laughing or immolating yourself to escape Cohen’s drivel, you’ll get to a tremendous claim. Cohen writes…

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As Todd mentioned, the Obama Administration has released its latest plan for regulating (and mandating) health insurance. The new plan includes a novel element: the creation of a seven-member Health Insurance Rate Authority that would issue an annual schedule of “reasonable” rate increases. Increases deemed unjustified could be blocked, and insurers that imposed unjustified rate increases would have to provide rebates to overcharged consumers.

Read the full piece here. 

In the comments to my last post on Mr. Obama’s health proposals (which have gotten worse — price controls!?), “Chris” and I have been having a back-and-forth about what he characterizes as a uniquely Republican disease — obstructionism. He calls Republicans “the Party of No.”

Read the full piece here. 

Dick Langlois’ post on Carl Kaysen’s role in the United Machinery antitrust case reminded me of a question I’ve been meaning to blog about.  Langlois writes…

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The president revealed his last-ditch plan to reform our healthcare system today. (Funny the plan is revealed before the “bipartisan” meeting about health care being trumpeted for political reasons.) One thing I was hoping to see in the proposal is missing — an increase in the eligibility age for Medicare (and, while we are at it, Social Security). Although I would prefer to see us do away with these entitlement programs, if we have them, why not make them solvent and sensible? When these programs were passed, people lived a lot shorter lives than they do today, and a simple indexing to life expectancy would go a long way toward reducing our national fiscal crisis. Not only would this reduce our government-funded health care expenses, it would encourage 65 year olds to stay in the work force. Take my Dad. He retired to a life of reading history books when he hit that magic number, even though he was still energetic, capable, and earning a good living at the time. Our perverse entitlement programs encouraged him to do this, to accept government handouts even though he doesn’t need them, and mandated that he go onto a government-run insurance program, even though he could easily afford his own health care bills or insurance. This makes absolutely no sense. Any system that takes people like this out of the work force and bestows upon them welfare without regard to need is not just stupid, it is immoral.

Read the full piece here.