The Heartland Institute

Less than one month after Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr issued a report declaring the city’s finances to be in worse shape than nearly anyone suspected when he assumed the job in March, Detroit has defaulted on a scheduled debt payment of $39.7 million. The default happened June 14, the same day Orr issued a debt ...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is now investigating bank overdraft practices since consumers paid $32 billion in overdraft fees in 2012. The CFPB study shows overdraft coverage varies significantly by financial institution and that consumers who sign up for overdraft coverage have higher costs and more involuntary account ...

The recent economic performance in Europe casts doubt on the assumption that government can alleviate downturns in economic activity by spending large amounts of taxpayer money that will stimulate employment. Those nations that have made free-market reforms and have imposed government spending cuts, such as Germany, France, and ...

According to a Commodity Futures Trading Commission official, the CFTC will soon unveil new speculative commodity position limits. Energy Risk magazine reported CFTC Commissioner Scott O’Malia had stated in mid-May the rules should be released within the next six weeks. Energy Risk also noted Commissioner O’Malia “appeared skeptical ...

Seventeen major retailers have filed a federal lawsuit over a $7.2 billion settlement regarding “swipe fees” to process credit card transactions – and card companies Visa and MasterCard have in turn sued the retailers and industry trade groups that want to back out of the settlement. Target, Macy's, and Kohl’s are among the ...

In a recent eye-opening piece by Zerohedge.com, “Thanks to QE Bernanke has injected foreign banks with $1 trillion in cash for the first time ever,” the highly trafficked financial blog notes that as quantitative easing has increased, so have assets of foreign banks based in the United States. In fact, since 2009, as the ...

There seems to be only one kind of loan that bankers want to make—SBA loans. SBA stands for Small Business Administration, a federal agency that guarantees certain loans made by banks that operate within its guidelines. Lawmakers portray SBA lending as a boost for small businesses. The program is actually a form of corporate ...

The recent media reports that the Federal Reserve has devised an “exit strategy” to reverse their nearly $3 trillion increase of the money supply over the last several years shows the monetary central planners remain wedded to the philosophy of “fine-tuning.” The “Fed” leadership still retains the hubris that they can manipulate ...

The federal government’s “Too Big to Fail” policy remains highly unpopular with the public. Previous bank bailouts have proven to be an expensive use of taxpayer dollars and a dubious act of government interference in the market. Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and David Vitter (R-LA) have proposed new legislation that would use ...

Federal investigators say City of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania officials misled the public and investors about how bad the municipality’s finances really were. The Securities and Exchange Commission in May charged the city of Harrisburg with securities fraud in connection with misleading financial statements made to the public. The ...

The Federal Reserve is doing aggressive buying of mortgage-backed securities, which is what is likely behind the fact that banks are slowing down the number of mortgages they are originating. They know once the Fed stops buying MBS paper, interest rates will shoot up. A banker friend emails: "A bank wouldn’t want to get caught ...

Slides from a recent presentation given by Heartland Policy Advisor Hilary Till discussing the challenges to popular narratives on commodity futures speculation and responses to popular narratives on commodity price spikes. ...

Although the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is nearing its three-year anniversary, its effects are still not known. It remains a work in progress, as many of its rules have not been written. To make matters worse, federal regulators, given broad discretion under the Act, have missed deadlines for ...

Interest in TBTF resolutions of insolvent large complex firms has intensified in recent years, particularly in banking. TBTF resolutions protect some in-the-money counterparties of the targeted insolvent firm from losses that would be suffered if the usual bankruptcy resolution regimes used in resolving other firms in the industry ...

Federal bankruptcy trustee Louis Freeh has filed a lawsuit against Jon Corzine who was in charge of MF Global when the commodity trading firm collapsed in 2011. The lawsuit accuses Corzine and two other MF Global officials of recklessly exposing the company to risks that led to its bankruptcy and the improper use of client ...

Are excessive student loans preventing young Americans from borrowing money to buy a home or new car? That is certainly one of the conclusions of a recent New York Federal Reserve study, “Young Student Loan Borrowers Retreat from Housing and Auto Markets.” The findings “may have broad implications for the ongoing recovery of ...

The system for proxy voting by mutual funds and other institutions that own shares in publicly traded companies in America is badly broken. The source of the disrepair is regulation. Among the unintended consequences of rules enacted with the best of intentions is the harm inflicted on retirees and other investors. The good ...

The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, also known as the Dodd-Frank Act, created many new restrictions on financial instruments and activities. The new regulatory powers include a consumer protection agency and the creation of a single federal bank regulator. The act replaces market-based financial monitoring with ...

Understanding today’s convoluted domestic and international fiat monetary system requires a great deal of time and study. One must understand fractional reserve banking, and the way this system affects the money supply. One must understand the multi-step process by which banks create money out of thin air. One must understand ...

There has been much discussion about the large increase in reserves, and especially excess reserves, held by the nation’s banking system. Mostly this discussion is couched in terms of the increase in the money supply. But although the increase in excess reserves—rising from less than $2 billion in August 2008 to almost $1 ...