Financial Transparency Coalition

We heard a lot about taxes in the first presidential debate last night. In fact, it largely dominated the first forty-five minutes in what amounted to a ridiculously-long-back-and-forth-that-silent-Jim-Lehrer-couldn’t-seem-to-interrupt. But that’s not a bad thing. It’s an important issue. It’s a defining issue. And it’s one that says a lot about the candidates, their values...and their grip on reality. Before we talk about the debate, though, let's start with some politics and some economics. Last week, when former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger went on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart pointed out that his state is an interesting example of the effect...

A new UN report finds that illegal logging is on the rise in part due to increased levels of organized criminal activity around logging. Brad Plumber of Wonkblog writes...

You're a criminal and you've got loads of cash. You really want that mansion in London. But how are you going to get it? You need a company service provider to set up an anonymous shell company to disguise who's behind the money and a bank willing to do business with your shell.

Redistribution is a dirty word. It’s become something of a catch phrase for the Tea Party and Libertarians. In 2008 the McCain campaign sought to unfavorably label Obama a “redistributor” in speeches and attack ads. But perhaps this is not a recent development. Libertarians point out that many of our early presidents were also suspicious of redistributionist policies. President Grover Cleveland, for example, vetoed a bill in 1887 that would have given $10,000 in aid to Texas farmers struggling with a drought. He rationalized that he did not believe it is the duty of the government to relieve “individual...