Author: Graham Harwood
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Death to “Buy, Borrow, Die”
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Every year millions of Americans begrudgingly file their taxes. Each household must spend countless hours deciding which deductions to take, bemoaning the complexity, and eventually sending off the precious dollars they must pay to fund our roads, bridges, firefighters, and military. At the end of the day, taxes serve as…
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A Solution in Search of a Problem: Cryptocurrency and Institutional Trust
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Imagine a cutting-edge new platform for economic development. It has value because everyone says it does. That value tends to fluctuate wildly. Accessing an account requires remembering a random string of letters and numbers. Some services allow users to use a traditional password, but if someone cracks that password or…
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Sitting on a Ticking Bomb: Introducing Congressional Oversight for Zero-Day Vulnerabilities
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Each new military paradigm and technological development promises new legal and policy questions. Every innovation in weaponry brings new range, cost, and training while impacting civilian life, posing new questions to the leaders of the day. The Constitution attempts to timelessly outline the parameters around which the government make war,…
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New Green Investing: Safe Harbor for Financial Services and Cannabis
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As each subsequent state legalizes marijuana for recreational and medical use, its inclusion in the already ineffective drug war becomes increasingly redundant. The American public agrees, with about 88% of respondents favoring some form of legalization, and 59% favoring access for recreational purposes. Individual states have led the way toward…
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The Dublin Convention: Bad for Host Nations, Worse for Migrants
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The calamitous earthquake that rocked Syria and Turkey killed over 46,000 people. As host to more Syrian asylum seekers than every other country combined, the disaster has thrust the refugee crisis back into the news. While more effective government could have limited some of the physical damage and casualties, the…
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A Responsibility to Democracy, More than Just Voting
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I spent most of my day one Friday in August listening to speeches on the floor of the United States House of Representatives, while dutifully manning the phones for constituent calls. This is not an activity I’d recommend. While I agreed with about half of the speeches on the floor…
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Financial History at Warp Speed: Cryptocurrency and the FTX Collapse
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As one of the most stable and respected names in cryptocurrency (crypto), FTX represented the rock that other firms could rely on. It had over one million users, investments from Japanese multinational firms to the multi-billion-dollar Ontario Teacher’s pension fund, and it sponsored everything from the Miami Heat’s arena to…
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Schedule F or How to Gut the Administrative State
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On October 21, 2020, President Donald Trump signed the most dangerous and reckless executive order of his presidency. Executive Order 13957 established “Schedule F,” reclassifying all policy or rulemaking federal employees as “at will” employees within the exempted service. By law, non-political rulemaking employees apply for positions through a rigorous…
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Inflation: Moving Beyond a Basket of Goods
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Two topics dominate discussions of both the current state of the economy and the political environment in the run-up to the 2022 midterm elections: how can policymakers fight inflation and is the economy currently in a recession? Like everything else today, COVID-19 plays a role in the answers to both…
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Piece of the Action: Debt vs. Equity for Bailouts
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American citizens often think of their country as a bastion of free-market capitalism. Indeed, the ethos of American economic policy is devoted to minimal government intervention to ensure that private enterprise can succeed. Proponents of this policy argue that businesses do not fail due to bad management; instead, they fail…
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A Friend and Foe Teach Us How Not to Handle Venezuela
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Imagine going to the doctor’s office and receiving a diagnosis of a critical condition that required surgery. As you go to schedule the surgery the nurse hands you a list of supplies you will need to bring for the surgery. You will need to provide gloves, mask, scalpels, stitches, and…