- Progressive sentiment vs. actual progress: Philadelphia bans cashless stores [Jeffrey Miron; related, Billy Binion, Reason (council member thinks city should legislate against “elitism”), Joe Setyon, Reason (NYC)] Meanwhile, heading in the opposite direction: “California bill would require businesses to offer e-receipts” [Don Thompson, Associated Press]
- “Overhaul CRA? Why Not Eliminate It?” [Diego Zuluaga, American Banker; video of panel on CRA at Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention with Bert Ely, Deepak Gupta, Keith Noreika, and Jesse Van Tol, moderated by Hon. Joan Larsen]
- SEC should see its role as fostering, not just reining in, risk taking [Cato audio with Commissioner Hester Peirce; more from Peirce, Cato Journal]
- Your taxes pay for bad mortgage loans [Hans Bader]
- “With Emulex Corp., Supreme Court Could Raise Bar for ‘Merger Tax’ Securities Suits” [Stephen Bainbridge, WLF; Emulex Corp. v. Varjabedian]
- In car insurance, credit scores “effectively predict risk of claims within racial and ethnic groups” and banning their use would likely “result in insurers finding other, less good and possibly discriminatory methods of distinguishing high from low risks” [Luke Froeb, Managerial Econ via Alex Tabarrok]
Filed under: banks, debtor-creditor law, mortgages, Securities and Exchange Commission, securities litigation
5 Comments
We can have fun with Hans Bader.
Our taxes pay for:
Bad wars
Caging children
Abortions (not a bad thing for some people)
Adoptions (not a bad thing, but just saying)
Correcting erectile dysfunction
Presidents playing golf
Crooked elections
Bridges to nowhere (although I think this one was deleted)
“Protection”/security at the Super Bowl
“Protection” at college football games (for coaches of State schools)
Shooting innocent people in Houston, Little Rock, Sacramento, etc.
LGBTQ marriages
Jailing marijuana users for decades
I don’t know that that’s having fun with Hans Bader. I think his point is that, like many government do-gooding things, society isn’t benefited and juiced-in people wind up making millions in government guaranteed money.
Nice work if you can get it.
Without printed receipts it would be much easier for cashiers to not actually ring up orders, pocketing the cash. This will be a nightmare for small businessmen.
A lot of small “ethnic” restaurants work this way, too. You ring up your order and then present the paper receipt to the counter to get your food. This prevents the cashier from not ringing the order because the cook won’t prepare an order without a receipt; you now need to get two people to conspire to steal from the boss–much harder. Not to mention the printer order gets clipped to an “order wheel”.
As usual, the big chains will be all for this because it will make it even harder on the small mom and pop outfit.
Cashless stores–
If the government is no longer willing or able to print “legal tender for all debts public and private,” then they should offer the poor and near-poor a successor product. The free post office savings accounts I have advocated could include debit cards. In the past, I would have limited free debit card transactions to a small number each month, but the idea behind cashless stores seems to be that no transaction is too small for cards.
Currency for the poor and vulnerable should not be left in the hands of the sort of market intellectuals who think payday loans are a swell deal.
Payday loans can be a swell deal—if you need the money right away and no one else will lend to you.