eersandbeers wrote: I'd be interested in reading about some SCOTUS cases on this issue.

I don't see how federal regulatory agencies have any Constitutional authority whatsoever to make any type of law or regulation.

A handful of the key cases:

Cargo of the Brig Aurora v. United States, 11 U.S. 382 (1813)
Wayman v. Southard, 23 U.S. 1 (1825)
Field v. Clark, 143 U.S. 69 (1892)
J.W. Hampton, Jr., & Co. v. United States, 276 U.S. 394 (1928)

The major test is laid out in Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, 293 U.S. 388. The modern doctrine is best found in Mistretta v. United States, 488 U.S. 361 (1989). You would probably be interested in Scalia's dissent in Mistretta.

fan_from_texas wrote:

eersandbeers wrote: I'd be interested in reading about some SCOTUS cases on this issue.

I don't see how federal regulatory agencies have any Constitutional authority whatsoever to make any type of law or regulation.

A handful of the key cases:

Cargo of the Brig Aurora v. United States, 11 U.S. 382 (1813)
Wayman v. Southard, 23 U.S. 1 (1825)
Field v. Clark, 143 U.S. 69 (1892)
J.W. Hampton, Jr., & Co. v. United States, 276 U.S. 394 (1928)

The major test is laid out in Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, 293 U.S. 388. The modern doctrine is best found in Mistretta v. United States, 488 U.S. 361 (1989). You would probably be interested in Scalia's dissent in Mistretta.

Thanks. When I get time I'll have to read up on the details of those decisions.

As far as Fed Chairmen go, Bernanke has done a fine job. However, that is like saying Butch Davis has been the best Browns coach since they came back. The Fed has almost single-handedly caused many, if not all, US financial crises, so they are going to do a good job of "fixing" one or two of them due to probability alone.

This was not an easy conclusion for me to come to. I used to think the Fed was great! Brainwashed by economics courses. I have had some good experiences with the Fed itself--gotten to sit in the conference room in DC several times, met Bernanke and other governors. I think they are all good people with good intentions. But the bottom line is that the Fed, or any human-run institution, cannot deal with the complexity of the REAL WORLD and it is an almost a 100% certainty that they will screw something up--the question is just how much. As we saw, Greenspan screwed it up big time.

For what I what I believe is more "correct" economic theory, refer to von Mises or Bastiat. (I say "correct" because I think any theory about the economy is going to be largely imperfect, but we can only hope to pick the least imperfect one, which I think the Austrian School gets close to).

I pretty much feel that anything that is funded by the taxpayer's money and is in operation for services for the taxpayer should be audited. All senators and congressmen, all agencies of the government, etc. Anything that is paid by or operations are funded by the taxpayer should be audited by a private firm.

This would expose all the waste of billions and billions of dollars of our tax dollars. We could cut a ton of the fat off and keep more money in our pockets, thus having more money to stimulate the economy with instead of government "bailouts" and "stimulus" packages.