Financial Transparency Coalition

With his inauguration only a few minutes behind him, President Obama officially submitted his initial round of Cabinet nominations to the Senate on Monday. Among them is Jacob “Jack” Lew, the current White House Chief of Staff and Obama’s pick to replace Timothy Geithner as the next Secretary of the Treasury. Before getting the post, though, Mr. Lew will face a tough round of questioning from the Senate Finance Committee, which is in charge of vetting his nomination. The next Secretary of the Treasury will have enormous influence nationally, and globally, on issues important to the Task Force, including the...

Over the last few months, an aid program (read: bailout) for Cyprus’ banks put together by EU rescuers has met mounting resistance among Europeans. The reason? Money laundering... and the alleged ties of Russian oligarchs to Cyprus’ banks. There does seem to be a questionable relationship there. Last fall, Der Spiegel reported on Germany's Federal Intelligence Service’s (BND) secret report on money laundering in Cyprus. According to Der Spiegel, the report finds that the people who would benefit most from a European bailout of Cyprus banks are Russian oligarchs, mafiosi, and businesspeople who have parked illegal earnings in the small...

The day before I left for my trip to Germany last month, I was warned to bring plenty of money in cash. You see, the country has transitioned to chip-and-PIN cards, which use embedded microprocessor chips for financial transactions instead of traditional magnetic stripes. The problem is that this means it’s becoming increasingly difficult for oblivious American travelers (myself included) to use their credit cards. Hence the cash. Although I could have circumvented this problem with a little foreknowledge and a call to my bank, I found this problem to be particularly irritating. After all, in this century, who...

In the past few years the world—and the United States in particular—has witnessed a resurgence of the term “Austrian economics.” Last week I wrote a post about the academic history and resurgence of Austrian economics in the last few years. I wrote that the reason for this is that the school of thought actually does a fairly good job of both explaining and predicting the financial crisis of 2007-8. Yet while the Austrians have enjoyed a boom in their theories as they are able to explain the sources of the world’s crises, their proposed solutions are a bust....