Cato Institute Event Videos (Full)

How Markets Make Things Work

Limits on Government Power: Obamacare and the Constitution

Senator Rand Paul's Speech at Cato University

How the Supreme Court Subverted the Constitution

The Constitution and the Rule of Law

Liberty and the American Experience, Part II

Creating Wealth

Liberty and the American Experience, Part I

Understanding Public Policy — A Primer

Freedom in a Historical Perspective

Origins of State and Government

The Greatest Story Ever Told: The Amazing Story of Economic Growth

The Science of Liberty

Cell phone companies now receive 1.3 million requests for information from law enforcement each year, including tens if not hundreds of thousands of requests to transform phones into surreptitious 24/7 tracking devices. Google — with its vast stores of citizens' e-mails, online chats, and Web searches — reports getting 6,321 government demands for information. History has proven time and again that government surveillance powers are inevitably abused without vigilant oversight. Yet as technology has granted both law enforcement and intelligence agencies a dizzying array of new ways to spy — on a scale that would have sounded like science fiction a decade ago — more and more spying escapes any meaningful scrutiny by the general public, and is often even invisible to Congress. In this month's e-Briefing, Julian Sanchez will survey the disturbing — and largely invisible — world of high tech government surveillance, and consider what it means for the future of privacy and freedom.

One consequence of the financial crisis has been the increased concentration of our nation's mortgage market into government-controlled entities, such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mae and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). Government entities currently shoulder almost 90 percent of the credit risk in our mortgage market. With the rescue of Fannie and Freddie already having cost the taxpayer over $180 billion and FHA teetering on the brink of insolvency, it is critical for policymakers to chart a path toward encouraging private market participants to bear that risk. Our panelists will examine obstacles and solutions for bringing private capital back into our mortgage market.