Cato Daily Dispatch for December 20, 2001
Jerry Brito, editor, jbrito@cato.orgArgentina Financial Crisis Turns Violent
Comcast, AT&T Broadband to Merge
Gun Shows a Terrorist Arms Bazaar?
Argentina Financial Crisis Turns Violent
After months of escalating economic crisis, Argentina boiled over yesterday in a wave of street violence and looting, raising alarms that Latin America's third-most populous country is being destabilized and that its government may be in danger of falling, according to The Washington Post.
President Fernando de la Rua declared a state of siege and ordered additional security forces into the streets to control violence that left at least six people dead and hundreds wounded or arrested. It was Argentina's worst unrest in a decade.
In "Argentina's Boom and Bust," Steve H. Hanke recounts that country's recent economic freefall. In "It's Not Too Late to Dollarize in Argentina," Hanke tackles criticisms of plans to dollarize Argentina to stabilize the economy.
Comcast, AT&T Broadband to Merge
Comcast Corp. and AT&T Corp. yesterday agreed to merge their cable operations in a $72 billion deal, creating the nation's largest provider of pay television and high-speed Internet service, according to The Washington Post.
The new company would be known as AT&T Comcast Corp. and would directly control cable access to 22 million homes, with a presence in 41 states and 17 of the 20 biggest U.S. cities. The agreement ended a protracted three-way battle for the AT&T cable system between Comcast, AOL Time Warner Inc. and Cox Communications Inc.
Comcast and AT&T are likely to face tough regulatory scrutiny because of the size of the merger and the combined company's ability to influence the television programming marketplace and the delivery of high-speed Internet services.
Adam Thierer, director of telecommunication studies, has compiled a primer on broadband policy that lists all of Cato's research on the topic and it is available online. Earlier this year, the Cato Institute hosted the policy forum "Broadband and the Markets: Perspectives from the Investment Community," featuring a panel of respected telecom industry analysts who discussed the ongoing debate over telecom industry regulation, deregulation, and broadband deployment.
Gun Shows a Terrorist Arms Bazaar?
Anti-gun groups are using the war on terror as a rationale for tightening gun control laws in America, citing the effort in their demands for more stringent background checks on gun sales at shows and over the Internet, according to Fox News.
In a report released Wednesday, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence said potential terrorists are taking advantage of provisions in existing laws to purchase guns. The center claims terrorists from around the world come to the United States to amass firearms.
"For terrorists around the world, the United States is the great gun bazaar," the report said.
In "The Facts About Gun Shows," Associate Policy Analyst David B. Kopel demonstrates that there is no "gun show loophole." "Despite what some media commentators have claimed," he writes, "existing gun laws apply just as much to gun shows as they do to any other place where guns are sold." Attempts to shut down gun shows are simply further attacks on the First and Second Amendments.