Senior Research Fellow Richard Ebeling writes a Op-Ed entitled "Big Labor Seeks Bailout Bill Disguised as Employee Choice". This was printed in the January 4th edition of the Sun Sentinel.

David Huffington, long-time Dollars and Sense columnist, recommends AIER's What Your Car Really Costs in his nationally syndicated column. His most recent column "What's the Real Cost of Owning Your Car" is featured in the Lincoln Tribune, Spokane.net and the Collierville Herald.

Choosing the right college goes beyond course availability and academic faculty. For many young people location matters too. Culture, population, transportation, restaurants and other amenities provide the backdrop for an invaluable informal education. The College Destinations Index helps compare the broader learning environments of the top 75 cities and college towns. It breaks down these college deciding factors for students and lays them out in an easy-to-understand map and table.

Get your free College Destinations Index today!

Senior Research Fellow Richard Ebeling's December 28, 2008 Op-Ed for the Washington Times. Read this commentary entitled the Big Labor Bailout.

Update: This Op-Ed was also printed in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review on December 30, 2008.

President and CEO of AIER, Charles Murray, writes a Op-Ed entitled "Social Security Greatest Ponzi Scheme Ever? Red flags: A Day of Reckoning is Coming". This was the lead op-ed in the December 26th edition of the Fredericksburg (VA) Free Lance-Star.

AIER recognizes that being environmentally-friendly is financially responsible and has embraced a number of energy-saving and resource-conserving initiatives.

Digital Membership - Starting in early 2008, AIER began offering a digital membership. A digital membership entitles you to 22 Research Reports and 12 Economic Education Bulletin publications--all delivered electronically via email. Digital members already account for almost 10 percent of our entire membership--meaning that we are producing 10 percent fewer books and mailing out 10 percent fewer publications.

A digital membership saves AIER money, saves members time waiting for snail mail, and saves trees with paperless delivery.

Learn more about the advantages of a digital membership

Digital Books - The new AIER digital bookstore offers some of our most popular titles in digital format. These PDF files can be read on e-Readers, Kindles, and even on an iPhone. Currently, AIER offers 5 titles in digital format and we hope to offer many more in 2009.

Visit our digital store

Paperless Office  - In 2008, AIER launched a new internal intranet, which greatly reduces the amount of paper passed between coworkers. Our new electronic library is used by staff, when performing research, and by the public, who now have access to over 3,300 online publications. The Institute also has many staff members who telecommute, reducing their carbon footprint by only driving to our campus a few days each week. In 2009, AIER will explore hosting webinars on a wide array of economics topics--this not only allows us to embrace a new exciting technology, but conserve attendees' consumption of fossil fuels.

New Database - In 2009, AIER will transition to a new database. The latest software will allow us to post membership details online, opening up the possibility for members to securely access their accounts and renew their memberships online. This would allow AIER to mail far fewer renewal notices. Additionally, features such as automatic credit card processing could reduce our paper usage by as much as 25 percent.

Environmentally-Friendly Facilities - AIER's facilities utilize motion-sensitive lights that automatically turn off when a room is unoccupied. The Institute also turns down the heat in any unused part of our facilities over the winter months. AIER has also significantly reduced its lawn mowing and is in the process of initiating a campus-wide recycling program.

The year 2008 marks the 75th anniversary of the founding of the American Institute for Economic Research--an organization standing peerless among think tanks and public-interest research groups. AIER's journey has proved to be as remarkable as it has been improbable. From modest beginnings, in the depths of the Great Depression in borrowed office space on a college campus, funded by $200 scraped together by a young founder who squeezed in time to write the Institutes' books and newsletters and court subscribers while fulfilling a full-time Army position, AIER has defied conventional wisdom both in its uncompromisingly objective research--and in its very survival.

This 165-page, full-color book reviews the 75-year history of AIER in extensive detail. The book is hardcover and features a full-color sleeve. Order your copy today and share a piece of AIER's history.

Some opinions originated in the western hemisphere recently called for the rebuilding of the “New Bretton Woods System” that involved fixed exchange rates with the US dollar as the key currency, a return of the gold standard. Some US political figures and scholars gave enormous publicity to the idea during their visit to Europe, and they seemed to have won over part of the market.

As the US presidential campaign drew to an end, media also jumped on board the “gold standard” band wagon. An article by Walker Todd, research fellow for the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) on the website Christian Science Monitor called for a return of “gold standard” in the US as means to tackle the financial crisis.

Andy Boynton of the Patriot Ledger recommended Walker Todd as one of Obama's economic advisors:

Seek out policy makers like the American Institute for Economic Research’s Walker Todd, who’s been talking about solutions that help homeowners and lenders alike.

Read the full article

National Review Online asked a group of economic experts to assess President-elect Obama's economic team. Senior Researcher Richard Ebeling joined the NRO symposium, Obama Money Talk: The New Administration and the Economy. This is what he had to say:

In spite of the impression in the media, that President-Elect Obama’s economic team reflects an underlying “pro-market” orientation, they in fact are advocates of manipulating markets to generate outcomes more to their interventionist and welfare redistributive liking. The French have long called this “indicative planning”: use the tax system and the regulatory mechanism to induce the private sector to do what politicians and ideological special interests want. That is not the free market. They will manipulate the markets to bring about the “green” and pro-labor union outcomes that will have nothing to do with the outcomes we as consumers would have desired in a more competitive environment.

In addition, they are all on board to design and implement a vast deficit spending package that will end up doing far more harm than any good, by creating politically influenced public works jobs that will only last for as long as the government keeps spending money in particular ways. Also, they seem to be completely oblivious to the simple but vital question: where is the money coming from to fund what will end up being a total $1.5 trillion bailout and stimulus budget buster? An answer would be nice.

Read the full article at National Review Online.