The Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee works to identify and analyze developing trends and ongoing events that promise to affect the efficiency and safe operation of sectors of the financial services industry; explore the spectrum of short- and long-term implications of emerging problems and policy changes; help develop private, regulatory and legislative responses to such problems that promote efficiency and safety and further the public interest; and to assess and respond to proposed and actual public policy initiatives with respect to the impact on the public interest.

President Obama has been calling for immigration legislation similar to what former President George W. Bush sought, legislation geared to a status quo that no longer exists and seems unlikely to return. That's going nowhere.

In his new book, “Phake: The Deadly World of Falsified and Substandard Medicines,” Roger Bate explores the underground trade in illegal medicines that kills over 100,000 people per year and supplants billions of dollars of real products.

3.8 percent of drugs sampled from countries with emerging economies failed basic quality control tests--and these drugs are used to treat potentially lethal infections. Africa has a greater problem with substandard products than any other location.

One of the unwritten, unspoken and rarely thought-about assumptions of those buying medicines is that they will work. We take it for granted that the medicines we buy will work as the scientists who developed the product intended.