[Competitive Enterprise Institute]
[snip]
The new administration announced on Tuesday its decision to suspend implementation of many of the Bush administration’s last-minute rules. In a memo addressed to all “executive departments and agencies,” White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel ordered a freeze on nearly all Bush administration regulations mostly emanating from the dying days of the last administration.
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I've been getting the Federal Register via email for over a decade; there's enough stuff in those few years alone to turn lots of economese into zombie concepts; laissez faire and free trade for starters...
[snip] “This decision by the Obama administration is an important signal, suggesting that the new administration is going to pay attention to our regulatory system,” said CEI Senior Fellow Eli Lehrer. “That's a good thing.”
“The Bush presidency issued a huge amount of new regulations,” Lehrer continued. “People are mistaken if they think of the Bush administration as deregulatory. And, particularly after the election, many regulations it issued were either poorly thought out or flawed in their implementation. A period to pause and review can only do the nation well.”
“Given the nomination of Cass Sunstein to be head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), I hope this bodes well for the future,” adds Iain Murray, Senior Fellow in Science, Technology and Medicine. “I would expect that all future regulations will be subject to a 'Sunstein test' - if they are precautionary in nature or fail a cost-benefit analysis test, they should not go forward. That will be a great advance in our regulatory procedure. If Professor Sunstein is stymied in this, then it will show we aren't in a new era, after all.”
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While folks are on the right track for pillorying "Nudge", Andie noted a few years ago that Sunstein's "Free Markets and Social Justice" was worth a read although, imo, it's nowhere near as interesting as Morton Horwitz' stuff: