Events

Almost 17 years after al Qaeda’s attacks on America, many key questions remain unanswered. Chief among them: why did America’s National Security Agency (NSA) fail to detect and thwart the attacks? Has the NSA as an institution learned the right lessons from this national tragedy and changed accordingly? What has Congress done—or failed to do—since the attacks to improve intelligence collection while still protecting American’s constitutional rights? “The NSA and the Road to 9/11: Lessons Learned and Unlearned” brings together five former federal officials who were key players in the effort inside the NSA and on Capitol Hill to prevent the 9/11 disaster and to reform NSA’s approach to surveillance in the years after.

If you can’t make it to the event, you can watch it live online at www.cato.org/live and join the conversation on Twitter using #CatoNSA. Follow @CatoEvents on Twitter to get future event updates, live streams, and videos from the Cato Institute.

P. J. O’Rourke, America’s leading political satirist and Cato H. L. Mencken Research Fellow, has been dubbed “the funniest writer in America” by the Wall Street Journal. In his new book, None of My Business: P. J. Explains Money, Banking, Debt, Equity, Assets, Liabilities, and Why He’s Not Rich and Neither Are You, the best-selling author delves into the world of business. He offers his humorous, incisive musings on everything from banking and investments to China and the future of Bitcoin — and, of course, how the “crazy things” that government does to money can make the financial world even more mind-boggling.

Whether explaining what cleaning his chicken coop taught him about investing, telling how covering war zones for Rolling Stone taught him economics, or sharing what his teenage daughter revealed to him about the digital economy, O’Rourke is always sure to deliver pithy insights with a healthy dose of humor. Join the Cato Institute for this rousing discussion of the wild world of finance.

Noon–1:00PM   Remarks by P. J. O’Rourke
1:00PM–2:00PM   Luncheon and book signing

If you can’t make it to the event, you can watch it live online at www.cato.org/live and join the conversation on Twitter using #CatoEvents. Follow @CatoEvents on Twitter to get future event updates, live streams, and videos from the Cato Institute.

Cryptocurrencies are now a $270 billion market, and initial coin offerings (ICOs) raised more than $8 billion in the first five months of 2018. What is the appropriate regulatory framework for this emerging financial technology? In this Capitol Hill briefing, Cato’s Diego Zuluaga and Mercatus’ Brian Knight will address whether and how cryptocurrencies might be determined to be securities, the role of cryptocurrencies in value creation, and the use of ICOs as fundraising vehicles. Zuluaga will outline a regulatory framework for securing innovation while ensuring protection against fraud and crime.