Is This Column a Crime?

[Commentary] Since World War II, University of Michigan economists have produced the definitive research on consumer sentiment. Their twice-monthly surveys of household spending are used by everyone from policy makers at the Federal Reserve to Wall Street traders. But thanks to an arbitrary threat of prosecution by the attorney general of New York, Eric Schneiderman, this high-quality research is no longer going to be available to anyone, any time.

Schneiderman proudly announced earlier this month that the hedge funds that had covered the costs of the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers will no longer get a two-second advanced feed of these data. He claimed he was striking a blow for a "level playing field." Instead, he struck a blow against research and information. The surveys rely on private funding, getting no support from the university. Thomson Reuters had paid more than $1 million a year to fund the research, from fees that traders paid to use the information for computer-programmed trading.

Richard Curtin, who has overseen this research since 1976, tells me that the loss of funding is devastating. "Out of all the challenges I have faced to fund this project over the past four decades, I never thought it would end as an unintended consequence of regulation," he says.