Congress should require banks to increase capital relative to their assets as asset size increases.

Government assistance programs during the recent financial crisis were conceived in haste, poorly designed, and sometimes transparently politically motivated--and they entailed hundreds of billions of dollars of losses (so far) to taxpayers.

The Troubled Asset Relief Program should be run like a business with a goal of returning as much of the involuntary investment as possible to its owners--the taxpayers--along with a reasonable overall profit.

We are in the midst of a serious financial crisis, and there is a temptation to act precipitously, without thinking of the long-term consequences.

Until the legislative process takes into account the long-term consequences of short-term policy actions (and inactions), we have no assurance that Medicare can be saved.

In the past decade, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s budget has increased threefold and the fundamental problems remain. For the sake of investors, who have lost billions in fraudulent schemes that should have been discovered, it is high time that these organizational issues be addressed.

The ongoing financial crisis provides lessons that should be used toguide the redesign of our regulatory system. Recent proposals such as those of the Group of Thirty and the Congressional Oversight Panel do not appear to have recognized these lessons.

Dodd-Frank overall is a poorly drafted statute that drastically expands the power of the federal government, creates new bureaucracies staffed with thousands, and does little to help the struggling American citizen.