Testimony before the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation on the legality of Wal-Mart's application to acquire an ILC (Industrial Loan Corporation).

Is the policy of separating banking and commerce after the adoption of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999still based on any comprehensible rationale or is it now simply superstition?

In a new book entitled “Financing Failure: A Century of Bailouts,” Vern McKinley provides the most detailed account yet of the government’s decision-making process during these momentous events.

The federal government has taken over large swaths of consumer lending, most notably the $10 trillion home mortgage and $1 trillion student lending markets. The government's share of new loans for each now approaches 100%.Government monopolies in financial services pose risks to taxpayers as well as borrowers

Under the Dodd-Frank financial-reform law, large nonbank firms may be declared systemically important because their failure will cause a systemic breakdown. In effect, this amounts to a government statement that these firms are too big to fail.

The Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee (SFRC) is a group of publicly recognized independent experts on the financial services industry--including banking, insurance, and securities--who meet regularly to study and critique regulatory policies affecting this sector of the economy.

Each new financial crisis teaches that the financial sector safety net consists of much more than the support explicitly promised to deposit institutions by their access to formal deposit insurance coverage and the Federal Reserve’s discount window.

The Pension Benefits Guaranty Corporation'senormous liability is only the latest example of the U.S. government's well-intentioned efforts gone awry.