The Huntsman plan for regulatory reform is a good effort, but it fails to come close to accomplishing the one major goal that it highlights in its summary description — “ending” too-big-to-fail (TBTF).

Last year's repeal of the final remaining vestige of Regulation Q, the prohibition of payment of interest on business demand deposits, at long last completed a pro-competitive process which began with the Monetary Control Act of 1980.  The repeal was and is a good idea.  We can easily see this by asking and answering half a dozen simple questions, to make the matter clear.

The Dodd-Frank Act required the FDIC to change how it assesses banks for deposit insurance. FDIC’s final rule implementing that mandate went into effect on April 1, 2011.

For many years, community financial institutions have been denied fair and equal access to the secondary market. Banks prosper by making prudent loans with an adequate return and maintaining a reasonable cost structure. Today 97 percent of our banks are community banks and they are increasingly finding this business model under siege.

A regulatory change in the mutual fund systemcould encourage price competition.

The PPACA's rate review and MLR provisions represent costly, bureaucratic interference with insurers' legitimate business decisions and state regulatory prerogatives. This will do little to enhance competition in health insurance markets and the availability and affordability of health insurance.

The Democratic chairmen of the House and Senate committees that oversaw health reform have weight on the interpretation of the law, in effect arguing that insurers would have to spend even more money on medical expenses to offset every dollar they spend on administrative costs.

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. At the two closed sessions before the luncheon, committee members will discuss, among...