For big insurers, frustrated at having to be regulated state by state, the wait for an optional federal charter goes on.
This would exempt insurers choosing a federal charter from much of state jurisdiction--including, possibly, laws giving consumers various rights and protections.
Among the proposed reforms: slashing the number of banking regulators from five entities to three, giving the Fed expanded powers to deal with market crises, creating a new federal commission to set mortgage-origination standards, and establishing an optional federal charter for insurance firms.
Let's let any insurer opt out of state regulation in favor of a federal charter. (I'll bet Allstate, Progressive and Geico would go federal in a heartbeat.) Relieved of 50-state paper-pushing burdens and free to pick off the good risks with price cuts, the federally chartered companies would be a formidable competitive threat.
The ABA has also lobbied to continue the charter for federal thrifts.
Already, Wal-Mart has been stopped from getting a federal savings-bank charter, for fear that the giant retailer might do to local banks what it has done to local stores.
So Mr Williams is offering a bargain: he will support vouchers in return for substantial increases in federal funds for both public and charter schools.
The federal government has sent millions of dollars to help jump-start charter schools in New Orleans, and the city is being watched closely by charter-school supporters nationwide.
The original Race to the Top, for example, incentivized states to lift their caps on charter schools (which Hess has said is something the federal government can do well because it establishes a clear, bright line).
FORBES: The Wisdom, Risks, and Foolishness of Race to the Top
Both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney favour charter schools, but at a time of probable cuts in federal education spending their growth may slow.
She would undo most if not all of the "structural" reforms that have been put in place in recent years--mayoral control, performance-based pay, charter laws and other choice schemes, reliance on entrepreneurship and market incentives, federal efforts to incentivize and prod the system to change in constructive directions, testing- and results-based accountability and more.
During his second term, he vetoed the renewal of the charter for the independent Second Bank of the United States, a private institution that kept the federal government's deposits interest-free, and issued uniform paper currency.
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