If the disaster-affected regions are to recover quickly and on a broad scale, these restrictive laws must be waived or replaced with over-riding statutes.

FORBES: The Long Road to Disaster Recovery

Citigroup's 1998 merger of insurance, banking, investment banking and brokerage services on such a large scale forced the government to revamp its laws, not the other way around.

WSJ: Whoever Started This Crisis Isn't in the Room

There may also be too few small businesses because small-business owners may find it difficult to access credit markets without collateral, or administrative costs of complying with the appropriate laws may make small-scale firms less competitive.

WSJ: Do Small Businesses Deserve Their Reputation as Job Creators?

Her in-laws would move in, her hours would scale back and her husband, an early employee at Palantir, would pull his weight.

FORBES: Mommy CEO: Pooja Sankar On Raising A Baby, A Business And A New School Of Role Models

There are also whistleblower laws now that provide similar incentives for identifying large-scale tax and securities frauds.

FORBES: Celebrating The 150th Birthday Of 'Lincoln's Law': Privatized Fraud Fighting

Unions have condemned Peugeot's decision to shut up shop, with Amicus general secretary Derek Simpson insisting that lay-offs on this scale would be "inconceivable" in France where workers enjoy stronger labour laws.

BBC: NEWS | Business | No surprise as Peugeot pulls out of UK

Even China is finally opening up to private agricultural investment, in part because new laws allow farmers to lease land, thus making possible economies of scale.

ECONOMIST: No matter how bad things get, people still need to eat

YouTube spokesman Ricardo Reyes counters that YouTube doesn't place in-video advertising on any clips that could potentially violate copyright laws, and that the site faces a challenge of content filtering on a much larger scale than other video sites.

FORBES: YouTube's Filter Fails to Please

Both banks agree that full-scale merger is not the right strategy so long as huge differences remain in Europe's tax and company laws.

ECONOMIST: British banking