He was saying throughout U.S. history from the very first presidential administration there has been a tension between those who a advocate an open free market with very little regulation and those who prefer to see tighter regulation from the central government, and that it has been a tension throughout.
He said that throughout U.S. history, there's been a tension between free and open markets and government regulation, and sometimes it swings too far one way, sometimes the other, and that right now, we've swung too far away from regulation and we need to revise our regulation.
Balkam asked Gross to comment on the tension between the tendencies to want to protect children via Internet regulation and government imposed filtering vs. wanting to promote free speech.
Most important, however, is how the Co-op's withdrawal from the Lloyds deal highlights the tension between the government's twin ambitions - of making banks safer through increased and improved regulation and promoting competition.