Deep down, Reagan believed that America offered bountiful opportunity for the average man when government lightened its grip and allowed the magic of human creativity and capital investment to work.
But the regulators--those who oversee banks at the Federal Reserve, the Comptroller of the Currency and the FDIC--have to take an aggressive approach in making sure that bank and insurance company regulatory capital is stabilized and perhaps, with some creativity, even increased from the unnecessary writedowns of the last year.