More than 20 years ago, at the Brandenburg Gate in West Germany, President Reagan gave an historic speech, in which he called upon Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.” Two years later, the Berlin Wall in fact came tumbling down, and the City of Berlin was reunited, permitting Western technology and freedom to transform the lives of both East and West Berliners.
The United States’ fragmented, compartmentalized, bifurcated, and dichotomized regulation of financial services does not pose quite the same threat to freedom and national unity that the Berlin Wall posed, but President Reagan’s notion of tearing down walls could certainly provide apt lessons for those seeking to rationalize our system of financial regulation. And, lest anyone misperceive the importance of the issue, it’s useful to bear in mind that the individual freedoms we enjoy are very much a product of our economic well-being.
