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Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, has a three part proposal for tackling the "too big to fail" problem and concentration of 70% of the U.S. banking assets in a few banks. It calls for Market Discipline to be exercized in a way that the Dodd-Frank legislation fails to do. This is to be accomplished by having deposit insurance and the Fed's discount window apply only to traditional commercial banks, not the nonbank affiliates and parent holding companies. Customers, creditors and counterparties of all nonbank affiliates and the parent holding companies would be asked to sign a disclosure accepting that there is no government guarantee. In addition the largest financial holding companies would be restructured so that all their corporate entities would fall under a speedy bankruptcy process. Fisher does not clarify how he would do this restructuring. The Fisher idea come after changes in the banking industry through internal management restructuring following trading losses, legal settlements and the passage of a Swiss referendum called the Minder Initiative on compensation. Fisher suggests the U.S. Fed and regulatory authorites in other countries should push for further restructuring and calls for action beyond the limited results from 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. He is critical of Dodd-Frank's often ambiguous and lengthy worded legislation- 849 pages for the law and 9000 pages for the regulations written to implement the law. Fisher emphasizes the point that its hard to implement a law and enforce rules when its not clear and is difficult to understand....

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David Super, a professor at Georgetown University Law School, says letting the fiscal cliff cuts in spending go into effect is fairer to the poor and middle class than the $1.2 trillion in spending cuts proposed by president Obama and the Democrats. He says the pressure of public opinion would lead to some minideals for the Bush tax cuts to go to lower incomes and for restoring some funds to defense after the fiscal cliff agreement goes into effect, leading to a fairer outcome.

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Brooks looks at the Obama and Ryan deficit reduction plans and sees something to like in both plans. He agrees with Ryan that modern medical technologies are becoming too costly to afford- especially with aging populations here and in Europe- and the need for consumers of medical care to shoulder some of the burden to control these costs. He agrees also with Ryan on the need for seniors and the middle class to share some of the burden of rebalancing benefit systems. He agrees with Obama in the need for a balanced approach combining tax increases with spending cuts, and the contribution government can make through targeted investments. He is pessimistic about the chances of bringing the two approaches together taking their best points because of the political climate which is increasingly partisan.

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WSJ describes interviews on 60 Minutes and on Fox News with Tom Homan, who will run Border Security.  Homan says targeted arrests for public safety threats and worksite enforcement operations, migrants who had due process and their federal judge said you must go home and they did'nt are the priorities, not mass sweep of neighborhoods.  WSJ cites the new president DJT as saying - "We have a lot of good people in this country, and we have to do something about it." “This has been going on for a long time. It’s a complicated subject.”  “I don’t want to go too much into clarification, because the nicer I become, the more people that come over illegally.” Yet after strict talk about deterrence, DJT concluded at the time he visited the Journal: “There are some human questions that get in the way of being perfect, and we have to have the heart, too.” WSJ says when it comes to children 64% of Republicans and includes the WSJ feel that new solutions have to be found. And getting Democrats to join in passing legislation to build a new immigration structure is a way forward that should be the goal building on the work of Senator Lankford. ...