To prevent financial markets from imploding again, as they did in the fall of 2008, regulators must find ways to limit the amount of “leverage” financial institutions utilize. Excessive "leverage" means financing with too much debt relative to the amount of equity a firm has. Numerous...

Now that Congress has passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, regulators promulgating the rules under this new bill must tackle a major problem that the reform bill addresses only indirectly. This is the problem of excessive “leverage” – financing with too...