Commissioner Bell’s speech was prepared for the Fourth Annual Networks Financial Institute Insurance Reform Summit held on March 7, 2007 in Washington D.C.

China has a two-part financial system with a competitive market-based component and a public, government directed component. Both have reformed rapidly since China's reforms began in 1978. The market-based component is immature and subject to numerous systemic weaknesses, while the government...

This policy brief evaluates the banking and policy implications of 2006 Congressional legislation authorizing the Federal Reserve to pay interest on reserves held at Federal Reserve banks beginning in October 2011. This upcoming policy change has received remarkably little attention from the...

Ever since severe turmoil enveloped the financial markets in the fall of 2008, commentators have blamed deregulation of the financial system, and specifically the supposed "repeal" of the Glass-Steagall Act by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999,2 for the crisis. This has led many to advocate a...

This paper examines consumer protection regulation in insurance markets and discusses how regulation could be made more efficient and robust. The paper argues that regulatory costs could be lowered and effectiveness enhanced by better targeting regulations to address market failures. Regulations...

Despite the fact that it grew out of a financial crisis, the Dodd-Frank Act was not the result of a bipartisan consensus. It received no Republican votes in the House of Representatives and only three Republican votes in the Senate. There are repeated statements by Republicans that they would...

Traditionally, individual states have shared responsibility for regulating the US insurance industry. The Dodd-Frank Act changes this by tasking the Federal Reserve with regulating the systemic risks that particularly large insurance organizations might pose and assigning the regulation of...

Throughout the past three decades of fast growth, China has undergone tremendous structural changes in its economy. There has been significant and continuing industrialization, urbanization and integration into the world economy. The financial system has also undergone major changes, with the...

Why should the United States engage in broad reform of its health care? Because it must. When should health care reform begin? Yesterday would be best, but today for sure. And how should reform be done? It should focus on continuous incremental changes to the cultural, legal, and regulatory...

Finance is a branch of economics that deals with budgeting, saving, investing, borrowing, lending, insuring, diversifying, and matching. In setting standards of financial literacy we ought to make sure they are consistent with the basic principles taught in economics courses. In section I of...