Joel Mathis

One reason I've never really come around to being a small-government conservative is my belief that if we put a tight leash on the feds, that will allow other large institutions--mostly big businesses, but not limited to that-- to dominate me instead . Conservatives deploy the language of liberty pretty effectively, but often it's in the service of a corporatist agenda that would wouldn't necessarily feel "free" to most of us. I'm not so much sure that "big government" is as much of a problem as is bigness itself: Outsized institutions of any sort, public or private, can have outsized impacts on our lives. So I'm intrigued by the question raised by my friend (and occasional nemesis) Steve Hayward over at Power Line. If conservatives want small government, he asks, should they also be in favor of breaking up the big banks?  So I think I could be persuaded that the big banks should be broken up, though this requires conservatives and pro-market

Maybe. But the New York Times doesn't offer any evidence to back up this assertion : To improve their profitability, banks have three main options: increase revenues, cut expenses and reduce the shareholder base. But the first method is not working at a time when earnings have been crimped by regulatory uncertainty and economic woes. The reason I ask the question is that "regulatory uncertainty" is one of those Luntzian phrases—like "death tax," say—that Republicans toss around cavalierly. And it's true that Dodd-Frank regulations are altering the investment banking landscape. But is that the reason Goldman Sachs lost $428 million during the quarter? Consider the very next paragraph in the Times' article: Goldman reported a loss of $428 million during the third quarter, compared with a $1.74 billion profit a year ago. The firm was punished by its holdings in stocks and bonds, losing $1.05 billion on its holdings in Industrial and Commercial Bank of