Topic for an op ed piece: A major legacy of Ronald Reagan's presidency was the move to de-regulate government. Reagan set the tone in his inaugural address when he stated that "Government is not the solution - it is the problem." (If you think about it, that's a pretty amazing thing for the CEO of an organization to say, and Reagan was the CEO of the United States.) Over time, the belief among conservative economists and their followers in the public was that unfettered market forces consistently yield better results for society than any interventions that government attempt to undertake. Regulations of all sorts fell by the wayside. Many regulations were eliminated. Of those that remained (e.g., environmental regulations), they were not rigorously enforced (particularly during the George W. Bush presidency).
The collapse of Lehman Brothers - brought down by its speculative excesses - tossed cold water on the free market visionaries. Bush's Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson - who once served as Goldman Sach's Chairman - mustered the support and political resources to establish a $700 billion bail-out program to prop up companies that were about to go bankrupt, including many of the opponents of government regulation.
What are the relative merits of arguments favoring government regulation of business activity vs. those opposed to it? Did the President and Congress go too far in de-regulation from 1980 through 2008? Check out the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. What was its point? To what extent did its abrogation in 1998 contribute to the banking crisis of 2008? In providing your answers to this assignment, don't be afraid to demonstrate a partisan outlook! Argue your position forcefully and convincingly.