Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate

Heartland's Center on Finance Insurance and Real Estate (C-FIRE) focuses on free-market, pro-consumer regulation of financial markets. We favor policies that empower individuals, replace centralized government authority, and pare regulations. Our efforts have involved fighting price controls, arguing against government takeovers of private markets, and abolishing subsidies for companies.

We focus on a limited subset of issues where we feel we can make a meaningful difference. When confronted with an issue, we always strive to respond as quickly as possible; we want to be in every news cycle. In carrying out our work, we make special efforts to partner with anyone and everyone who shares at least some of our views.

Click here to learn more about the CFIRE project.

Politically Correct Lending Hands Corporate Welfare to Big Banks

There seems to be only one kind of loan that bankers want to make—SBA loans. SBA stands for Small...

Insurance
The Fed’s $1 Trillion Bailout . . . of Foreign Banks

In a recent eye-opening piece by Zerohedge.com, “Thanks to QE Bernanke has injected foreign banks...

Insurance
Federal Reserve’s ‘Exit Strategy’ is Just More Monetary Manipulation

The recent media reports that the Federal Reserve has devised an “exit strategy” to reverse their...

Insurance
Online 'Marketplace Fairness Act' Could Tax Your 401(k)  

The U.S. Senate recently passed the Marketplace Fairness Act, which would force online retailers to...

Insurance

John Berlau
SEC Charges Pennsylvania’s Capital City With Fraud

Federal investigators say City of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania officials misled the public and...

Insurance

Melissa Daniels

Featured Works

Property & Casualty Insurance Report Card, 2011 Edition

Solving the Flood/Wind Problem After Hurricane Losses:

Four Problems, Four Solutions: A Blueprint for Reforming Texas’s Insurance Environment

The Patriot's Toolbox

Ideas

Free Market Solutions in Real Estate

Proposals to increase regulation of the real estate industry are in the news these days thanks to record foreclosures, a collapsing credit market, spiraling losses for some of the nation’s largest and most respected financial institutions, and the spectacle of government agencies racing to find short-term solutions to stop the collapse. Many of these problems are the result of regulatory policies that unnecessarily raise costs, limit competition, and expose taxpayers to risk.
Free Market Solutions in Insurance

The current regulatory environment for property insurance is characterized by heavy-handed regulation at both the state and federal levels. Consumers suffer when regulations appropriate for a different era reduce competition, discourage innovation, and limit choices. We seek a world where insurers are free to sell the products they want to sell, consumers are free to buy them, and insurance serves a crucial risk-management and safety-promoting function that in many cases makes political intervention in individual affairs unnecessary.
Free Market Solutions in Finance

Following the financial collapse of 2007-2008, governments greatly expanded their interference in financial markets, bailing out and subsidizing some businesses while imposing considerable and unnecessary regulatory costs and uncertainty on investors and other financial service providers. Heartland is working to repeal unnecessary regulations and fend off new regulations and discriminatory taxes on financial services.