Besides adverse court rulings, there are perennial proposals from Italian lawmakers, for example, to rein in bloggers by requiring them to post corrections of their errors.
Indeed, one of Mr Passos Coelho's challenges is to lead by example and rein in spending in the country's bloated public administration, as well as improve performance at state-controlled companies that have accumulated about €40 billion of debt.
Goldman Sachs, for example, would have to rein in its high-rolling traders.
Regulators may say, for example, that he failed to rein in his enthusiastic analysts who recommended chancy stocks that the firm had underwritten to unsuspecting investors.
Lobbyists and Congressional aides have discussed a possible compromise: Congress would authorize a new government-run insurance program, but it would come into existence only if certain conditions were met — if, for example, private insurers failed to rein in health costs by a certain amount after several years.
And the more stringent collateral requirements will make the business more capital-intensive.OTC derivatives are only the most striking example of the regulators' determination to rein in banks' trading businesses.
The VA pays about 40% less for prescription drugs than Medicare Part D, so many pundits have held it up as an example of how the feds can effectively rein in drug spending.
If these warning signs start flashing, Thaler went on, the government should rein in speculative activity, by, for example, raising lending requirements in overheated real-estate markets.
His traditional allies at MoveOn, for example, have gathered hundreds of thousands of petitions to rein him in too.
It's one thing to rhetorically pledge to rein in spending, but I have led by example.
