Way past Time to "Stifle Innovation" and "Reduce Efficiency" on Wall Street
Regulations Need Regulators
By Steven Pearlstein Wednesday, April 2, 2008; D01
It was Hank Paulson's bad luck that he launched the Treasury's work on a new "blueprint" for financial market regulation just as the worst credit bubble in history was about to reveal how badly the regulators had blown it.
. . . But having spent the past several months scrambling to prevent a financial meltdown that has its roots in regulatory nonfeasance, the Treasury team has had to acknowledge that better regulation might not always mean less regulation. And while their blueprint is flawed in several respects, they have laid out a credible framework for an important debate that will extend well into the terms of the next president and Congress.
. . . Nor is it any less ridiculous to have the Securities and Exchange Commission overseeing stock and bond markets and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission overseeing markets in stock and bond futures -- but nobody overseeing the $45 trillion market for derivati…