This forum has featured recent entries debunking myths about deregulation and highlighting the way in which overregulation stifles entrepreneurship.
To this information we now can add the Bloomberg Business Week article ?Let A Thousand Regulators Bloom,? which shares information only a fan of sluggish economic growth could love:
While hotly contested issues like limits on banks’ proprietary trading and a new consumer protection agency got most of the attention during the financial overhaul debate, the SEC alone will be issuing some 100 rules covering derivatives, hedge funds, asset-backed securities, and executive pay. The agency needs to hire 25 examiners right away for a new office of credit-rating agency oversight.
Rewiring Wall Street does not come cheap. The Treasury hired Booz Allen Hamilton to help design the legislation’s new consumer protection agency and draw up what could be a $400 million budget next year. The SEC expects to increase its budget by about 20 percent in the next fiscal year, to $1.2 billion, more than triple its size in 2000. Its staffing is expected to increase by more than 1,000 people, some 800 just to deal with the reforms, to about 4,700, a 36 percent jump from the head count in 2007, before the financial meltdown. The legislation “creates a whole new regulatory regime,” and implementation is “a massive undertaking,” says the SEC’s [Mary] Schapiro. “This will fill regulatory gaps that have plagued the system, gaps that have long needed to be filled.”
