Justin Wolfers, a Professor of Business and Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania has these as his first two:
1. If it walks like a bank and quacks like a bank, it’s a bank. Bring all banks out of the shadows and into the glare of the regulatory sunlight.
2. Too often financial information is written with two pens. The small font sizes provide enough cover for a lawyer to sign off, but in larger type, they tell a story that is misleading enough to encourage a steady stream of suckers. That doesn’t seem fair. Here’s a different approach. If your firm’s marketing materials lead a random sample of 100 Americans to believe that the mortgage, or credit card, or other financial product is less onerous or risky than it actually is, then your marketing materials are misleading, and your firm is liable for damages.
Nearly all of these suggestions are excellent. The only problem is that they will [b]never[/b] be implemented because:
1. Congress (both Democrat and Republican] is owned by those who would be regulated,
2. The Republican Party, even if it were to win overwhelming majorities (enough even to override presidential vetoes) dominated by Tea Partiers would never allow any of this to pass without significantly weakening them to satisfy the lobbyist and
3. The regulators are owned by the regulatees.
Just look at the outcome of the modest efforts to improve the regulation of banks and credit cards or of offshore drilling to see what happens when anyone in Congress attempts to buck the lobbies.