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I keep hearing this argument, 'no oversight', and I have yet to see proof of it. Finance remains the most heavily regulated industry, as it has for decades.

• wdewind 11y ago
  > Finance remains the most heavily regulated industry, as it has for decades. I'm not trying to be pedantic if you were just speaking in hyperbole, but I'm curious on the methodology for determining that.
• snowwrestler 11y ago
  Both things are true. Finance is heavily regulated by at least a dozen agencies, but the coverage of those agencies has gaps, and significant overlaps where it's not clear who is supposed to be holding the ball. To name two examples from the financial meltdown: - Lending practices at banks are regulated by the Federal Reserve. Lending practices by mortgage brokers financed by i-banks and hedge funds were essentially unregulated. Those are where a lot of the bad loans and securities started. - Derivatives are normally regulated by the CFTC, but credit default swaps were specifically exempted from that regulation in 2000, on the assumption that other federal regulators would cover the downstream risks under their purview (they did not).