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Just so we're clear, Barney Frank was a congressman, not a regulator.

• pdonis 4y ago
  As a congressman, he sponsored a highly significant law that governs all of the activities of regulators. So if anything, the conflict of interest question is more relevant to him than it would be to a bureacrat working in one of the regulatory agencies.
  • credit_guy 4y ago
    I disagree. Once a law is passed, it's the law. It applies to everyone, including the congressman who authored it. Regulators however are the people who enforce the laws. Having a regulator in your pocket is many times more useful than having a lawmaker in your pocket. For example, if a cop pulls you over for a traffic violation, would you rather have the chief of police among your "good friends", or the lawmaker who passed whatever traffic law you violated?
    • pdonis 4y ago
      > if a cop pulls you over for a traffic violation, would you rather have the chief of police among your "good friends", or the lawmaker who passed whatever traffic law you violated? If I get pulled over by a cop for a traffic violation, it means my attempts at major corruption have already failed. The minor corruption of having the chief of police fix my ticket is small potatoes by comparison. If I want to buy laws and regulations that favor me over my competitors, which is a much more serious form of corruption (and the form that large organizations like banks are much more likely to engage in), I want to buy the lawmaker, not the regulator, because the lawmaker will give me much better value for my money.