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I would hesitate to describe the SEC's regulations as "sensible and straightforward". I've never heard anything to that effect from a candid observer, and we're

I would hesitate to describe the SEC's regulations as "sensible and straightforward". I've never heard anything to that effect from a candid observer, and we're talking about more than just the SEC here. But anyway, there are always bad people and there is always regulatory capture, but a robust system is one in which there is no excuse for bad things and good people are allowed to work honestly. My aim was to describe how financial regulation is broken even if it was full of good guys. In fact, what constitutes doing the "right thing" is hard to determine except in retrospect.

Retric 12y ago
I am not going to suggest you spend a lot of time on this, but poke around http://www.sec.gov/about/laws/secrulesregs.htm http://www.sec.gov/about/laws/secrulesregs.htm and mostly the regulations seem reasonable. At least compared to generic government regulations which can be far far worse. Consider, some raw materials would classify as nuclear waste if used to build an outbuilding at a nuclear power plant but you could use the same stuff to build a school. Anyway, IMO I think the issues come down to financial transactions being somewhat abstracted from 'morals'. Sure, people rarely get into finance to make the world a better place. But, it's hard to feel telling your friends to sell stock before bad news hit's is a bad idea. Toss in people chasing after a few points here and their to hit their bonus and the incentives tend to be messed up. Many regulations seem reasonable when applied to a financial system, but seem arbitrary for any one transaction.