The classical understanding, in the founders day, was that “to regulate” meant to “regularize”: to make standards that served to level the playing field - everyone plays by the same rules - and help prevent negligence and fraud.
It did not mean to simply criminalize any particular business practice just because a politician thought the practice was “unfair”; in as much as individuals do not lose the right of contracts, permitting anyone the liberty to NOT enter into a contract they believe is “unfair” to themselves. That is why helping to obtain transparency - full knowledge of the facts in a financial transaction - are also part of “to regularize”; but transparency itself is meant to “shine a light” on what is taking place and not necessarily criminalizing something.
That said, it cannot be said that “regulators” did their jobs, in the run up to the “financial crisis” of 2008.
However, any regulatory error that they made DID NOT REQUIRE any new legislation, or any new powers for them to have insisted on different standards than what prevailed up to 2008. For the most part, they simply needed to act differently than they did, within the powers that they already had.
And guess what, the “financial reform” legislation of 2009 is not very specific on exactly what the new standards ought to be either. The majority of what that bill did was not in detailing new standards, but in INCREASING the depth, breadth, reach and minutia of new federal power to regulate nearly every “financial transaction” imaginable (not just banks and not just “financial” institutions - but “financial transactions” (any and every possible “consumer contract” or transaction between anyone, individual or corporate), and empowering new federal dictators to dictate what the details of their own new “standards” will be.
When it is clear what the true purpose and true objective of the Dims 2009 federal legislation really was - increasing the depth, breadth and reach of federal power (with the excuse of the “financial crisis” as the reason); then you understand where Bachus could be coming from; when he is concerned about “regulation” becoming too involved in to much “minutia”.
The worst part of the 2009 "financial reform" legislation is that it insures that banks now know that in the next "crisis" that they help create, some of them automatically don't have to worry, because the law mandates that regulators will chose who has to be "bailed out" and that they carry it out - at our expense. It - the law - insures there will be a next time, because "too big to fail" is not only accepted, it is institutionalized, by law. And next, time, the "regulators" don't have to ask Congress how much the "regulators" can put us all on the hook for any new bailouts - they now have authority to do so on their own. What we needed was the opposite message to all the banks - no one is "too big to fail", and the only ones we will ever help out is the depositors with FDIC insured accounts - not the bank corporations, not their bondholders, not their stock holders. With THAT kind of notice, sheer self preservation would change their behavior.
Was 0bama being truthful when the first thing out of this mouth is "...my Muslim faith..." or, is he being truthful when he is corrected and then says "my Christian faith"?
In this financial crisis, which has brought the nation, indeed much of the world to its' knees...the number of prosecutions has been essentially zero. Banks have learned a lesson from the use of "human shields" as in the mideast, and that position has been repeatedly ratified. Henry Paulson walked into Congress with a 3-page "do this or you will see tanks in the streets and martial law and by the way, my personal immunity clause is on page 2" document that was by any measure the greatest piece of extortion in the history of mankind. And within a small number of days, what he did was NOT what the money was allocated for, meaning, his threat was nothing but a threat. But a threat nonetheless, bazooka and all pointed atthe collective throats of Congress. Now...Henry Paulson http://cfprod2-cornelledu-ssl.cit.cornell.edu/video/index.cfm?VideoID=985 claims that "young people owe America service".
Well, yes, they do, and they shall pay it, minimally in the form of their future earnings and their deteriorated standard of living which will most assuredly ensue for the next decade. Largely because of the financial shenanigans of Mr. Paulson and his cronies.
If you're at all familiar with Bill Black (heartily reco many of his appearances on YouTube) who was the chief prosecutor during the S&L crisis, outside of a scant handful, there simply have been no prosecutions during this crisis. None. Banks at the top of this food chain have been granted de facto immunity. The Bank of America swore that 155,000 affadavits it submitted in order to pursue foreclosures were truthful and validly sworn documents, and when it was shown that they were not, they were granted leave NOT to accept a penalty of perjury * 155,000, but to go back and resubmit their claims! Would you or I get to do that, to retract a statement made under oath and then be given the opprtunity to restate it? Fraud has ben ratified as the operating theme and modus of the entire financial system, from top to bottom.
My point is, that if wouldn't matter if Bozo the Clown were the chief regulator of the financial system although that in itself would be a positive step towards transparency because lacking the will or the ability or desire or inclination to prosecute these egregious crimes, the entire topic of "fraud" is moot.
It hardly matters whom is named the chief cop when the cops are never called.