We Didn’t DeregulateFrom the April 5, 2010, issue of NR. When Barack Obama was running for president, he made no secret of his plan to “restore commonsense regulation†by closing up regulatory “loopholes†he blamed Republicans for opening. Deregulation of the financial industry, he argued, was a main cause of the financial crisis.Much like Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression, President Obama offered a sweeping, ambitious regulatory agenda: a total revamp of the financial industry, including reform of the process by which loans are converted into securities; more robust federal regulation of credit-rating agencies; the creation of a systemic-risk...