The
Los Angeles Times
has a
. The lede:
Reporter Nathaniel Popper simply looked at the visitor logs and summaries available from the main financial regulators—the CFTC, the Federal Reserve, FDIC, and SEC—tallied them up, and noted that nine out of 10 meetings regulators held were with bankers, hedge funds, consumer finance companies, and/or their lawyers. If you ever wondered why the laws Congress pass often amount to nothing, here's your explanation. The rules by which these laws and regulations are enforced are usually heavily influenced by the industries the regulations target. Just the sheer number of meetings slows the process down, according to one regulator Popper quotes:
Chilton tells Popper he saw the same lawyers three times in two weeks, representing different companies but always making the same argument. "I have to say, the third time I had the meeting my attention span was dwindling," Chilton said. This raises a good question the story doesn't answer,
: "Why can't he just refuse the meetings? I have a feeling the answer just might be illuminating." I'll second that. For those with an interest, here are the links to the visitors data the
LA Times
used for this story:
(I think . . . these are links to big PDFs in which the relevant stuff might appear.)
