Missed Opportunity

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the White House is backsliding on its goal to streamline financial regulations.  While not surprising in the highly politicized world of Washington D.C., the compromise may haunt the current administration and others for years to come.  Here is what the WSJ had to say.

The Obama administration is backing away from seeking a major reduction in the number of agencies overseeing financial markets, people familiar with the matter say, suggesting that the current alphabet-soup of regulators will remain mostly intact.

Administration officials had suggested they might push for major regulatory consolidation in the wake of the financial crisis. But now they expect to call for most existing agencies to have broader powers to limit risk-taking by financial institutions, say the people familiar with the planning.

Opportunities to reform and eliminate duplicate activities do not come around very often.  This is truly a missed opportunity of the greatest proportions.  Companies facing changes in regulation among the spaghetti-like structure we have today will need to spend more to comply with conflicting rules that may or may not reduce risk in the long run.

As the great Thomas Edison once said, "opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."  That is certainly the case here.