Experts on the Future of the SEC, Part 1

On October 23rd, Henry Waxman’s House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform began hearings on regulatory oversight of financial markets. Alan Greenspan, John Snow, and Christopher Cox testified. SEC Chairman Cox, the only currently-serving official to testify, is in a tight corner: in March, the Department of the Treasury proposed a new regulatory structure, dubbed "Pure Functional Regulation", that would see the responsibilities of the SEC distributed among new agencies. John McCain wants him fired (but that’s not so scary today, is it?) Perhaps most unfairly, he’s been blamed for the Consolidated Supervised Entity program, which was adopted almost a year before he even arrived at the SEC.

It made me think there was a real possibility that the SEC might become a casualty of the credit crisis. I even wondered whether this could mean the end of disclosure-based regulation.

To get some insight, I took a quick email poll of securities law experts. All this week, I will be summarizing the responses I received.


NEXT: Keep Disclosure-Based Regulation!