Honey, the SEC Shrunk Itself!

The SEC has made a few, largely unsuccessful, stabs at regulating hedge funds and credit rating agencies and it now appears, from this Reuters report, that the head of the European Central Bank intends to propose global regulations for those types of entities. Jean-Claude Trichet said: "Let me stress that both initiatives on rating agencies and hedge funds warrant strong international coordination."

Maybe this is the new administration's real vision for the future of regulation: international cooperation between regulators. A system like this is already working in Canada. Even though each province has its own regulatory body, each body has enacted the same rules. These "national instruments" are mutually agreed upon and then enacted locally - almost like treaties. Disclosure documents are filed on SEDAR, a jointly-operated electronic filing system.