Modern financial regulation can provide consumers and investors with adequate information for making sound financial decisions and can protect them from being misled or defrauded, especially in complex financial transactions. Better regulation can reduce conflicts of interest and help manage moral hazard, particularly by limiting incentives for excessive risk taking stemming from often implicit government guaranties. By limiting risk taking in key parts of the financial sector, regulation can reduce systemic threats to the broader financial system and the economy as a whole. Ultimately, financial regulation embodies good risk management, transparency, and fairness.

Modern financial regulation can provide consumers and investors with adequate information for making sound financial decisions and can protect them from being misled or defrauded, especially in complex financial transactions. Better regulation can reduce conflicts of interest and help manage moral hazard, particularly by limiting incentives for excessive risk taking stemming from often implicit government guaranties. By limiting risk taking in key parts of the financial sector, regulation can reduce systemic threats to the broader financial system and the economy as a whole. Ultimately, financial regulation embodies good risk management, transparency, and fairness.

This report by the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP) discusses how regulation would have averted the crisis that we are in today, and how the implementation of smart regulation will help the United States prevent another financial crisis and determine our economic success in the years to come. The report examines how deregulation of financial markets over the last twenty-five years have returned the boom-and-bust cycles that had plagued the United States’ economy until reforms of the Great Depression ushered in a half-century of financial stability. The report specifically points to three areas of regulation that could have prevented the current economic crisis, specifically basic consumer protection rules, supervision of credit rating agencies, and regulation of companies that are “too big to fail.” This is a print on demand report.