Stanford Exposes Rodgin Cohen’s Myth of the Myth of Regulatory Capture
By William K. Black
Quito: March 19, 2015
Sometimes the fates conspire to bring together two stories that when considered together bring that lightbulb moment. The first story, dated March 18, 2015, is from the Wall Street Journal. It overwhelmingly conveys the opinion of Rodgin Cohen, the super-lawyer to the super-fraudulent bank CEOs. He was a leader of the financial regulation wrecking crew that produced the criminogenic environments that drove our recurrent, intensifying financial crises. As I will explain in a future column, Cohen basically has one speech, which he has repeated with minor variants for decades. The latest Cohen variant claims that:
“The regulatory environment today is the most tension-filled, confrontational and skeptical of any time in my professional career.
Cohen says the strained relations between government regulators and bank officials stems from ‘the myth of regulatory capture.’
‘The consequences of such as approach are likely to be less effective examinations, not more,’ he said. ‘Unless we deal with the canard of regulatory capture, we will inevitably be placing pressure on examiners to disprove this charge.’”
The second story is from “Yves Smith,” who created and runs the blog NakedCapitalism. It is actually two stories at this point. Her first article on March 17, 2015 explained how Andrew Bowden, a senior SEC official, had displayed a classic case of regulatory capture at a March 5, 2015 conference at Stanford. Stanford Law School posted the video of the conference showing Bowden as a literal cheerleader for the Private Equity business he is supposed to regulate. I wrote to point out as a former financial regulator why I would have immediately asked for the resignation of any of my staff that even remotely came close to Bowden’s disgraceful and dishonest behavior.
remainder: http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2015/03/stanford-exposes-rodgin-cohens-myth-of-the-myth-of-regulatory-capture.html#more-9251
