From: RegBlog | Penn Program on Regulation
Politicians, advocacy groups, and businesses have all seemed to call for financial regulatory reform during this election cycle. Now, even the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has joined the chorus. Recently, it issued a report on the state of the regulatory system, identifying areas for reform and calling on Congress and the President to work together to make changes.
The GAO undertook to analyze a regulatory structure that has evolved over 150 years, one piece at a time in response to discreet crises. Its report seeks to show how well the basic components of the financial sector are working: depository institutions, securities and derivatives markets, and insurance. What the GAO finds is that the oversight of these different components is seriously fragmented, overly complex, and suffering from a lack of collaboration between both domestic and international institutions.