From Regulator to Lobbyist . . .
“The answer is yes, it does. If it didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to justify getting out of bed in the morning and charging the outrageous fees that we charge our clients, which they willingly pay.”
-A former regulator, now corporate lobbyist, as to whether he had an inside edge in lobbying his ex-colleagues
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Well, don’t let it be said that this Congress isn’t creating jobs: The 2,300 page financial reform bill seems to be generating demand for more of what we surely don’t need: Corporate Lobbyists.
150 lobbyists that used to work in the executive branch — lawyers for the Securities and Exchange Commission, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Federal Reserve bankers, and other regulatory agencies — have registered as lobbyists. Add to that 100s of attorneys “scouring the financial regulations” on behalf of corporate clients, and you have the makings of a small army of former Federal employees. They are now working for the firms they used to regulate.
The lobbyist’s goal? Now that finreg legislation has passed, they seek to influence the future rule making that has been written into the new law. According to a NYT:
• The law firm of Davis Polk determined that 243 new financial rules and 67 new studies are required by the legislation.
• The S.E.C. must developing 95 rules (derivative trading, credit rating agencies standards, executive bonus disclosure).
• The Commodity Futures Trading Commission must develop 61 rules.
• Federal Reserve is required to develop 54 specific rules.
• The 2 new agencies created by Congress — Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Financial Stability Oversight Council — will create 80 new financial oversight and disclosure rules.
The firms that will be covered by these rules are seeking to influence them before they are even written: Water them down, reduce disclosure requirements, soften oversight, neuter penalties.
As we previously discussed, the bang these firms get for their bucks is extraordinary.
The battle continues . . .
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Previously:
Government for Sale: 2009 Lobbying $3.49 Billion (July 14th, 2010)
Source:
Ex-Regulators Get Set to Lobby on New Financial Rules
ERIC LICHTBLAU
NYT, July 27, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/business/28lobby.html
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July 28th, 2010 at 7:24 am
battle – struggle: an energetic attempt to achieve something
BR…not certain you can call the charade of lawmaking a battle…pretty one way from where I sit…
the grifters/rentier class continues to lord over ‘us’
July 28th, 2010 at 7:42 am
Whatever happened to that TV commercial you were brainstorming, BR?
July 28th, 2010 at 7:44 am
Lobbying = Mentoring, to those without a clue but hired to structure the rules.
July 28th, 2010 at 7:47 am
Am I missing something? Write 2,300 pages of law…but forget to put the rules in? Or was the law for patronage purposes only, and the heavy lifting starts now?
July 28th, 2010 at 7:58 am
“As we previously discussed, the bang these firms get for their bucks is extraordinary.”
Gee – D.C. really DOES have the cheapest hookers…
July 28th, 2010 at 8:29 am
BR,
not to ‘pick nits’, but, here: “150 lobbyists that used to work in the executive branch — lawyers for the Securities and Exchange Commission, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Federal Reserve bankers, and other regulatory agencies — have registered as lobbyists.”
you may a problem with the first usage of ‘lobbyists’ (150 lobbyists)
but, past that, Did you (We), really, expect anything useful (to the ‘Represented’) to come to pass?
if memory serves, Lewis Carroll, well, described our current Scene, long ago..
http://www.lewiscarroll.org/
sometimes, seems that We’d be better off reading about http://search.yippy.com/search?input-form=clusty-simple&v%3Asources=webplus&v%3Aproject=clusty&query=Baker+Plant+City+Little+League+Pitcher
then wasting the energy, required, following the Acts in D.C..
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/represented
July 28th, 2010 at 9:17 am
Lobbying is what you get when you reject the price-setting mechanism of markets in allocating goods and services for the allocation of goods and services by government fiat.
July 28th, 2010 at 9:52 am
Engineer In Hell
An engineer dies and reports to the pearly gates. St. Peter checks his dossier and says, “Ah, you’re an engineer — you’re in the wrong place.”
So, the engineer reports to the gates of hell and is let in. Pretty soon, the engineer gets dissatisfied with the level of comfort in hell, and starts designing and building improvements. After awhile, they’ve got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators, and the engineer is a pretty popular guy.
One day, God calls Satan up on the telephone and says with a sneer, “So, how’s it going down there in hell?”
Satan replies, “Hey, things are going great. We’ve got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators, and there’s no telling what this engineer is going to come up with next.”
God replies, “What??? You’ve got an engineer? That’s a mistake — he should never have gotten down there; send him up here.”
Satan says, “No way. I like having an engineer on the staff, and I’m keeping him.”
God says, “Send him back up here or I’ll sue.”
Satan laughs uproariously and answers, “Yeah, right. And just where are YOU going to get a lawyer?”
July 28th, 2010 at 10:14 am
Trent Lott: Man of the People, Fledgling Lobbyist
Republican Lott (left) and Democrat Breaux have opened a lobby shop(Lott – Freddie Lee – Getty Iamges; Breaux – Brad Puckett – AP)
Former Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) is struggling a bit to adjust to life as a lobbyist.
“I took the Metro for the first time,” Lott told the Sleuth Thursday afternoon in the makeup room of MSNBC, where he and his new lobbying partner, former Sen. John Breaux (D-La.), were fixin (as Lott says) to do a TV segment.
July 28th, 2010 at 10:44 am
This is nonsense. How many lobbyists register each month? There were 40,000 working at the end of the Bush Presidency. So 150 new ones? So?
July 28th, 2010 at 1:41 pm
Curmudgeon nailed it.
To quote Friedman: “the strongest monopolies are those that derive from governmental privilege. These monopolies get their power from governmental measures that interfere with competition by others. The biggest problem with government regulation is that it ends up being controlled by the industrialists”.
We keep killing competition and entrepreneurs over and over again. What starts as well meaning regulations to benefit the consumers, ends up benefitting and being controlled by the producers. Why are you surprised by seeing thousands of new lobbyists coming on the scene? A 2,000 page new law of “regulation” is nothing more than a beautiful, personal, hand delivered invitation to large corporations to come to the party. The tragedy is that the entrepreneurs and small businesses aren’t on the VIP list and don’t receive invitations.
July 28th, 2010 at 8:15 pm
The battle continues…………..
Which battle would that be? I’m not sure there is any battle as things continue nicely in line with the status quo and the average American doesn’t seem to care or is resigned to just bending over backwards.
Of real concern is the Item BR linked yesterday from Business Insider (“22 Reasons why the Middle Class is being systematically destroyed”), expressing views which I have held for some time and expressed both here and to anyone who would listen. If the trends expressed therein continue, and there is every reason to expect they will, then the average US citizen will soon have nothing, including a paycheck and unemployment benefits to cover the ongoing 10% plus unemployment rate.
That might then perhaps focus the minds better. The second Republic looms?
July 29th, 2010 at 8:01 am
Hmm. Let’s see, just who are they lobbying? Oh, Congress, now I see. Hmm. Do you mean folks like Pelosi, Reid, Frank, Dodd and all the Chairman of each committee? Oh, ok.
Let’s see, these lobbyists to quote:
“As we previously discussed, the bang these firms get for their bucks is extraordinary”.