“At a time of financial crisis such as we are experiencing, it is more important than ever that the regulatory agencies coordinate major policy initiatives. The FDIC apparently disagrees and would prefer to blaze its own trail.”

Contact Cornelius Hurley, 617-353-5427, ckhurley@bu.edu

“This settlement may encourage even more aggressive theories of monopolization against Microsoft and other big firms to be brought before the European Commission.  It could be viewed by some rivals as an invitation to bring their business grievances to the EC.”

Contact Keith Hylton, 617-353-8959, knhylton@bu.edu

School of Law Professor Tamar Frankel, an authority on securities law, welcomes the Obama administration’s push for more regulatory oversight for the shadowy market of derivatives and can discuss why it’s important.

“The administration’s new rules for derivatives are welcome. The fact that the people who believed in the market self-limitation are at the helm is salutary. They know the benefits and the weaknesses of market self-regulation.”

Contact Tamar Frankel, 617-353-3773, tfrankel@bu.edu

Williams says Bernanke missed the point.

“The Fed took its eye off the ball.  The regulatory framework that oversees our banks cannot be repaired until the most important regulator, the Fed, completes a thorough internal assessment of how they missed the real estate bubble which was the primary driver of our current recession.”

Frankel says consolidating regulatory authority would be a mistake.

“In the 1930s we avoided ‘too-big-to-fail government” by splitting the regulation of banking, insurance, and markets.  Now there is a proposal to combine them into one huge regulatory system.  I hope that both financial intermediaries and their regulators never again acquire as much power as they do now, and I hope we do not strictly regulate the entire system under one roof.”