If you look at a chart or a diagram of the regulatory structure in the United States, what you see is really almost a spaghetti bowl of regulators. We have a multilayered, multifaceted regulatory structure that--to my way of thinking--is unnecessarily complicated. And there's lots of overlap and duplication and inconsistency among all of those regulators.
That, in a nutshell is one of the significant problems with our system - too many regulators with too many rules and too many different views. But the comment is not the interesting part of the story, it is the commentator - Mary Shapiro, Chairman and CEO of the NASD. Ms. Shapiro made the comment after a meeting with the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association's Regional Firms Committee.
The merger of the NASD and the NYSE is aimed at fixing some of this issue, and On Wall Street has an update and analysis of the issues in its June 1 issue.
