Quick post about overreaching regulations

I've been reading the latest issue of The Economist, a pereodical whose virtues I cannot extoll enough. On of the focii of this week's issue is on the regulatory environment of America.

I knew that Dodd-Frank was a dense tome of legislation, but until now, I had no idea how bad it really was.

As my readers might have garnered from my writing thusfar, Adam Smith is my "homeboy" (to use the parlance of our times). I'm a firm proponent of the free-market, and the larger concept of lessez faire government, as were the founding fathers of this great nation.

Unfortunately, I feel that we've strayed far, and if the folks at The Economist have the right of things (which they often do), our economy is pretty much "effed, " unless we stop thinking we can out-think business and regulating against all of the anticipated futures.

As I've said before, too big to fail is a fallacious notion, and Dodd-Frank at least makes an attempt to hedge (pun intended)  against this. A noble ambition, but at what cost? According to The Economist, just trying to comply with Dodd-Frank will cost investment firms $150k to start and an additional $40k per annum.

This doesn't include the fact that the bill is written such that it does not have all the answers, but is open to amendment and leaves ample room for expansion. In essence, this bill is designed to spawn greater bureaucracy in regulation of financial institutions.

You know, bureaucracy is, in my estimation, the mother of fraud, waste and abuse. I challenge anyone to provide me with a thesis to the contrary.

Thus, such a bill so voluminous (well over 800 pages) and complex as Dodd-Frank, which begs for more complexity and further bureaucratic involvement is not the answer to our problems. Bear in mind that the bill passed in response to the financial collapse leading to the great depression in 1929 was a mere 37 pages.

Basically, what we have is a petri dish for more bureaucracy, more government regulations, more waste, fraud and more abuse, and to what end? Financial institutions will continue to out-think regulations, as is their job, while wasting time and money on attempts at compliance.

Basically, I advocate a rule of thumb such that, if you can't read and understand regulation in a single sitting, it has no business existing.

More on this topic to come.