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Another 'Deregulation' Myth
...Barack Obama nonetheless attacks President Bush's policies to "strip away regulation," without mentioning a single example. In an attempt to fill out Mr. Obama's talking points, the press corps has now fingered a 2004 change in SEC net capital rules. In fact, then-SEC Chairman William Donaldson's reform was anything but deregulation. A regulatory failure, yes, and a cautionary tale for those who think new regulation will solve everything....

...Was Basel II a libertarian plot cooked up at the Cato Institute? Not quite. It was the product of years of effort by the world's major central banks, intended to avoid crises such as the U.S. savings and loan disaster. Basel embraced the theory that a common set of global banking standards and more intensive study of the risks of particular assets would yield both more efficient use of capital and a more stable financial system....

...As for the SEC, if commissioners took on a massive burden in 2004 without realizing they had signed up to safeguard the world's financial system, then they overreached. But they sure didn't "deregulate."