Redesigning Financial Regulation

At the height of the 1990s boom, Jack Grubman, one of the most successful analysts in Wall Street proclaimed ‘what used to be conflicts of interest are now synergies’. This myopia contributed dramatically to the elevation of a culture in which greed was deified, oversight denigrated and misfeasance justified. Since the fall of the markets and the implosion of confidence in the American corporate business model, one man has proved instrumental in deconstructing the rhetoric of the 1990s: Eliot Spitzer, the combative Attorney General of New York. In the process, his innovative application of state law has reconfigured the governance of Wall Street. Over the past three years…