The FDIC's Sheila Bair, one of the few regulators to have performed ably and with concern for the public interest during the financial crisis and afterward, has announced she will take new steps to increase transparency around the rule-writing process that will follow if the Dodd-Frank regulatory reforms are passed by the Senate this week: Bair, in a separate interview today, said the FDIC plans to launch a website that will list the new rules the agency will be required to promulgate, as well as posting information on visits by industry representatives and other government officials.“Anyone who comes in to meet with us, we will post their name and their name and their affiliation,” she said.
Financial reformers need to shift their efforts from legislative lobbying to influencing the rule-writing process within the regulatory agencies, an arcane procedure that favors the expertise of corporate lobbyists over the petitioning power of the citizenry. It's good to see Bair increasing transparency around the process -- hopefully her move will put pressure on other agencies to follow suit. But transparency isn't enough; activists will have to leverage this information about the rules and who is discussing them to put pressure both on the agency and on private actors to make sure the rules are in the public interest.
-- Tim Fernholz
