E Pluribus Unum-Out of Many, One: Why the United States Needs a Single Financial Services Agency

The United States needs to consolidate the over 115 existing state and federal agencies that regulate banking, securities and insurance firms and their products and services into a single, federalfinancial services agency; a U.S. Financial Services Agency ( US FSA ). The US FSA would be able to more effectively regulate the U.S. financial services industry than the existing regulatory regime. The current U.S. financial regulatory regime suffers from a range of problems, including an inability to anticipate and plan for future financial crises, an inability by regulators to quickly adapt to market innovations and developments, inconsistent regulationsf or financial products and firms that are competitors in the market, and the capture of agencies focused on a single sector of the financial services industry by the firms that they regulate. In addition, the U.S. financial regulatory regime is one of the most expensive in the world, costing 12 times more than the United Kingdom\u27s regime and 86 times more than Germany\u27s regime. The US FSA would eliminate or significantly reduce these problems, as well as provide more cost effective and transparent regulation of the financial services industry than is available under the current system