Introduction to a Panel on the Modernization of Financial Regulation: What Is the Governmental Role in Finance, Anyway?

On January 8, 1998, at the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools, a program sponsored by the Section on Financial Institutions and Consumer Financial Services was held, "What Is the Governmental Role in Finance, Anyway?" Three distinguished panelists made presentations outlining core concerns that the panelists argued should guide future governmental regulation of banking and finance. The following papers are based on the panelists' presentations at the conference and offer insights into the thinking of some of the most prominent figures in financial regulation today. The papers are evidence of the rich mix in financial regulation of the theoretical and the practical, the historical and the futuristic, the political and the economic, the bureaucratic and the entrepreneurial--an eclectic array of forces that all line up to be counted in the legal calculus. The papers also implicitly acknowledge the general social importance of finance, as well as the sheer difficulty of any attempts to adjust the systematic character of financial regulation.