Arthur Levitt, a former chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, has called for the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to merge, in a letter to the Wall Street Journal.
In a letter entitled ‘How to restore confidence in our markets’, Levitt laid the blame for the financial crisis at the feet of the US regulators.
“Our regulatory system failed to adapt to important, dynamic and potentially lethal new financial instruments as the storm clouds gathered,” he claimed.
He argued that this had led to disastrous consequences. “There is now a total breakdown in the...