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Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Regulate your way to riches: Michael Oxley

[Originally posted at Beltway Confidential]

Very few former congressmen have household names, but Michael Oxley, R-Ohio, is an exception, because he co-sponsored the sweeping post-Enron regulations of pubicly traded companies, now known as Sarbanes-Oxley.

So what do you do after imposing complex and burdensome new regulations on the stock market?

You become the lobbyist for the stock market.

Oxley, an advisor to the board of NASDAQ, which is a for-profit company, is now officially a lobbyist for NASDAQ. This is not too different from when the hedge-fund industry hired Rep. Richard Baker, one of the first congressmen ever to propose hedge-fund regulation, as its top lobbyist.

Do you think Oxley would have the lobbying gigs he has now had he decided that deregulation was called for post-Enron?

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