Market regulators should be paid as much as bankers and fund managers to prevent another Wall Street meltdown, reports Fortune. It quotes Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC) deputy chairman and executive director Tony Tan.
“The people who work in the regulatory agencies need to be as good as the people in the market itself,” he said.
The report says:
Singapore created a special civil service pay scale for its market regulators. Top people there can earn the equivalent of over $1 million annually. The same is true in Hong Kong. In London, meanwhile, heads of departments at the Financial Services Authority earn more than the equivalent of $250,000 annually.
It adds:
"You need good career people to do this job, and if you want good people who make a career of it, you need to pay them properly," says Howard Davies, the former head of Britain's Financial Services Authority (FSA) who now heads the London School of Economics. "In the U.S., they don't — and they have got it wrong."
US Securities and Exchange Commission staffers who earn more than $100,000 remain the exception.
That's a fraction of what many bankers on Wall Street earn. There is, of course, one big advantage to being a regulator, especially at troubled times like these: relative job security. Davies says the FSA in London is currently flooded with resumes.
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it is not how much you pay them. they need to be made accountable too. the fraud in wall street is also contributed by the regulators who slept on their jobs or slept with the bankers and fund managers.
just because you pay them less does not mean that they can do less or not do anything when called upon to do so. paying more for efficiency and incorruptibility is a myth.
the regulators must be hanged if they did not do their jobs or create a system that is flawed.