Our friends over at naked capitalism brought this opinion piece from the FT to our attention. It is by the best known securities law professor in the country, John Coffee at Columbia Law School. He argues persuasively that despite all the post Sarbanes-Oxley panic, the US capital markets remain the most attractive around the globe. My view of this is pretty simple: in no other country do investors stand as good a chance at enforcing their legal rights than in the US. And investors continue to be willing to pay a “Rule of Law” premium to buy stocks here. That suggests the deregulation mantra sung by so many in the last few years ought to be softened considerably. With several seats open on the SEC perhaps it is time to elevate someone to that critical body who actually believes in what the SEC does!

FT.com ‘Regulation-lite’ belongs to a different age