Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

From John Cochrane's The Grumpy Economist:

The Wall Street Journal reveals a good way to make money in the new US economy: Work for agencies like the CFTC who get to write huge complex and vague rules for financial companies, with lots of discretion and supervision, then go work for the companies who have to comply with said rules....

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, if rules are clear and simple, you don't need to hire the people who wrote them, and who have lots of buddies on the inside deciding what they mean, to survive.  And in the regulatory-capture department, good luck to new smaller companies who can't afford to hire their own personal rule-soothsayer with a good contacts list on his phone.