Austan Goolsbee, on Daily Show, Defends Regulations

Austan Goolsbee, outgoing Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, took to the Daily Show on Wednesday for one last sit-down with Jon Stewart. Stewart included a question on regulations (part 2, at 3:55), and Goolsbee gave a spirited defense:

Stewart: Does the president believe business is overregulated? Does he think we are bureaucratically so snafu-d and entangled that that is the problem with the economy right now?

Goolsbee: As a general matter, no. Though there certainly [are] individual things that could be done different and streamlined, where, you know, they have to submit paper forms, they can’t do it on the web, you know, things of this nature. But, the president said from way back when, being for rules of the road doesn’t make you anti-market. And in fact, what we saw in the financial system, what we saw in oil drilling in the Gulf, and a bunch of places, ripping up the rules of the road were devastating to business. It wasn’t just that it was bad for society, it was bad for those companies that nobody was following the rules of the road, because when you lose public trust you don’t have it.

Not bad for boiling it all down to a few sentences.

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