After hours of consultation with U.S. and European regulators, I have been struck the past few days by the convergence across sectors and geography. Commercial lending, securitization, insurance, asset management, and consumer credit are in varying degrees of convergence toward a single post-crisis paradigm. It is quite extraordinary to hear the same language in different accents both linguistic and political. 

As an aside, what is perhaps most startling to me has been the degree that the Greenspan/Rubin confidence in long term profitability as a constraint on bad behavior has completely vanished. There are no open advocates of good management as self-regulation left as far as my eye can see. This isn't really surprising, I guess, after what happened last time around but it suddenly hit me that there isn't even a presumption of prudence as a break on financial mismanagement anymore. Rereading Greenspan today makes him seem more naive than misguided. I'm tempted to say that we may be near the top of the market for regulators.

More immediately, though, there is a lesson for all of us. Regulation meets not only in policy and directives but in data and technology as well. Even if the enthusiasm for prudence and constraint is near the top and begins to slowly wane as all social trends eventually do, there are aftereffects of the regulatory boom that need to work themselves out among those who service these related industries.Here are a handful of opportunities: alignment of ratings methodology for corporate and consumer credit; creation of coherent default methodologies across data, models and systems; integration of actuarially derived liabilities and probabilistic risk models for assets in insurance; and a whole host of new indices for benchmarking and risk measurement in a more integrated world.

This is the result of my recent forays into the regulatory world. Happy to be back in unseasonably mild New York City pursuing opportunities.