No where, regardless if you think they are talented or not, clearly they are even if people don’t value that specific skill set they.

They have a unique experience that can’t be gained elsewhere, you can’t regulate an industry you don’t understand and you can’t understand the financial industry without working in it.

So people move back and forth between legislators/regulators and compliance/lobbying.

The only solution is to pay them more but not only it’s not possible it’s also not going to solve anything sometimes people just get bored and want to switch roles. Cooldown periods might help but only a bit as you can’t generally prevent people from gaining employment and if you refuse to hire anyone who has had recent job experience in the financial industry your regulation would be ineffective.

You can not outpay greed.

Cooldown periods might have helped if it were not for the simple fact that many of the position offered to past officials are in fact very well compensated board:committee seats that require very little activity. The implicit assumption by both parties is this is for services rendered during office.

I'm not certain what the precise solution is but what we have now isn't working. Remember that Standard Oil was broken up as a monopoly back in the day - the fact that it grew so large before action was taken isn't great but even once it had nearly unlimited lobbying strength the US still overcame it and managed to break it up - same with Bell.

Industry experts will be in the pool of potential regulators - but that regulatory position used to be stable and lucrative enough to be the final destination as opposed to a stepping stone where scratching a few backs by relaxing some regulations could land you a future cushy job.

That argument resonates with me.

I work in the biotech industry and you see lots of people who move from the FDA to companies and back.

But if you're a company trying to get a drug approved, who else are you going to hire? Same with the FDA. If they're trying to regulate manufacturers, hiring someone from a manufacturer is an ideal way to get that talent.

I'd be satisfied with some strict rules around lobbying and gov't influence. But banning people from moving around? That seems excessive and likely detrimental.

Regulator employee who want job in regulated company will seek to please the company. Which is what is happening and is issue. There is too much temptation to not make it difficult and to not be seen as difficult.

That's a line of thinking that if you take such a position you should probably not take the role.

Alternative: if you are a banking government boss type of position and go work in the private sector, don't work for your 'opposition', instead use your skillset in an unrelated area. It's pretty silly that we have to spell this stuff out for those people or even make laws about it since it's to blatantly obviously unethical that you'd think that even they can see that.