WASHINGTON, D.C.— Stephen Hall, Legal Director and Securities Specialist at Better Markets, issued the following statement on the release of an updated report, The Trump Administration Seeks to Paralyze Agencies with Burdensome and Unworkable Cost-Benefit Analysis, which highlights the resurgence of cost-benefit analysis as a weapon against rules meant to protect investors and markets:
“Right now, those in the Administration and on the Hill who extol the virtues of quantitative cost-benefit analysis as a regulatory tool are actually deploying it as a weapon—a Trojan House—to undermine the agencies that were established to protect Americans from a wide variety of threats to their economic well-being. To the extent this strategy succeeds, along with the Administration’s campaign to gut all agencies, Americans will continue to lose important regulatory protections and suffer real harm, some of it potentially catastrophic. Our financial markets will see an increase in fraud and abuse; investors and consumers will be victimized in ever greater numbers; and our entire financial system will be more likely to suffer another financial crisis like the 2008 crash, which inflicted $20 trillion in financial pain on all Americans. That’s why Better Markets believes that it is important to push back against the misguided campaign to paralyze agencies with cost-benefit analysis.
“The 2024 elections have dramatically changed the regulatory landscape. Over just the past four months, we have seen a concerted effort by the President and some in Congress to impose heavy-handed cost-benefit analysis requirements on all agencies. In response, Better Markets is releasing an update to its series of reports. In this 2025 edition, we review the renewed push in favor of cost-benefit analysis, along with some positive developments in the courts, which increasingly share our position that the financial regulators are not required to conduct quantitative cost-benefit analysis. The report also surveys recent scholarship that continues to see fundamental flaws in the cost-benefit analysis methodology.
“The financial services industry has fought for decades to slow, dilute, and nullify important rules by insisting that agencies must undertake the impossible task of preparing a quantitative cost-benefit analysis for each of their regulations. Since its founding, Better Markets has opposed this campaign with research and analysis demonstrating that despite its superficial appeal, cost-benefit analysis as applied to financial regulation is unworkable, inaccurate, and extraordinarily burdensome. This misguided approach, in short, is a recipe for regulatory paralysis and it should be resisted.”
The report is available online here.
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Better Markets is a non-profit, non-partisan, and independent organization founded to promote the public interest in the financial markets, support the financial reform of Wall Street, and make our financial system work for all Americans again. Better Markets works with allies—including many in finance—to promote pro-market, pro-business, and pro-growth policies that help build a stronger, safer financial system that protects and promotes Americans’ jobs, savings, retirements, and more. To learn more, visit www.bettermarkets.org.
