To Regulate, or Not to Regulate. That is the Question.

Whither regulation? Lots of debate on this. With firms crumbling left and right, especially in banking, the most unlikely characters are jumping into the regulation bed together. Imagine Ayn Rand and Karl Marx canoodling in a corner at Smith & Wollensky's.

On the right, many in the government-is-the-problem crowd suddenly want the feds to step in and support the free-falling markets. On the left, many in the government-is-the-answer crowd are loath to bail out a bunch of Wall Street fat cats.

The history of regulation shows it swings back and forth like the pendulum of a grandfather clock. Typically, regulation is light until stability grows into instability as excesses grow and consequences settle in. It's all invisible until suddenly one morning the consequences crash through our kitchen windows. (Note: Adam Smith's "invisible hand," made famous in his 1776 "Wealth of Nations," referred not to federal intervention in the markets but to the societal benefits of people behaving in their own interests.)

Next: Government flies from sleep into overreaction: "We must regulate!" As time goes by and we feel the benefits of some regulation, "the regulated" begin crying that they're so manifestly pure in interest and intent that they no longer deserve the chains of regulation. It isn't in their interest to acknowledge that regulation helped stabilize things to begin with, and they count on the short collective memory of the citizenry to forget it.

Soon the people have allowed their representatives to water down regulation. After a short-lived honeymoon of good behavior, history shows that too many swashbuckling CEO's sidestep former laws that had become rules that were now, really, simple recommendations (weren't they?).

Always, we fail to understand the mind of the business leader. Most honed their competitive mettle in sports—much of it healthy, like doing their best, learning to lose gracefully, good sportsmanship. But many competitive people take one particularly bad principle from the lockerroom to the boardroom: The tendency to stay just a shade within the rules and when nobody's looking, Katie bar the door.

When basketball refs aren't calling fouls the competitive player will foul more to stop his opponent. When the refs don’t call the fouls, you don't exactly hear the culprit yelling, “Hey, ref, you missed that last foul! I really hacked him good!” Not gonna happen.

In the business world, leaders ignore boundaries if there's no regulator around and they're pressed to gain every edge to beat quarterly expectations. Guidelines fade fast when they feel pressure to perform (with kid’s expensive schools, hefty house payments). The rationalization defense mechanism kicks in: Those aren’t really rules.

Ironically, regulation is good for business. It's good medicine, whether preventing or curing disease. While they don’t like the taste, without it business can’t help itself from wallowing in the mud, forgetting the old line about pigs getting fat and hogs getting slaughtered.

Recent abuse is so bad that the medicine needs to be industrial strength yet sensible enough to restore confidence in our institutions and rebuild their balance sheets. We got through much the same mess with the mortgage-inspired S&L crisis of the '80s. Let’s hope our memories are a little longer this time around.