Public Citizen Responds to the President’s Statement about Corporate Regulation

Maybe as a child you had fun building monopolies and crushing your opponent while playing Monopoly.  Maybe your game piece was a dog or a top hat, but at the end, the only drawback was having to put away all that money and title deeds and having wasted your afternoon.

The reality of big business is not the stuff of board games, as we all know.  Their role in the country is constantly defined and redefined.  In response to President Obama’s opinion editorial today, Rob Weissman, President of Public Citizen wrote a statement urging the Obama administration to enact firm regulation of large corporations.

Weissman writes, “President Barack Obama’s opinion editorial today adopts business and right-wing think-tank talking points about the harms of regulation and urges “balance” in achieving the right amount of regulation – not so little that we fail to protect the public, and not so much as to harm the economy.” “Balance” seems to be the buzzword of many politicians these days, but Weissman is critical of the President’s approach.

“Republican leaders have signaled that they intend to challenge existing public protections, weaken agencies like the Food and Drug Administration, Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and block the implementation of financial reform and other legislation.  Some Democrats also have indicated a strong skepticism of regulation, if not an outright anti-regulatory bias.”

In the upcoming months, recruiters may wish to follow any shifts in the government’s regulations on big businesses. Tons of specialized jobs follow regulations, like Sarbanes Oxley or the more recent financial regulations and stimulus. Massive projects are undertaken for compliance standards, and this usually leads to pockets of hiring.