umm there are people who are experienced in regulation and the finance industry and aren't goldman sachs "wall street guys" or "activists".
you don't go to the people who created and continue to create financial crises and think they will fix the problem. this is like letting police departments reform themselves because police officers happen to know more about police policy than the average person
No, there are not many people who are experienced in regulation or the finance industry that are not "wall street guys." You're just wrong. At some point or another they probably worked in finance and understand that mindset. When I say "wall street" guys, I mean people with experience with finance at high-level. Low level people just follow the trends anyway. When I say activists, I mean academics who have studied the topic but never practiced. There are limitations to that. A big one is a lack of understanding of the human element and how people process information or how they act in certain situations. This is why people often bring in practitioners to explain concepts or how it works every day.
Elizabeth Warren is as hard on Wall Street as anyone else and she comes from what used to be one of the titans. Elliot Spitzer was tough on Wall Street, but he was a "wall street" guy. Again, by "Wall Street" guy, I mean someone like an SEC official or an NY-DA who has relationships with most of these people. We all went to law school together, and were taught the subject matter the same way, we just took different paths. But we're not exactly from a "different cloth." These are the same people you're chilling with at bar association events.
Moreover, the police department argument is awful. No one is going to appoint the typical laymen to regulate police departments and no one is going to appoint some random activist off the street to regulate Wall Street. However, the level of complexity involved in that role is miles apart from the sophistication required to understand financial markets. Half the type the people on Wall Street themselves don't know what the fukk they're trading.