After sitting down with Paul Atkins, a Republican commissioner at the SEC, it became clear that many in Washington D.C. are simply hung up on hedge fund regulation.
Atkins, who served the SEC from 1990-94 and was re-appointed in 2002, has a practical view of regulation: The SEC should focus on protecting the most investors. And that would mean mutual fund investors. Atkins told me, “There are 90 million investors in mutual funds and I think that ought to be the SEC’s prime worry … there might be at the most 200,000 people invested in hedge funds and those are wealthy individuals — people who have the means to hire folks who can help them monitor their investments.”
