Like many of the AmericaSpeakOn.org contributors, subscribers, and observers, I rely on several daily news e-mails for information.  One of my favorite daily e-mails comes from the website of FinReg21.com.  The daily newsletter arrives in my e-mail at 7:30am and hits on key topics of the day, many times with in-depth analysis.  I am pleased to be interviewing the financial markets expert who helped create FinReg21, David Evans.

Tom:       How did you come up with the idea for FinReg21 and what was the purpose for creating the web-site and the daily e-mail newsletter?

David: Never let a good crisis go to waste! It was clear in early 2009 that there was going to be an intense discussion over reforming financial regulation. There was no good outlet for people who wanted to contribute to the debate by publishing their work.  And, there was no good place for people who wanted to understand the debate to find material covering a broad range of issues and industries.  There was a clear need. As it turns out, I was deeply engaged in the financial regulatory discussion and I knew how to set up a thought-leadership platform having previously set up www.competitionpolicyinternational.com.

Tom:       This week the U.S. House of Representatives will be voting on major financial regulatory reform legislation.  Do you feel as though FinReg21 has informed the debate? 

David:  Absolutely. Through web analytics, we know we are widely followed in DC and have people in Congress and the regulatory agencies paying close attention to what’s written.  We have managed in a short time to present most of the reasonable perspectives on every major topic before Congress—from derivatives regulation to a national charter for insurance to consumer protection.

Tom:       While FinReg21 provides a balance in the articles that cover financial regulatory reform, you must have an opinion on the legislation pushed by President Obama and leaders in the House and Senate.  How do you keep your views from biasing the news and articles in FinReg21?

David:  Probably by erring too much in the opposite direction.  I happen to like debate, so I would never be interested in publishing my own views without an opposing one—that perspective helps.  We also hired a journalist at the beginning and gave him free reign to write. We didn’t pick him for any particular political perspective, but as it turns out he’s written a number of pieces that I disagree with.  And we’re happy with that.

Tom:       FinReg21 is content-heavy.  It looks as though it takes an army of economists and experts to provide the amount of news and analysis on the web-site.  How do you manage the web-site so that it does not overwhelm you?

David:  We pick good people to write and contribute and that eases the burden on me.  I’ve been extremely fortunate in having Michael Uohara as my managing editor to take on a lot of the management work.  My main problem is that I am overwhelmed with the material coming out on financial regulation and since that’s not the only thing I work on it has been a challenge staying on top of all the paper flying around.

Tom:       What other ventures, besides FinReg21, are you involved with?

David:  I have a thriving consulting business at LECG, where I work on antitrust issues and on financial services including regulatory reform.  I also work as a business advisor and investor in the payments industry. I spend a lot of time helping pre-IPO stage companies navigate the payments ecosystem and helping many of the large payments companies to use these new firms to innovate.  As part of that work I established www.pymnts.com together with Business Wire which is owned by Warren Buffett.    

Tom:      What will FinReg21 look like three years from now?

David:  Many dimensioned—we want to grow our viewership from the current level of 20,000 to something closer to 100,000 worldwide.  We also want to establish Lombard Street, our key journal, as the authoritative place to publish and read articles relevant to financial reform.  Three years from now, my anticipation is that we’ll be looking more at rulemaking within reformed or newly established agencies and less about passing legislation. I believe we’ll be living with highly energized financial regulation for many years to come.  There’ll be a continuing debate about improving regulation and fixing the problems that emerge in what comes out of Congress.

Tom Sullivan served as the Chief Counsel for Advocacy at the U.S. Small Business Administration from 2002-2008.