Will regulators ever loosen up on their own?

The industry has gone from not enough regulation to too much. But will regulators ever ease up without litigation?

Will regulators ever loosen up on their own?
I heard someone recently say in regards to the excessive regulation in the mortgage industry that the pendulum has swung so far in other direction that the grandfather clock has fallen over. Yes, it's quite possible that the industry suffered from too little regulation prior to the recession. I wish that we as an industry could have self-regulated, and then maybe we could have prevented the financial crisis from happening. But, truth be told, we did go too far and the regulation was probably for the best.

However, as our industry becomes too regulated, it can become just as dangerous for our economy as it was when we had too little regulation. On the June 29 episode of my Lykken on Lending Internet radio show, I got the opportunity to talk to legal expert Mitch Kider, managing partner of WBK. According to Mitch, the regulation isn't likely to stop on its own. Unfortunately, the only way regulators are going to stop pressuring mortgage companies with unfair expectations is through litigation from mortgage industry.

Ideally, we would all like to see the private sector and the government reach a compromise and get along for the betterment of the consumer. That's what it's really all about. We just sometimes disagree about how to make things better for the consumer.

But just like the industry couldn't be trusted to operate without checks and balances, the regulators cannot be trusted to do so either. And, as regulation gets more and more oppressive, we'll likely see more litigation from the mortgage industry to provide those checks and balance to the government regulators.