Aren't the banks themselves doing the same thing? Use OPM (taxpayer bailouts) to socialize any losses on huge bets with huge payoffs.
to tie the two together, i don't believe regulators are paying nearly enough attention to how incentives have changed over the past 15 years and why board of directors have become powerless to common sense in this arena
Actually, that's not "all you can do".
Note that regulators "don't have any skin in the game" and that regulation is systemic risk (by definition).
Also, regulation is always behind.
And that's without even addressing the elephant in the room, regulatory capture.
Non-sensical?
Do you really believe that the properties of regulation are affected by alternatives? (Hint: the relative merit is, but not the absolute properties.)
It's perfectly appropriate to interrupt a regulation love-fest by pointing out that it does not have the properties that its fans claim.
Do you really want to argue "we must do something, regulation is something, therefore we must regulate"?
And, there's the small matter that regulation can take many forms. For example, torts are a form of regulation.
Yet, question bureaucrats, and folks rise up.
You remember bureaucrats. They're folks with no skin in the game....