Unsurprisingly, his view of financial regulators is not very high. In a recent interview with the NYT when asked why the S.E.C. (the US equivalent of the FSA) failed to wake up to Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme until he turned himself in, he had this to say:

They weren’t even asleep at the switch; they were comatose. They didn’t respond to heat and light, much less evidence of wrongdoing.

But they’ve improved now, right? Money quote lies herein…

Are you saying the S.E.C. under Schapiro is about to catch fraud on Wall Street?
She has the wrong staff. They’re a bunch of idiots there.

What do you mean?
The five commissioners of the S.E.C. are securities lawyers. Securities lawyers never understand finance. They don’t have the math background. If you can’t do math and if you can’t take apart the investment products of the 21st century backward and forward and put them together in your sleep, you’ll never find the frauds on Wall Street.

So why doesn’t the S.E.C. hire finance people? Why don’t they hire you?
They’re overlawyered. They’re poisoned by lawyers.

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Guess he’s not a fan.