"I think regulation is going to be a killer," said David Fishman of Arbitronix, based in Las Vegas.
He added, "If we are going to truly reduce youth smoking, then government regulation is going to be required".
"I think people have accepted that regulation is going to happen and that the business will probably be less profitable".
Second, it is very clear, extremely clear, that additional regulation on the economy at this point would be a burden on growth and whichever candidate imposes the most regulation is going to get the least growth.
Talk of Bretton Woods II may be overambitious, but some new global architecture of financial regulation and oversight, or at least more effective coordination of national regulation, is going to be necessary once we touch bottom in this financial crisis.
"When you have an atmosphere where people feel they can do whatever they want to make money, and regulation is going to be going away, it just makes our job a lot harder".
"It will be four to five years," said Carrington Phillip, vice president for regulatory affairs at Cox Communications, "before we have a good sense of how regulation is going to evolve".
I think what the critics of the current system have to answer is if external regulation is going to be introduced, who is to do it, and to whom is that person or regulator to be accountable?" Cox denied that the committee had been overly lenient with Miller.
"In the wake of Enron," he said, "the possibility is that regulation is going to go much too far and that we are going to create a kind of audit society in which there is the illusion that if there are enough regulations and if you check off enough boxes, everything will be fine".
I wouldn't mind, except that starving health care and environmental regulation is going to doom this country to second-class status in the world, and it is my children and grandchildren who are going to have to live with the results.
