Not good enough.

That's the message the National Center for Regulatory Reform has for the Obama administration over its proposed regulations for the financial and insurance industries.

Under the president's plan, the government would have the right to seize key companies whose failure jeopardizes the financial system. Right now, the government's authority to seize companies is mostly limited to banks.

Mike Aguirre of Aguirre, Morris, and Severson in San Diego and the primary architect of a reform proposal issued by the National Center for Regulatory Reform, takes exception to the administration's assertion that the proposals are the most significant new regulation of the financial industry since the 1930s.

"We do not believe that the new regulations are the most significant since the Depression," Aguirre said. "It appears that they will do more harm than good."

Aguirre, along with a group of reformers in San Diego who established the National Center for Regulatory Reform, has been working on his own reform proposal based upon those adopted by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. The proposal calls for a repeal of the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which established the FDIC, required a strict separation of investment banking from commercial banking, and urged that hedge funds be required to register as investment companies. Aguirre and his fellow reformers also support the requirement that hedge fund managers and advisers register as investment advisers under the Investment Advisors Act.

"We believe it is a fundamental error to put the individuals who were deeply involved in the deregulation of financial derivatives, as is the case with Secretary Tim Geithner and White House Economic Adviser Larry Summers, in charge of financial reform," Aguirre said. "There will be no recovery of our stock market, financial and insurance systems until integrity and real reform are embraced."

The reformers also propose the following:

• Bank depositors' funds should be invested in ordinary commercial business activity.
• Insurance policy premiums should be used to pay benefits and invested in conservative investments.
• Financial derivatives should be brought under the jurisdiction of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.
• State insurance regulations should be strengthened.
• Investment bankers should not speculate with other people's money.