Who Is Protecting Investors?

A lot of people would like to know why so few of those who brought this economy to the brink of collapse have paid any price for their actions. They also ask why banks, deemed too big to fail at the time of crisis, have become still larger. Though we still have no good answers, we now have even more questions:
Are market regulators organized to anticipate problems and forestall dangerous practices? Or are they simply reactive and largely ineffective prosecutors? Do they have the tools or the motivation to address potentially destabilizing market behavior in the future? More in Barron’s here.