What sort of work experience do you think the applicants for the jobs at the SEC ought to have?
If you need people people with experience in banking and finance, especially the legal and regulatory/compliance areas, where would you do your recruiting?
Do you think that only experienced murderers should adjudicate murder cases? Should all cops be expected to have extensive criminal experience, and should we expect them to return to crime after they retire from the police?
This. If anything, insider experience tends to dull willingness to enforce because "it's how everyone does it". As a regulator, the public in a real way depends on you to be the lever that looks at how everyone does it, and be willing to say "not good enough"
They are actually making a very powerful point. A regulator is expected to at some point operate from an "external to industry" perspective. Much like a test framework or testing harness must exist out_of_band of the system under test.
A regulator that regularly pulls exclusively from industry insiders should raise eyebrows. Now whether the SEC actually pulls the majority of hires from industry insiders, that's another question I can't readily answer. Don't have those figures.
Source? There is a revolving door, but it’s as much between industry and the SEC as it is between it and the rest of the public sector.