Before he joined SIFMA, Ryan held senior positions in the industry in both corporate and regulatory roles, from the vice chairman level at JPMorgan to Director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, where he helped in the S&L cleanup. He talked to Elizabeth Wine about today's regulatory needs.

1. What do you think of President Obama's proposal for financial reform?
We're for a new regulatory apparatus, especially directed at the large interconnected firms that the press calls 'too big to fail.' We like what's in the House bill: a council of existing regulators chaired by the Secretary of the Treasury, with the actual work of supervising large interconnected entities going to the Fed. Get a regulatory apparatus for systemically important institutions and set up a resolution system so we don't have 'too big to fail.' Then largely delegate to primary regulators-the Fed, the FDIC, the SEC, the CFTC-the authority to establish specific rules that deal with capital, leverage, liquidity and permissible activities.

2. You don't like the so-called Volcker rule. Why?
We're just surprised this came out when it did. It had been promoted by Volcker for the past 13 months. It could have been included in any regulatory proposal on the table, or the House bill. But it wasn't. This crisis of the last two years did not come about because of proprietary trading, hedge funds or private equity. It was about making mortgage loans to people who couldn't pay, government-designed programs originated by mortgage brokers who were not regulated, and pushed into the financial system. His proposal doesn't address the core issues.

3. There's a lot of popular outrage about banks. What would you say to assuage that anger?
The popular notion on this is largely incorrect. People are upset, and it's a major issue that we take seriously. But most TARP recipients have paid back the money. Some, who are not our members, have not paid back yet. Overall, Treasury thinks it will have close to a 9% return on TARP money. For people to say, 'We gave you the money,' is not true. Did they provide support in an insecure environment? Yes. Should be we pay it back? We should, and we are. But even so, we clearly have not gotten our point across, or people do not want to hear it. If this industry has made a mistake over the past 15 years, it's that we've allowed ourselves to be pigeonholed as traders. That's a piece of our business, but it's not why we exist. We exist to raise capital for people, get equity to help institutions and states and support retail investors.

4. Why is a fee on banks, as proposed by Obama, a bad idea?
The fee makes no sense to us. If it's related to TARP, which it is, before you try to make up the difference between the money you put out and money you received, go to the people who haven't paid back the government-the smaller banks, AIG, the automakers-and figure out if you can collect from them in some reasonable time frame. After they try to collect from everybody, if there is some residual piece that needs to be made up, let's sit down and figure out how to make it up.

5. What would you say to advisors who are nervous about their industry?
They're concerned about the way the regulatory agencies do their work. So they care about FINRA, which is redoing its rulebook now. They care about product rules at the SEC, the rules on short sales, the impact on investors from flash trading and dark pools. They care about the general standards that will apply to the financial advisor. The House bill says the SEC should undertake rulemaking with FINRA to come up with a new federal fiduciary standard to apply to all people who sell financial services to clients, whether they're registered reps or independent financial advisors. I think the end result likely will be, if we have legislation, it will be directed at the affected agencies doing the work, instead of Congress hard-wiring what the new standard will be.