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Simon Johnson calculates that Fed board members have met with opponents of financial reform—mostly, bankers—about 10 times more than they have met with advocates.

It’s actually quite stunning just how many times representatives of big banks have met with Fed officials on the Volcker Rule.

Just on the Volcker Rule — the provision in Dodd-Frank to limit proprietary trading and other high-risk activities by megabanks — Fed board members and staff members apparently met with JPMorgan Chase 16 times, Bank of America 10 times, Goldman Sachs nine times, Barclays seven times and Morgan Stanley seven times…

Volcker Rule advocates will no doubt be wringing their hands in distress. Unfortunately, few will probably allow the facts about the regulatory process to shake their faith in regulation. So let me try to make it very clear.

This is how regulation works—or, rather, doesn’t work. The ideology of regulation—that is, the idea that government supervision will prevent private sector excess and error—is fundamentally flawed because it doesn’t take into account that in almost every case, the regulations are written by the special interests supposedly being regulated.

Political scientists use the phrase “regulatory capture” to describe this process but that is somewhat misleading. It implies that at some stage regulators are free and need to be captured. In fact, regulators live in special interest captivity from day one.

Regulatory supervision simply will not do much to address the fragility of our financial system. In fact, it’s likely to make everything that’s bad about the financial system even worse.

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