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Lessons of the debacle that led to the $700 billion financial-markets bailout include the realization that industries need better government regulation, panelists at a recent symposium at the University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore said.

"In trying to solve this problem, people are saying government is important," said Ralph S. Tyler, commissioner of the Maryland Insurance Administration. "The system needs to move more quickly so it isn't 10 steps behind."

Added Thomas E. Perez, secretary of the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation: "A sound business climate and regulation go hand in hand."

The Oct. 3 session, hosted by the school's business law program and Journal of Business and Technology Law, brought together former and current officials from the Federal Reserve Board, Maryland Insurance Administration and other agencies.

Tyler raised a perennial complaint about the nation's regulatory system: There is no central regulator of the insurance industry.

"The federal government is the dominant regulator of the financial securities industry, while the states are dominant regulators of insurance," he said.

Granting more power to the U.S. Treasury Department and Federal Reserve sets up the $700 billion plan for failure because those agencies don't have a "culture of protecting consumers," Perez said. This year, Maryland toughened its law to better regulate mortgage brokers, requiring them to provide more data about loan changes, among other aspects.

Wall Street's woes occurred after investment banks increased their borrowing and their assets then declined drastically in value, said Mark Cicirelli, an investment analyst with Elliott Associates in New York.

"The margin of error permissible is tiny," Cicirelli said. "To lose 3 percent is not difficult."

He agreed that there should be better regulation of securities, including rating agencies, saying there were numerous parties to blame for the crisis.

The newly enacted rescue plan allows the federal government to purchase bad mortgage-related securities and other distressed assets from troubled financial institutions. Credit can then be more readily available to help the economy rebound, proponents say.

But the plan failed to buoy Wall Street and international markets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and other indicators have plunged as the meltdown has gone global.

The root cause of the crisis is low wages, said Damon A. Silvers, associate general counsel of the AFL-CIO. Homeowners can't afford their mortgages and other expenses as costs escalate, especially if they lose their jobs, he said.

The Bush bailout plan does not really address problems in the housing market or help distressed homeowners, Silvers said.

Peter Morici, a business professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, who was not a panelist at the Baltimore symposium, agrees that the plan does not address key elements, such as the compensation and management practices on Wall Street that led to "irresponsible decisions" and the crisis. The plan's reforms are too weak to have meaningful effects, he said.

"It does not address the void of sound leadership at the top of major financial institutions like Citigroup and Merrill Lynch," Morici said this week in a report. "The wizards of Wall Street leave companies too poor to take care of their workers decently."

The Baltimore meeting was moderated by Michael Greenberger, a University of Maryland School of Law professor and former director of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.