… is from page 128 of Roger Koppl’s outstandingly good 2014 monograph, From Crisis to Confidence: Macroeconomics after the Crash (link added):
[I]f regulators are human, their decisions may be biased towards self-serving ends. An obvious bias to fear and expect is one towards greater centralisation and greater state control over the decisions of financial institutions (Higgs 1987: 159-95). Such control serves the bureaucratic interests of the regulators in general. Thus regulators may have an interest in more control, as well as a cognitive bias in that direction that develops regardless of any particular self-interest. Moreover, regulators will be loath to blame themselves when things go wrong. They will sincerely protest that they need more tools, more power and more control in order to prevent future problems.
