US Treasury - Is It Supposed To Be A Regulator? What About SEC, FDIC, Office of Thrift?

[Median Democrat]

I remember reading some critiques of Geithner's plan, and listened to one critic on NPR. Many of the criticisms appear to be directed on the failure of the plan to address the flaws in the current financial system that lead to this meltdown such as lack of regulation. My question is whether we really do want the U.S. Department of Treasury to be the primary regulator of the financial markets? Here is the Department's description of its mission:

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The Treasury Department is the executive agency responsible for promoting economic prosperity and ensuring the financial security of the United States. The Department is responsible for a wide range of activities such as advising the President on economic and financial issues, encouraging sustainable economic growth, and fostering improved governance in financial institutions. The Department of the Treasury operates and maintains systems that are critical to the nation's financial infrastructure, such as the production of coin and currency, the disbursement of payments to the American public, revenue collection, and the borrowing of funds necessary to run the federal government. The Department works with other federal agencies, foreign governments, and international financial institutions to encourage global economic growth, raise standards of living, and to the extent possible, predict and prevent economic and financial crises. The Treasury Department also performs a critical and far-reaching role in enhancing national security by implementing economic sanctions against foreign threats to the U.S., identifying and targeting the financial support networks of national security threats, and improving the safeguards of our financial systems.

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Shouldn't the role regulating financial markets be entrusted to an agency whose mission is not to promote economic growth? Shouldn't the role of regulation fall to an agency like the SEC with greatly increased powers?

I know a lot of people are pushing for the Treasury to be a more aggressive regulator, but I am not sure whether I want the Department that is trying to promote economic growth to also be responsible for oversight. I think that is why regulation was entrusted to a different agency originally, and why the President can't simply fire the Chairman of the SEC.