That would be George Bush and Dick Cheney. And the people that elected them.
I don't think it is illegal to believe that reducing regulations is always beneficial. It's just wrong in many circumstances, and in particular when the result is that bad/weak/amoral people are left unrestrained.
Same thing with the banks and rogue traders. It's the banks which create the laisser faire environment but they make the rogues guilty if they take bad risks.
The issue is philosophical. A lot of people believe in the theory that all regulation is bad. Of course, some regulation is bad and it is also true that excess regulation can be harmful. Just as it is also true that some regulation is useful and insufficient regulation can be harmful.
Unfortunately, human beings don't seem to be especially good at retaining qualified messages. It's easier to live in Limbaugh land, where the government is always evil, rich people are virtuous because they are rich, fortune is irrelevant to outcomes, no taxes are better than low taxes, all public goods are a form of socialism, socialism is synonymous with wickedness and America's foreign policy should be about force and bombs rather than persuasion or example.
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