An American presidential panel said the current system of hedgefund regulation is “working well” and market discipline remains the best way to protect investors and guard against risks to the financial system.

The panel, led by the Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, and including his counterparts at the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said in guidelines released yesterday that the responsibility of maintaining discipline falls on hedge-fund managers, investors, creditors, trading partners, and market regulators.

“Those who would believe that the role of regulators is to guard against any losses or somehow prevent losses or to prevent a hedge fund from having problems, they have a different philosophy about regulation than I do,” Mr. Paulson said in an interview.

The report by the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, which Mr. Paulson called the “unified perspective” of American regulators, makes no recommendations for new regulation. It follows the failure last September of Amaranth Advisors LLC, a Greenwich, Conn.-based hedge fund that lost $6.6 billion on natural-gas trades. Hedge funds manage an estimated $1.4 trillion in assets. The working group’s stance is at odds with positions adopted by some European governments, led by Germany, and some state officials, who think more regulation is needed.

“These vague recommendations lack substance and specifics, making them unenforceable,” the Attorney General of Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, said. They amount to a “buyer-beware strategy that has proven ineffective.”

Some members of Congress, including Senator Dodd of Connecticut and Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the new Democratic chairmen of the Senate and House banking committees, have expressed concern that pension fund investments in hedge funds could jeopardize the retirement savings of average Americans.