The attorney general of New York, Eliot Spitzer, issued a Christmas Day press release about his plans to cede the lead in the year ahead. “In response to reporters’ questions about enforcement actions in the New Year, Mr. Spitzer noted that federal authorities, specifically the SEC, have become much more active, and, as a result, it would be less likely that states would have to take the lead or act alone in confronting new problems,” the release from Mr. Spitzer’s office said.

If Mr. Spitzer does indeed mean to cede the lead, that will leave at least some New Yorkers breathing a sigh of relief. It reduces the risk that the attorney general will overreach and end up damaging important institutions. The New York Stock exchange is one example of Mr. Spitzer doing exactly that. The attorney general sued its former chief executive, Richard Grasso, in an effort to recover $100 million in compensation that the exchange had paid Mr. Grasso. The result, in part, could be seen in the announcement last week by the giant discount broker Charles Schwab that it was giving up its seat on the New York Stock Exchange. The price of a seat on the stock exchange has sunk to about $1 million, far below the $2.6 million one was worth at the height of the Grasso era.

Mr. Spitzer may well be wondering how to win the backing of the business community for his gubernatorial bid. One approach would be to emphasize not only his aggressive prosecution of corporate misdeeds, but his restraint. Unlike the regulators at the end of the last financial boom, in the 1980s, who pushed Drexel Burnham Lambert into bankruptcy and out of business, Mr. Spitzer hasn’t yet put a major bank, insurance company, or mutual fund firm out of business. He’s saddled the companies with onerous settlement agreements, document-production requests, and subpoenas. He has wielded the overly vague and broad bludgeon of the Martin Act. But unlike, say, Rudolph Giuliani in his term as a federal prosecutor, he hasn’t taken anyone out in handcuffs. Mr. Spitzer has taken aim at some genuine problems – late trading in the mutual fund industry, bid-rigging in insurance, and Wall Street “research” that was really an arm of the effort to win stock and bond underwriting business.

Mr. Giuliani, of course, managed in his successful term as mayor to make the transition from bane of Wall Street to its hero. One way he did it was by reducing taxes. It’s unclear who Mr. Spitzer’s opponent will be in the election for governor, which is still almost two years away. But if Mr. Spitzer really wants to signal that he isn’t a scourge of economic growth, the best way to do it would be to start talking about taxes and spending, areas where the attorney general doesn’t have much of a record, but where there is plenty of room for someone like Mr. Spitzer, who claims to be a centrist Democrat, to get to the right of New York’s liberal Republicans.