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Financial Regulatory Reform Update

By Anonymous

For those interested, here is the text of the proposed bill.

It is only 1,336 pages long ...

Some overviews:
From Sewell Chan at the NY Times:

Mr. Dodd said he believed there was substantial bipartisan agreement on 9 of the bill?s 11 provisions, the exceptions being consumer protection and corporate governance.
...
The major flashpoints will include, among other things, the scope of authority for a new Consumer Financial Protection bureau to be established within the Fed; the scope of exemptions under new rules governing the trade of derivatives; and the mechanism by which the government could seize and dismantle a large company on the verge of failure.

The bill includes a provision intended to curb Wall Street?s influence over the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Its president would be appointed by the president of the United States, not by a board that includes representatives of member banks.

From the WSJ: Finance Overhaul Sets Up Winners, Losers

Among the winners, community banks and small credit unions would be financially able to compete, for perhaps the first time, against large competitors reined in by new restrictions on capital, complexity and size. The Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. would see their powers redefined, and in many ways expanded.

On the other side of the ledger, large financial companies overseen by the Fed would have to pay into a $50 billion fund to pay for the collapse of failed financial firms.

From Elizabeth Warren, via Firedoglake:

?Since bringing our economy to the brink of collapse, Wall Street has spent more than a year and hundreds of millions of dollars in an all-out effort to block financial reform. Despite the banks? ferocious lobbying for business as usual, Chairman Dodd took an important step today by advancing new laws to prevent the next crisis. We?re now heading toward a series of votes in which the choice will be clear: families or banks.?

Full post as published by Calculated Risk on March 16, 2010 (boomark / email).