It's Not Over

News
By Team at August 30, 2010 - 5:40pm

So reports the New York Times:

Having passed the Dodd-Frank Act earlier this summer, the bill that aspires to reorder our financial universe in the wake of the most serious economic crisis in generations, Congress has moved on to other matters. Regulators are left to write the rules that will make financial reform a reality — or not — and are beginning that laborious process. ..

The question is this: Will regulators give Wall Street’s big dealers what they want in a second bite of the apple?

There is no doubt that regulating the freewheeling derivatives market is important work. If done right, heightened scrutiny could well eliminate the potential for another disastrous bank run like the one that threatened world markets in September 2008 when the American International Group imploded. The insurer had written insurance on mortgage securities— a derivative known as a credit default swap — and almost collapsed after, among other things, onerous collateral calls from its trading partners drained its cash...

“It is again going back to the battlefield, and this is a much more complicated battlefield...”

“There is going to be so much pressure from the biggest financial institutions not to have limits,” said Heather Slavkin, senior policy adviser of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s Office of Investment and a participant in the Aug. 20 meeting. “Regulators are going to be very much focused on what types of swaps get cleared, so the governance and ownership aspects that are just as important may not get the attention they deserve.”

It's not over yet. We must continue to hold the regulators accountable and ensure that they follow both the letter and the spirit of the Wall Street Reform law.

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