http://www.georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2010/04/has-obama-even-read-fi...

Has Obama Even READ The Financial Reform Bill?

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/04/dodd-financial-reform-bill-all-ho...

In a letter to Senate majority leader Harry Reid and minority leader Mitch McConnell, luminaries including former SEC Chief Accountant Lynn Turner, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, hedge fund owner Jim Chanos, former Lehman Brothers Vice Chair Peter Solomon, former S&L investigator Bill Black, former Senate Banking Committee Chief Economist Rob Johnson, economists Dean Baker, Barry Eichengreen and others pointed out that Dodd's proposed financial reform legislation wouldn't have prevented the current crisis ... and won't prevent the next crisis.
Dodd himself has admitted that his bill "will not stop the next crisis from coming".

In fact, the bill is wholly ineffective, failing to address the core things which need to be done to stabilize the economy. See this, this and this.

As I wrote last month:

Senator Dodd is trying to push through a financial "reform" which bill won't do anything to break up the too big to fails, or do much of anything at all ...

For example, Dodd's bill:

Won't break up or reduce the size of too big to fail banks
Won't remove the massive government guarantees to the giant banks

And won't even increase liquidity requirements to prevent future meltdowns

As Senator Ted Kaufman points out:

What walls will this bill erect? None.

***

Just this week, a Moody’s report stated: “…the proposed regulatory framework doesn't appear to be significantly different from what exists today."

***

In sum, little in these reforms is really new and nothing in these reforms will change the size of these mega-banks.

Moreover - as Simon Johnson notes - the bill intentionally doesn't have much in the way of specifics, but just pushes off on regulators the ability to crack down on Wall Street in the future. As Johnson notes, this is a recipe for continued failure to rein in Wall Street:

If legislation can only empower regulators then, given regulators are only as strong a newly elected president wants them to be, the approach in the Dodd bill simply will not work.

Indeed, Democratic Congressman Brad Sherman - a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee and a certified public accountant - said recently:

The Dodd bill has unlimited executive bailout authority. That’s something Wall Street desperately wants but doesn’t dare ask for. The bill contains permanent, unlimited bailout authority.

And as Arthur Delaney points out, the bill is riddled with carve-outs purchased by lobbyists:

"Obtaining a carve-out isn't rocket science," said a Republican financial services lobbyist. "Just give Chairman Dodd [D-Conn.] and Chuck Schumer [D-N.Y.] a shitload of money."

On MSNBC Tuesday morning, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), a Banking Committee member who worked closely with Dodd, said there was "no question" that Dodd's draft contained loopholes. Corker mentioned a few hits from the carve-out list: "Private equity firms are left out," he said. "Hedge funds are left out."

The bill is all holes and no cheese.

President Obama said today:

The reform that both parties have been working on for a year would prevent a crisis like this from happening again ...

Is that true?

Well, the chief sponsor of the bill Obama supports - Chris Dodd - said:

This legislation will not stop the next crisis from coming.
Breaking up the big banks, appointing real regulators, decreasing leverage, separating traditional banking from speculation, and reining in derivatives will stop the next crisis from coming.

The proposed financial reform legislation won't.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63I3ZW20100426

The vote gives Republicans leverage to extract more concessions from Democrats on a measure that could ban banks from several lucrative types of trading and subject them to greater oversight.

Needing 60 votes in the 100-seat Senate to begin debate on the bill, Democrats fell three votes short.

The setback is not likely to be permanent. Lawmakers in both parties said they are close to agreement and the Senate could take up the bill later this week.

As Wall Street reels from a fraud case against Goldman Sachs Group Inc, lawmakers from both parties are eager to crack down on the financial industry before the November congressional elections. The vote came a day before Goldman executives were due to appear before a Senate panel.

"All of us want to deliver a reform that will tighten the screws on Wall Street. But we're not going to be rushed on another massive bill," Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said ahead of the vote.

More than two years since the near-collapse of Bear Stearns ushered in the worst U.S. banking and capital market crisis in generations, both sides in the Senate were locked in negotiations toward a possible bipartisan compromise.

President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats want tighter rules to prevent a repeat of the 2008-2009 crisis, which tipped the economy into a deep recession. Republicans see a need for reform, but say the Democrats' bill is a government overreach.

The future shape and profitability of the banking industry hangs in the balance.

The bill would form a consumer watchdog, bar banks from trading unrelated to clients and devise a new process for dismantling troubled financial firms. It also would crack down on the unpoliced $450 trillion derivatives market that helped ignite the financial crisis.

Democrats, who control 59 votes in the Senate, needed to hold their ranks and garner at least one Republican vote to begin debate on the bill.

But they came up short when conservative Democrat Ben Nelson joined Republicans to block the bill by a vote of 57 to 41. According to the Wall Street Journal, Nelson had sought to modify the bill to protect home-state investor Warren Buffett.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid also voted no, a tactical move that allows him to bring up the measure again once he secures the needed Republican support. "The only thing Republicans stand for is standing together," Reid said.

Republicans have struck a conciliatory tone and said they expect a final bill to pass by a wide margin.

The stakes are high for Obama. Since the passage of his landmark healthcare restructuring, he has sharply criticized Wall Street in speeches backing the Democratic bill.

Obama said he was "deeply disappointed" by the vote.

"Some of these senators may believe that this obstruction is a good political strategy, and others may see delay as an opportunity to take this debate behind closed doors, where financial industry lobbyists can water down reform or kill it altogether," Obama said in a statement.

Roughly two-thirds of Americans want stricter financial regulations, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released on Monday.

Hundreds of lobbyists for banks and Wall Street, sometimes working closely with Republicans, have been working for months to block or weaken the reform plans, which threaten bank profits, particularly in the lucrative derivatives market.

Bank stocks fell on Monday, with the KBW Banks index down 3.1 percent. The financial crisis hit bank stocks hard, but they are up 30 percent so far this year.

Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley told the Reuters Global Financial Regulation Summit on Monday that the bill Democrats were offering would require banks to spin off swap-trading units.

Swaps are a type of financial contract implicated in the downfall of bailed-out insurer AIG and other firms that bet heavily in the derivatives market.

Obama administration officials have declined to say whether they support that approach, though officials have praised the broader bill.

Republicans have focused their criticism on an element of the bill that would aim to end bailouts of "too big to fail" firms like Goldman. Democrats want an "orderly liquidation" process. As proposed, the bill aims to protect taxpayers from costly bailouts, like that of AIG, while shielding the economy from shock bankruptcies like Lehman Brothers' 2008 collapse.

Senator Richard Shelby, the lead Republican negotiator on the issue, has said it does not sufficiently ensure that taxpayers won't be on the hook for future bailouts.

"I am hoping that we can get a bill. I would like to get a bill this week, or next week, as soon as we can," he said after meeting with Democratic Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd a few hours before the vote.

HOUSE CLEARED BILL LAST YEAR

The U.S. House of Representatives approved a reform bill in December. Whatever the Senate produces would have to be merged with the House bill before a final measure could go to Obama to be signed into law. Analysts expect that by mid-year.

The reform debate has intensified amid the high-profile fraud case brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission against Goldman, a titan of Wall Street.

Goldman released three-year-old emails over the weekend that showed bond trader Fabrice Tourre wrote of the impending collapse of the subprime mortgage market and how he was masterminding ways at Goldman to make money from it.

Tourre is the only individual charged by the SEC in its case. Goldman released the e-mails as it readies for its appearance before a Senate panel on Tuesday.

Goldman Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein and Tourre are slated to testify, with other former and current executives.

Goldman Sachs and Blankfein were hit with a shareholder lawsuit on Monday claiming they hid key details about a risky transaction that resulted in the SEC charges.

(Additional reporting by Rachelle Younglai, Thomas Ferraro and Tabassum Zakaria; Editing by Will Dunham)

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