Financial reform endgame

[Cate Long]

We are entering the final quarter of Congress' efforts to reform our
banking and financial services laws.

The House and Senate conference committee begins it formal
consideration of merging the two pieces of legislation next week.
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank will be
leading the conference process.

The Senate passed it's version of legislation on May 20 with a variety
of amendments that address derivatives oversight, proprietary trading,
fiduciary standard, hedge fund registration, credit rating agency
reform, auditing the Fed, access to the discount window for bank
holding companies which trade swaps, resolution authority, the
Consumer Financial Protection Agency and many other fine print
issues. Substantial new powers have been granted to the Federal
Reserve and other government agencies.

The House of Representatives passed their version of the legislation
on December 11.

The House version has substantial differences from the Senate version.
Particular areas of divergence are the definition of "swap execution
facilities", explicit leverage limits for financial firms, the Volcker
rule and the scope of authority for the Government Accounting Office's
audit of the Federal Reserve.

We have consolidated commentary from law firms, bloggers, financial
technology firms and media on financial reform at Riski.

See here: http://freerisk.org/wiki/index.php/Senate_draft_commentary

If you see any good coverage of the conference process please forward
it.

Chairman Frank, House Financial Services Ranking Member Bachus,
Speaker Pelosi, Senate Banking Committee Ranking Member Shelby and
others are pushing for the conference process to be open and broadcast
on C-Span. This would reduce the influence of the banks lobbyists. We
anticipate an announcement shortly.

We are hoping that the bill remains strong and the banks don't succeed
in stripping out the vital sections of the bill.

We'll keep everyone updated.