Overhaul of the Fed (1 Viewer)

Bush is starting to sound more and more like Nixon.

Voted into office on a platform which touted deregulation and less government interference, he's now turned the corner toward draconian, totatliarian centralized microscopic examinations of financial institutions.

What's next, a revival of Tricky Dick's wage/price freezes? Not good. Not good at all.

CBS NEWS
Sweeping Overhaul Of Fed Proposed
Bush Administration Would Strengthen Reserve's Oversight Of Financial Institutions


Sweeping Overhaul Of Fed Proposed, Bush Administration Would Strengthen Reserve's Oversight Of Financial Institutions - CBS News
 
Bush is starting to sound more and more like Nixon.

Voted into office on a platform which touted deregulation and less government interference, he's now turned the corner toward draconian, totatliarian centralized microscopic examinations of financial institutions.

What's next, a revival of Tricky Dick's wage/price freezes? Not good. Not good at all.

CBS NEWS
Sweeping Overhaul Of Fed Proposed
Bush Administration Would Strengthen Reserve's Oversight Of Financial Institutions


Sweeping Overhaul Of Fed Proposed, Bush Administration Would Strengthen Reserve's Oversight Of Financial Institutions - CBS News

Agree 100%...Next up: WIN buttons
 
Kirk Walters, Ohio -- The Toledo Blade
walters.jpg
 
MSNBC
White House unveils financial-rules overhaul
Plan to move more oversight to the Federal Reserve
March 31, 2008


WASHINGTON - The Bush administration Monday proposed the most far-ranging overhaul of the financial regulatory system since the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression.

The plan would change how the government regulates thousands of businesses from the nation’s biggest banks and investment houses down to the local insurance agent and mortgage broker.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson unveiled the 218-page plan in a speech in Treasury’s ornate Cash Room. He declared that a strong financial system was important not just for Wall Street but also for working Americans.

Fact file: Financial overhaul
The main elements of the Bush administration's plan to overhaul financial regulation:

— Expand the role of the President's Working Group on Financial Markets to include the entire financial sector and not just financial markets.

— Create a federal commission, the Mortgage Origination Commission, to develop uniform, minimum licensing standards for mortgage market participants.

— Close the Office of Thrift Supervision, which regulates thrift institutions, and move those functions to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates banks.

— Merge the functions of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission into the Securities and Exchange Commission to create one agency to provide unified oversight of the futures and securities industries.

— Establish an Office of National Insurance within the Treasury Department to regulate those in the insurance industry who want to operate under an optional federal charter.

— Work to establish as a long-term goal three major regulators: the Federal Reserve as a "market stability regulator"; a "prudential financial regulator" to take over the functions of five separate banking regulators; and a "business conduct regulator" to regulate business conduct and consumer protection.

Source: Associated Press

READ MORE
White House unveils financial-rules overhaul - Stocks economy - MSNBC.com
 
I don't know much about this stuff at all, so really, my opinion is almost worthless.

But it smells like a either an overreaction, or a desperate measure meant to ward off events that are far, far more ominous than most people realize.

Nothing that drastic could be good.
 
No, I'm not going to sit here and pretend to even begin to fathom all the ramifications of these proposals.

Certainly, establishing a Office of National Insurance within the Treasury Department jumps out and grabs my attention.

Centralized Federal control over the insurance industry? I would tend to think the line of lobbyists would be long, with very deep-pocketed interests fighting it tooth and nail.

Then again, I can easily picture a lot of Gulf Coast residents cheering the move heartily. :)
 
No, I'm not going to sit here and pretend to even begin to fathom all the ramifications of these proposals.

Certainly, establishing a Office of National Insurance within the Treasury Department jumps out and grabs my attention.

Centralized Federal control over the insurance industry? I would tend to think the line of lobbyists would be long, with very deep-pocketed interests fighting it tooth and nail.

Right. I haven't read much on the proposal, but if it is par for the course for this Administration the issue isn't more, or less, regulation. The issue is federal preemption. You get the feds involved, you create a regulatory system written by the corporate interests and then you have the conservative judiciary rule that the federal scheme preempts any attempts by the states to exercise control.
 
Right. I haven't read much on the proposal, but if it is par for the course for this Administration the issue isn't more, or less, regulation. The issue is federal preemption. You get the feds involved, you create a regulatory system written by the corporate interests and then you have the conservative judiciary rule that the federal scheme preempts any attempts by the states to exercise control.

Yeah.

I happen to think the insurance industry is by and large evil and out of control. So I don't much care about anything that happens to them. Anyone who has the power to legislate requirements to buy their product, but also to influence lawmakers to limit and obfuscate the actual delivery of their product, can go straight to hell.

But I think what you're suggesting is this might well further the games played by the insurance companies, rather than limiting them. That's just great.

But all of the other stuff seems so insanely bureaucratic and complicated that it has to have a lot of negative consequences.
 
I just noticed the word "optional" in that Office of National Insurance proposal. :hihi:

Let's check in with the WSJ and see what they're saying...well, well, well...looky who's chiming in, Louisiana's own Richard Baker!

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Proposed Rules Bring Cheers, Fears
Some on Wall Street Expect Simplification; Others, Greater Burdens
By RANDALL SMITH, SUSANNE CRAIG AND ROBIN SIDEL
March 31, 2008; Page C1


With a trader's eye toward risk and reward, Wall Street saw upside in the possibility of lighter, more streamlined regulation, but worried that rules designed to make the financial system safer could cut into profits.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is proposing a sweeping overhaul of the system that regulates banks, brokerages, exchanges and insurance companies that is designed to streamline the structure. The proposal also would shift power from states to the federal government and eliminate some regulatory agencies, giving more power to the Federal Reserve. The plan is unlikely to gain approval soon, with a lame-duck president and an increasingly partisan Congress unlikely to make major moves in an election year.

RICHARD BAKER EXERPTS:

"There has been a view that the trouble could be laid at the feet of hedge funds," said Richard Baker, the former Louisiana congressman who in February became president of the Managed Funds Association in Washington, D.C., the biggest hedge-fund industry group.

While momentum for increased oversight of the industry appears to be growing, hedge-fund executives interpreted the plan as giving them just one overseer. "The goal here domestically and internationally is for hedge funds to have a single regulatory regime," he said. "That could be viewed as simpler and, from the regulators' side, more effective."

READ MORE (Subscription Required...unless you go to Google News and look it up :) )
Free Preview - WSJ.com
 
We're all waiting for the other shoe to fall. All the bad loans aren't out of the system yet. Probably won't be for another year or two.
 
New Yorker: Americans are going for broke - The New Yorker - MSNBC.com

Everything seems to backfire I would have thought tougher bankruptcy laws would have helped not hurt.

I always thought the bankruptcy reform was horrendous.

It sounds good on paper, under the guise of making people responsible for their own decisions. But it was a boondoggle for the credit companies, and it didn't include reform of any of the complicated, draconian, usurous practices of credit companies.

We've been over it many times on the board, but when companies are able to create complicated tricks that force credit holders into interest rates over 33%--and they reform bankruptcy laws in such a way that it becomes almost impossible for people to escape those debts--who's the one at fault?
 
I always thought the bankruptcy reform was horrendous.

It sounds good on paper, under the guise of making people responsible for their own decisions. But it was a boondoggle for the credit companies, and it didn't include reform of any of the complicated, draconian, usurous practices of credit companies.

We've been over it many times on the board, but when companies are able to create complicated tricks that force credit holders into interest rates over 33%--and they reform bankruptcy laws in such a way that it becomes almost impossible for people to escape those debts--who's the one at fault?


Sort of sounds like our current "free choice" healthcare system that so many people reflexively defend.

You have the choice of which plan might or might not screw you out of paying for catastrophic healthcare coverage if something really bad that would bankrupt your family happens.
 

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