In his pursuit of financial reform President Obama is sticking to the game plan: Never let a good crisis go to waste. As the legislation stands right now, we can expect to get a new layer of regulators – a Financial Stability Oversight Council that is going to be able to make up laws as it goes along.
If you think the lobbying is intense while Congress considers financial reform legislation, wait until the President signs it. That is when the real battle will begin to shape the new rules of Wall Street.
The unifying theme of the Senate bill that passed last week and the House bill of last year is to hand even more discretion and authority to the same regulators who failed to foresee and in many cases created the last crisis. The Democrats who wrote the bill are selling it as new discipline for Wall Street, but Wall Street knows better. The biggest banks support the bill, and the parts they don't like they will lobby furiously to change or water down.
Big Finance will more than hold its own with Big Government, as it always does, while politicians will have more power to exact even more campaign tribute.
That's the goal. More power to attract more campaign money. Nothing gets fixed.
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