A council of regulators will identify threats to the system. The Treasury secretary will lead the council.This is just part of it, and the article admits that there are still gaps needed to be filled in many areas, but still. This is a great step in the right direction.
One potential threat: Big, interconnected financial companies. The council will have authority to review both banks and nonbank companies, such as insurers and credit unions, that haven't faced bank-style regulation, to see if they could threaten the system. All such companies must meet tougher standards. For example, their use of borrowed money will be limited. Fuller disclosures, onsite supervision by Federal Reserve regulators and stiffer accounting rules will apply, too.
Derivatives for the first time will also trade through clearinghouses. These intermediaries settle trades and are on the hook if the owner can't pay off its derivatives contracts. Clearinghouses will require derivatives sellers to set aside money for each contract in case their bets go bad.
A new agency will oversee consumer products and services, from mortgages to check cashing. It will regulate many nonbank companies, such as payday lenders. Before the crisis, no regulator with financial expertise oversaw the most reckless mortgage lenders.
The regulator will police companies that dominate consumer finance, such as credit card companies and the biggest banks. The agency will write rules and ban products it deems unsafe, such as mortgages that require payment of interest only. It can ban confusing language in documents. And the agency can punish companies that don't comply.
It actually did say exactly what you're saying it didn't: it called for the guy to be captured or, if necessary, killed. It only ordered that he be killed in the event he couldn't safely be captured alive.Hahaha. How exactly do you capture someone with a predator drone?
Obama is a pragmatic politician. The reason he gets dragged through the mud by both sides is because he is willing to compromise, which is not acceptable in our partisan political atmosphere.
Consumer Financial Protection BureauAs the site where I found the above summaries notes, it all comes down to the implementation of the act. The act itself provides enough regulatory authority to do much more, or much less, than advertised.
Will write consumer protection rules for banks and nonbank financial firms offering consumers financial services or products and ensure that consumers are protected from “unfair, deceptive, or abusive” acts or practices.
Federal Insurance Office
Will monitor all aspects of the insurance agency and identify issues or gaps in regulation that could lead to systemic risk. Based upon its findings, the FIO will make recommendations to the FSOC regarding insurance institutions that pose a systemic risk and should be subject to greater regulatory oversight.
Financial Stability Oversight Council
Will identify risks and emerging threats to the financial stability of the United States arising from large bank holding companies and systemically important nonbank financial companies and respond with appropriate regulation to reduce the risk from their size and activities.
Office of Financial Research
Will have the power to subpoena financial information from institutions under the supervision of the Fed. The OFR may require periodic and other reports from any nonbank financial company or bank holding companies. [This entity is also charged with performing research and analysis into the financial markets generally, to identify practices that may pose systemic risk]
Brady Dennis covers the controversy over Elizabeth Warren and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau today, noting that she is a short-list candidate for the job, along with Assistant Treasury Secretary Michael Barr and deputy Attorney General Eugene Kimmelman, a former official at Consumers Union, Public Citizen and the Consumer Federation of America. The one new piece of information in the article is White House spokesman Jen Psaki contradicting Chris Dodd and saying that Warren would be confirmable:I'm actually pretty disappointed in how TPM initially reported this. It seems like an extremely misleading characterization of the circumstances, especially considering the fact that the President has the authority to appoint Warren to be the first interim head of the agency without even requiring congressional confirmation.
The White House has been careful to leave its options open, even as officials have expressed faith both in Warren’s qualifications and her ability to win Senate approval.
“While there are a number of strong choices under consideration for this position, Elizabeth Warren is a champion for consumers and middle-class families, and we are confident she is confirmable,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
An audit for the Fed. Owners of the "Audit the Fed" shirts might like this one. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) will perform a one-time review of Federal Reserve emergency lending. The details should be on the Federal Reserve website by December 1, 2010. The GAO will have the authority to conduct more audits in the future, but there is no requirement.posted by saulgoodman at 12:09 PM on July 22, 2010 [1 favorite]
bla bla bla. The problem with arguing that whatever Obama is doing is "pragmatic" is that it's totally vaccuous. I mean, there's nothing that can't be excused as being the "pragmatic" choice. It's meaningless. Especially because it's so often used to mean politically pragmatic, rather then simply pragmatic in a policy sense. The public option, for example, would have reduced the cost the healthcare bill. There were no policy downsides. But it was dropped, and the excuse was 'pragmatism'. But how was it pragmatic?"Obama is a pragmatic politician. The reason he gets dragged through the mud by both sides is because he is willing to compromise, which is not acceptable in our partisan political atmosphere."This is a guy who first appeared on the national stage and eventually became president because of a speech where he said, "there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America."
I hear they're going to have a whole "Don't Watch Porn While You Let the Economy Crash, Asshole" policy added to the employee handbook, for one.How exactly would watching porn, as opposed to, say, reading Metafilter during work going to have a greater negative impact on your job performance? Almost all high level knowlege workers surf the web during work, there's no reason to be puritanical.
One senior attorney at SEC headquarters in Washington spent up to eight hours a day accessing Internet porn. When he filled all the space on his government computer with pornographic images, he downloaded more to CDs and DVDs that accumulated in boxes in his offices.Are you trying to claim that behaviours like this, behaviours that were going on while the very companies the SEC was supposed to be regulating were destroying our economy, don't have a serious negative impact on your performance? Am I "puritanical" because I think these people are the scum of the earth?
An SEC accountant attempted to access porn websites 1,800 times in a two-week period and had 600 pornographic images on her computer hard drive.
Another SEC accountant attempted to access porn sites 16,000 times in a single month.
In one case, the report said, an employee tried hundreds of times to access pornographic sites and was denied access [more horrors at URL]
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And it's light years beyond where we'd be if McCain/Palin had won the election, so yeah, once again, I'm happy with my vote for Obama and the Dems in Congress.
posted by darkstar at 3:29 PM on July 21, 2010 [20 favorites]