A swarm of 2,600 lobbyists for the financial industry have launched an all out offensive attacking elements of financial Reform Bill that aim to water down many of provisions of the Bill on behalf of a whole array of special interests, as amendments are offered.
Big business pleads for loopholes in financial regulatory reform
By Steven Pearlstein
Now, however, as we close in on the endgame for financial regulatory reform legislation, special interests are crawling out of the political woodwork demanding loopholes and exemptions. And if you strip away their end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it rhetoric, their basic complaint is that the reform bill would make credit and other financial risks more expensive and harder to get -- in other words, the bill is doing exactly what it is supposed to.
With the proposed reforms in place things would be a little less lucrative for Wall Street Banks as higher risks becomes less lucrative, while at the same time things would get less volatile for the rest of the country.
If there is one lesson that ought to have been learned from the recent crisis -- as well as the savings-and-loan debacle of the late 1980s -- it is that everyone who engages in the same business should be regulated in the same way by the same entity, irrespective of the charter they hold. If car dealers want to be in the lending business, they should be regulated like every other lender for the simple reason that their customers deserve the same protections as other borrowers.
Pearlstein's logic is inescapable. A disjointed regulatory scheme invites opportunistic abuses. Fragmentation of similar regulatory functions makes no logical sense.
If the price of regulatory reform is that it raises the cost of derivatives trading for end users, it is only because the cost of derivatives trading was too low and never reflected the true cost of the systemic risks and taxpayer bailouts needed to deal with them. Rather than bellyaching about modest increases in costs, these well-heeled end users ought to be thanking us for decades of implicit subsidy of their hedging activity and graciously offering to start paying their fair share.
Maintaining the status quo that keeps the free for all in the derivatives market going has the potential to impose unacceptable costs on tens of millions of Americans who aren't players in the derivative market.
More about the titanic lobbying effort as Wall Street pulls out all the stops to water down the Financial Reforms.
US banks pouring millions into bid to kill Barack Obama's finance reform bill
Wall Street is flooding Congress with lobbyists seeking to curtail key parts of the sweeping regulatory bill
America's major banks are pouring millions of dollars into an apparently successful attempt to weaken Barack Obama's finance reform bill, currently stalled in Congress by Republican opposition.
In the face of deep public anger over the financial crisis and government bailouts, banks have flooded Congress with lobbyists seeking to curtail key parts of the sweeping regulatory bill – such as provisions to create an office for consumer protection and more strongly regulate the vast derivatives market.
JP Morgan Chase is at the forefront of lobby spending with $1.5m (£980,000) in the first quarter of this year alone – a sharp rise on the same period in 2009 – followed closely by Citigroup. Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs have also spent more than $1m on lobbying Congress this year, more than double their previous spending.
Its up to all of us to counter this money powered lobbying feeding frenzy that surrounds every Senator as they shape this vital Financial Reform Bill into its final form. Call your Senator (202) 224-3121
Here's a couple more links:
Financial industry taps D.C. insiders
this comes from the Sunlight Foundation:
Financial reform lobbyists host fundraisers for senators