After Banks Bankroll Their Campaigns, House Members Push to Undermine Dodd-Frank

[octoberlib]

Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) is pushing a new bill — which was passed out of committee by a voice vote and is currently being considered by House leadership — titled the “Swap Execution Facility Clarification Act” that would weaken some of the financial regulations related to transparency in the derivatives market put into place by the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill passed last year.

As the New York Times’s Gretchen Morgenson explains, financial swaps have typically been made “one-on-one, over the telephone. The price is usually whatever the dealer says it is,” which provides little transparency. The Dodd-Frank bill sought to reform this by enacting new reporting and transparency requirements. Yet if Garrett’s bill is enacted, it would “bar the Securities and Exchange Commission and the [Commodity Futures Trading Commission] from requiring swap execution facilities to have a minimum number of participants or mandating displays of prices.” This would help gut transparency in the derivatives market.


In sponsoring this bill, Garrett is joined not only by five of his House Republican colleagues, but also by three Democrats. Co-sponsor Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) counts FIRE as two of the top three donors to her 2010 campaign, while FIRE accounts for the top 5 donors to Rep. Gregory Meeks’s (D-NY) 2010 campaign. FIRE represents the top two industries donating to co-sponsor Rep. Gwen Moore’s (D-WI) campaign, with Bank of America registering a PAC $10,000 contribution representing her top single donation. Morgenson also notes that Maloney told her she was concerned about “job losses on Wall Street” if the financial reform law was not amended.

The backers of Garrett’s bill overtly have very different philosophies, ranging from the Tea Party conservatism espoused by Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY) to Moore’s championing of labor unionism. Yet major donations from Big Finance tie them all together as they try to undermine new laws designed to bring transparency to Wall Street and the financial sector. Fittingly, Dan Cohen and Ali Wolpert, two lobbyists representing the Depository Trust & Clearing Company, a financial firm, will be holding a fundraiser for Maloney next month.




http://www.republicreport.org/2012/banks-transparency-gophouse/#sthash.ziw2iTFZ.dpuf



*FIRE stands for Finance, Insurance and Real Estate industries

[Old Codger]

1. Absolutely

The best government money can buy....

[Octafish]

2. Systemic Corruption

For the non-paupers in spirit, a pot of gold awaits...

Neil Barofsky Gave Us The Best Explanation For Washington's Dysfunction We've Ever Heard

Linette Lopez
Business Insider, Aug. 1, 2012, 2:57 PM

Neil Barofsky was the Inspector General for TARP, and just wrote a book about his time in D.C. called Bailout: An Insider Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street.

SNIP...

Bottom line: Barofsky said the incentive structure in our nation's capitol is all wrong. There's a revolving door between bureaucrats in Washington and Wall Street banks, and politicians just want to keep their jobs.

For regulators it's something like this:

"You can play ball and good things can happen to you get a big pot of gold at the end of the Wall Street rainbow or you can do your job be aggressive and face personal ruin...We really need to rethink how we govern and how regulate," Barofsky said.

CONTINUED... http://www.businessinsider.com/neil-barofsky-2012-8

...for the rest of us, it's Austerity Time. Again.

[octoberlib]

3. +1!

I read Barofsky's book. I found it interesting how hard it was to get the Justice Department to prosecute banksters when he worked as a US attorney for NY.