"House approves financial reform bill."

[Clio the Leo]

House approves financial reform bill

A little over a year after Congress bailed out the financial system, the House on Friday passed a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s financial architecture and the rules that govern it, seeking to prevent a repeat of last year’s meltdown.


Friday’s 223-to-202 vote was a major victory for the Obama administration, which has made Wall Street reform a policy and political imperative, second only to health care on its agenda. But like so much of the White House’s other legislative agenda, this too, was a partisan win, as not a single Republican voted for the bill.

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) aggressively made the case for Republicans to oppose the bill, and in the end all of them did. In addition, 27 Democrats voted no. ]

The massive plan touches nearly every corner of the financial universe, from the now-opaque and largely unregulated derivatives market to consumer products like credit cards to credit rating agencies to executive compensation. It also creates a new consumer financial watchdog agency.


“The crisis from which we are still recovering was born not only of failure on Wall Street, but also in Washington,” President Barack Obama said in a statement. “We have a responsibility to learn from it, and to put in place reforms that will promote sound investment, encourage real competition and innovation, and prevent such a crisis from ever happening again.”

The legislation sends a clear message to Wall Street that “the party is over. Never again will the reckless behavior a few threaten the fiscal stability of our people,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) at a news conference after the final vote. The legislation, she continued, would “inject transparency and accountability into our financial system.”

The action now moves to the Senate....

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/30497.html

And THAT'S where the fun starts!

[Ken Burch]

1. Congrats to the prez

I support the man on the GOOD things.

[Cant trust em]

2. I can't expect anything else than that.

:thumbsup:

[Clio the Leo]

8. Yeah, he tries to work those in from time to time. NT

[impik]

3. But, but, but - Matt told me that Obama is a sell-out!

Loser.

[Cha]

5. He's a lying idiot.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x51550

[girl gone mad]

6. Taibbi's analysis turns out to have been very correct.

What passed today was short of the permanent bailout Geithnner wanted, or the unlimited slush fund Bernanke sought, but not by much. Still looking through the amendments, but from what I have seen so far, 4173 is toothless and will institutionalize the idea of too big too fail rather than breaking up these behemoths.

[DontTreadOnMe]

9. You didn't even read the bill!

Wall Street is applauding, they dodged any real reform.

But go ahead, put a check mark next to Obama's "Mission Accomplished"

[girl gone mad]

4. Sadly, it's full of loopholes and watered down do-nothing language.

The more I read it, the less I like it. I don't even think it's a baby step in the right direction at this point. I think Wall Street will be celebrating tonight. They dodged the bullet, big time.

[amborin]

7. accomplishes very little:

" The bill does very little to address industry structure. Wall Street and the big banks engaged in reckless betting under the belief that they were too big to fail - that they were protected by a federal backstop. The biggest banks are now bigger than they were before the crisis. The solution to the too-big-to-fail problem is to break up the big banks so that the system can absorb their failure.

The bill fails to impose limits on bank size. A related problem is the intermixing of commercial and investment banking in single firms and resultant excessive risk taking by federal insurance-backed commercial banks. The bill fails to separate commercial and investment banking, and otherwise address this problem. Financial derivatives and other exotic instruments - labeled by Warren Buffett as weapons of financial mass destruction - fueled the crisis. The bill contains very modest regulations over financial derivatives but leaves more than a quarter of the market free from regulation and contains loopholes to enable another substantial chunk to escape regulatory control. Even for derivatives covered by the bill, the new rules are very limited. The bill does not establish a regulated exchange for derivatives trades. It does not ban financial instruments that do little other than enable high-stakes gambling. And it does not require the purveyors of derivative instruments to prove that the benefits of their new products outweigh the costs and risks to the financial system.

The bill also fails to tackle seriously the problem of executive and high-level pay. Wall Street mocks the Congress - and the American people - by preparing to pay tens of billions of dollars in bonuses in the shadow of a vote on financial regulation and while the financial sector continues to benefit from trillions of dollars of public support. At a minimum, we need binding rules to mandate that bonus pay be tied to long-term performance."

[pampango]

10. I'll take a bill that the Progressive Caucus supports 70-3 and repubs oppose 175-0. n/t