Subscribe to Dollars & Sense magazine. Recent articles related to the financial crisis. Obama Plans To Tighten Financial RulesFrom The New York Times:January 25, 2009 Obama Plans Fast Action to Tighten Financial Rules By STEPHEN LABATON WASHINGTON The Obama administration plans to move quickly to tighten the nation's financial regulatory system. Officials say they will make wide-ranging changes, including stricter federal rules for hedge funds, credit rating agencies and mortgage brokers, and greater oversight of the complex financial instruments that contributed to the economic crisis. Broad new outlines of the administration's agenda have begun to emerge in recent interviews with officials, in confirmation proceedings of senior appointees and in a recent report by an international committee led by Paul A. Volcker, a senior member of President Obama's economic team. A theme of that report, that many major companies and financial instruments now mostly unsupervised must be swept back under a larger regulatory umbrella, has been embraced as a guiding principle by the administration, officials said. Some of these actions will require legislation, while others should be achievable through regulations adopted by several federal agencies. Officials said they want rules to eliminate conflicts of interest at credit rating agencies that gave top investment grades to the exotic and ultimately shaky financial instruments that have been a source of market turmoil. The core problem, they said, is that the agencies are paid by companies to help them structure financial instruments, which the agencies then grade. "Until we deal with the compensation model, we're not going to deal with the conflict of interest, and people are not going to have confidence that the ratings are worth relying on, worth the paper they're printed on," Mary L. Schapiro said in testimony earlier this month before being confirmed by the Senate to head the Securities and Exchange Commission. Timothy F. Geithner, the nominee for Treasury secretary, made similar comments in written and oral testimony before the Senate Finance Committee. Aides said they would propose new federal standards for mortgage brokers who issued many unsuitable loans and are largely regulated by state officials. They are considering proposals to have the S.E.C. become more involved in supervising the underwriting standards of securities that are backed by mortgages. The administration is also preparing to require that derivatives like credit default swaps, a type of insurance against loan defaults that were at the center of the financial meltdown last year, be traded through a central clearinghouse and possibly on one or more exchanges. That would make it significantly easier for regulators to supervise their use. Read the rest of the article Labels: bailout, banking regulation, Barack Obama, derivatives, financial crisis, financial regulation, hedge funds, Ratings agencies Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). |
