President Obama signed the finance reform bill into law today. While the legislative debate is over, the policy debate about how to deal with the financial system continues, as reaction to the bill comes in. At first blush, nobody seems very happy.
The operational definition of a compromise from high school civics is that everyone is equally unhappy. By that metric, the finance reform bill is an excellent compromise.
Former Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs chairman Hank Paulson and former SEC chairman Harvey Pitt publicly estimated that another major financial crisis could occur within six to ten years. That view provides one way to measure what the finance reform bill may have actually accomplished.
With no action, another crisis of at least the magnitude of 2008 could occur relatively soon: perhaps within one to three years. Readers of this blog may recall my pet theory as to why this is so, based on the confluence of opacity, arbitrage, and leverage. I find this concern echoed one way or another across the political spectrum.
So, if one believe's Paulson and Pitts, the financial reform bill perhaps pushes out the next crisis past the end of Obama's Presidency, even assuming he is re-elected in 2012. I think there will be a grudging, but growing, consensus to that effect.
That consensus will join similar conclusions about TARP and ARRA. TARP did not resolve the crisis of 2008, but it is generally agreed that without TARP, the crisis would have become far, far worse. ARRA did not end the ensuing recession/depression, but again it is generally agreed that without ARRA, it would have been worse. I think it will become agreed that the finance reform bill did not put the financial system on sound footing, but without it, the fragile recovery would be shattered by the next instance of extreme volitility.
Some fear that the "not on my watch / kick the can down the road to the next administration" aspect of the current bill will be all there is. Liberals, and even moderate conservatives, believe that would not be a satisfactory outcome.
So what's next?
During the hot, steamy summer of 2010, probably nothing. To proponents of further reform, the bill bought time. Enough time, perhaps, to get past the most poisonous political atmosphere this blogger can recall. The most ardent call for some additional incremental measures to be taken up in the lame-duck session between the November 2010 elections and the new Congress in January 2011. I do not expect much: the 111th Congress probably won't do any more on this topic.
It is thus up to the 112th and 113th Congresses. And so the policy debate continues.
Personally, I would like to see the discussion move towards what the few over-arching principles of a 21st century regulatory environment should be. Regulatory principles are like the rules of a sport. They should be observable, and thus not too complex. The regulators cannot be as powerful as the players or as cunning as the coaches, but they need to be able to call ball or strike, fair or foul, safe or out.
The principles underlying the regulations promulgated during the New Deal were simple enough: transparency through public disclosure and avoiding conflicting function in the same organization. They worked well to avoid a major cataclysm for perhaps two generations.
Nobody believes that we can find a set of principles that will permanently avoid financial melt-downs. Changing technology and continued innovation in products and services will eventually come up with something that the smartest people today cannot anticipate. Nobody in 1937 could have envisioned computer-driven program trading, which in 1987 led to the first market melt-down since Glass-Steagall. Fifty years is a pretty good run: I think we'd be happy with a scheme that holds for a generation.
We have the gift of time. Do we have the wisdom and the will to use it?
Rep. John B. Larson: 10 Ways New Wall Street Reform Law Will Help You
For eight years, Wall Street played Russian roulette with America's future while Republicans in Congress looked the other way. The new financial reform law takes major steps towards fixing that.
Brian D. McLaren: An Important Provision of the Financial Reform Bill
If you use a cell phone or computer, you're probably connected to the long-standing conflict in Eastern Congo. But this week, the President will sign into law the Financial Reform Bill, which contains a Congo-minerals related provision.
I hope we do.
http://riffenberg.wordpress.com/2010/07/18/required-tracking-of-gold-silver-purchases-in-health-care-bill/
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2010/07/health-care-bill-inserts-tracking-of.html
That there are no bright-line rules - no balls and strikes as you put it.
What this bill does is transfer more power to regulators so they can act in secret.
Currently those people would be Summers, Bernanke and Geithner.
What we know is that Summers helped kill Glass-Steagall.
Geithner helped AIG and the Banksters hide their problems and get profits.
Bernanke did nothing to help the average American.
They now have more power than before.
There isn't the slightest reason to trust that they will do anything more than they have done to help the average American - which is not one thing. Small Business has suffered tremendously at their hand and the hand of the banksters they have worked exclusively to enrich.
This is not a right or left issue. It is an issue of getting people back to work. And, frankly, they have FAILED to do anything effective in that regard. While they have worked hard to keep the bankers incomes very high, they have ignored the needs of the average American.
Obama's economic team is no friend to the average American. He and his team have treated bankers with enormous deference, while doing nothing effective to help the average American - and certainly nothing to help small business.
The evidence from eighteen months in office is that these individuals are unwilling to take action for the average American. They are untrustworthy.
The worst part of this law is that it gives these bureaucrats more power.
But, no rules.
So, when Repugnant Republicans enter office in January, and 2012, they will have more power to transfer more money to the wealthy at a faster rate than the current Obama kleptocracy.
Since this bill was put together by Obama and the Democrats, that must be their desire. Especially since they have, so far, worked so very hard to transfer money to big corporations.
And, so very hard to add administrative burden and costs on to small business - without a concommitant change to reduce offshoring because it benefits big business so much.