The Obama Adminstration's Handling of Wall Street.

Sam, I'm touched by your concern, and amused by your insecurity.

Anytime you come up to Canada, feel free to swing by for a beer. no jokes. me and my "multiple user IDs" (???) will amuse you. my mom might be hanging around, and the basement is kinda dirty, but HEY, it's good living around fall time---Quebec is awesome tbh in terms of fun.

 

All part of the Dodd-Frank show, which even in its' ideal form, is basically a watered-down Glass-Stegall.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has already ruled out banning certain financial products. More or less, its' main role is disclosure, judging from the Warren hearing. So, the Dems are fighting for basically, credit card companies to reveal on what credit score they reject terrible loan applications for, and making sure mortgages are fully disclosed and informational advantage is leveled. Admirable goals, sure, but nowhere near the magnitude of change required.

Meanwhile, the agency responsible for the meat of new Dodd-Frank enforcement is being starved, and there has been nary a peep from the White House.

 

^actually what the CFPB is, and nothing more. So looks like that's what you want, tbh.

 

The CFPB doesn't really do anything to stop loan officers from making unsound loans, from what I've seen from hearings (though, tbh, usually coerced under Republican pressure), the emphasis is on disclosure---making sure consumers have the information to avoid unsound loans, but not preventing them in any way from the lending side (or at least, not outright banning certain financial products). The CFPB is pretty much restricted to hoping that flashing information at people will make them renege (fat chance on that---credit card debt amirite???). It is pretty much in its current form designed to be a "hold your hand" agency and little more.

So to emphasize that the President is pushing somewhat over there, doesn't really impress me when I know that the two main agencies (SEC/CFTC) responsible for much of the enforcement of Dodd-Frank's new provisions are being starved of resources, and the President doesn't seem to be pushing very hard there.

 

Little do you know, I have quite a few positions on the bank industry falling a bit short thanks to Dodd-Frank and debt ceiling warnings.



But yes, obviously the fact that derivatives, which have not been looked over at all, have some semblance of regulation being tacked onto them thanks to Frank-Dodd is a cause for concern for the banks. I'm not saying Frank-Dodd doesn't do anything, it just doesn't do nearly enough. It doesn't address the rating agencies which were crowing with their little heads that they were just merely spouting "opinions" (yeah, opinions that can cause entire countries to default thanks to higher borrowing rates). It doesn't address executive compensation that tends to reward short-term speculative cash flows that create large amounts of risk in the future (none of the Wall Street executives "lost"...most kept their jobs, or failing that, the salaries they garnered from propelling their banks to disaster. How the hell can that incentive structure be justified?) It fails to significantly address conflict of interest and lobbying issues, including a high amount of bank-sponsored academic research, lobbying, and "revolving door" government in critical agencies such as the SEC.

etc. etc.