Wall Street and its Friends in Washington Want Congress to “Crawfish” on Financial Industry Regulatory Reforms

The Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, a nonpartisan research group, is urging lawmakers to conduct oversight hearings on the way that financial reform legislation is being implemented. CCMR claims that the rulemaking process of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other regulators is “seriously flawed,” while “sacrificing quality and fairness for apparent speed, risking lengthy court challenges and poor rules.”

CCMR made its allegations in a letter to outgoing Senate Banking Committee chair Christopher Dodd (D-Conn), ranking member Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), outgoing House Financial Services Committee head Rep. Barney Frank, and ranking member Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.). CCMR says it is concerned that the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act requires a virtual full “rewrite” of current regulations for the country’s financial markets and that the specific deadlines are “overly ambitious.”

Now, the SEC has until July 2011 to write about 60 new rules-it wrote less than 10 a year in 2005 and 2006-and the CFTC has to issue almost 40 new rules-it made about 11 rules in the couple of years leading up to the economic meltdown. Also, per Dodd-Frank, the SEC has about 200 days to make a rule final. Before the financial crisis the agency would take 524 days for rule adoption from proposal to finalization. The CFTC has 238 to adopt a new rule. Previously the agency would take about 109 days. Also, whereas before, the public was given approximately over 60 days to comment on new rules, agencies on overage are now allowing about 30 days for comments.

CCMR claims that there are now conflicting rules in the asset-backed securities area and regarding over-the-counter derivatives. Recently, Bachus and House Agriculture Committee chairman-elect Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) wrote CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler and SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro about the direction and pace that swaps rulemaking was taking.

Per Shepherd Smith Edwards and Kantas Founder and Securities Fraud Lawyer William Shepherd, “No one wants to be told what to do, it is human nature, and government regulations should only occur as a ‘necessary evil.’ The test should be whether the evil regulation is better than the evil non-regulation. This one should be easy to answer! Look back at what just happened after Congress deregulated the financial industry over the past decade: Debacle! With taxpayers having to bail out the perpetrators. A little pain on Wall Street can be endured to prevent this from happening in the future. Perhaps these regulations are not perfect, but the de-regulation now in place has proven disastrous.”

Related Web Resources:
Committee on Capital Markets Regulation

Commodity Futures Trading Commission

Securities and Exchange Commission

US Senate Banking Committee

House Agriculture Committee

Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (PDF)

Institutional Investors Securities Blog

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