“U.S. bankers and insurers are trying to use trade deals, which can trump existing legislation, to weaken parts of the Dodd-Frank Act…,” according to Carter Dougherty of Bloomberg.

Banks could “take exotic swap dealings and put them inside the public safety net, and we could all get stuck bailing these guys out like we did in 2008,” AFR policy director Marcus Stanley told the Washington Post.

The Dodd-Frank Act, Mike Konczal points out on washingtonpost.com (5/6/13), left it to regulators to decide how much capital banks must set aside. And U.S. regulators have ceded much of the task to the international …

Under H.R. 677, the CFTC loses its jurisdiction over inter-affiliate swaps, which are defined so loosely that, according to AFR’s Marcus Stanley, “the affiliates don’t even need to share majority ownership… That’s a big, whopping exemption.”

“Think of the precedent… rushing forward with the aspects of the rule supported by industry while offering the faint possibility that the commission might one day get around to addressing the concerns raised by investors.”