Timothy Massad, nominated to lead the CFTC, “has drawn skepticism from [public] interest groups about his views on regulation,” according to Bloomberg, which cites Marcus Stanley, policy director for Americans for Financial Reform. “He’s really something of a blank,” Stanley said. “He doesn’t have a policy or substantive record at least in the areas regulated by the CFTC.”
“First, if you don’t like a bill, amendment or provision thereof, you try to defeat it with a vote. Just say, then vote, no (or nay, or whatever). If that fails, go to stage two. You can try to defund it through the appropriations process. If that doesn’t work, there is stage three. This is where you can try to stop it, change it or delay it through the regulatory rule-making process. If all of those things fail, you can go to DEFCON four: litigation. That’s the D.C. Quadrakill: 1. kill bill; 2. defund it; 3. regulate it; and, 4. litigate it.”
“Lisa Donner, head of Americans for Financial Reform, contends the CFTC budget was slashed at the behest of Wall Street lobbyists seeking to undercut the effectiveness of financial reform. The budget savings are so miniscule that ‘it’s not plausible that the real issue is budget numbers,’ she says.”
“Though small compared to Wall Street and the right, groups like Americans for Financial Reform and Better Markets show up extensively in the comments on the Volcker Rule. In the final rule, there are hundreds of references to the detailed comment letter the Occupy the SEC group sent…” The work of these outside groups “is a major piece of what makes solid final rules happen.”
“The strength of the rule is the scope of the compliance regime,’ said Marcus Stanley, policy director of Americans for Financial Reform. “The regulators correctly realized that most proprietary trading is hidden within supposedly innocent activities like hedging or market making.”
“We’ve seen that court challenges are a major element of the [financial] industry’s plan to block strong regulations,” says Marcus Stanley, the policy director of the nonprofit Americans for Financial Reform. “So having a better ideological balance on the court should be very helpful to financial reform.”
Vacancies now “should be easier to fill with people who meet the basic criteria of having a commitment to fulfilling the law,” said Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform… The change in the Senate’s rules come at a time when judges are expected to decide major disputes over provisions in the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, ObamaCare and the president’s push on climate change, several observers of the court said.”
“The CFTC is at an important crossroads,” the Washington Post observes. “The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act directed the agency, with 674 employees and a $194 million budget, to oversee a $400 trillion piece of the unregulated derivatives market, a key contributor to the financial crisis. The CFTC has almost finished writing the rules mandated by the law and must now get Wall Street to comply.”
The House of Representatives recently voted to roll back a provision of the Dodd-Frank Act that, as reporter Ailsa Chang explained on All Things Considered (NPR, 11/11/13), “prevents banks from using your deposits to trade in derivatives — risky securities that many believe contributed to
On Oct. 31, the Senate voted to filibuster the nomination of Representative Mel Watt as Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. This was an appalling vote on several levels. In the first place, the 46 Senators who said No to cloture were using