Dodd-Frank Financial Overhaul Bill Ready to Go

What’s being called a “sweeping” financial reform bill just emerged from committee early this morning.  This quote from co-author Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd says it all:

“It’s a great moment.  I’m proud to have been here.  No one will know until this is actually in place how it works.  But we believe we’ve done something that has been needed for a long time.  It took a crisis to bring us to the point where we could actually get this job done.”

First of all, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank should be under investigation, not writing “sweeping” financial reform bills.  That being said, Dodd’s statement contains everything that should send sane people running: 1) it’s huge and “sweeping” but (just like the trillion dollar health care bill) no one will know what the heck it does until it’s too late;  2) this was in the works on a paper napkin or something before the financial meltdown, so it may not truly solve any real problems, other than crossing off one more item on the progressive agenda;  and 3) there’s that whole making-use-of-a-crisis thing that should send shivers down your spine.

Essentially, the bill would set up a myriad of new bureaucracies to be overseen by people who haven’t got a clue and didn’t see the earlier crisis coming, which will also give the government much more power to monitor banking practices.  Let’s make sure, unlike the existing regulatory agencies (ahem… SEC), that the new ones don’t allow their functionaries to view pornography on the job.

Government was a HUGE contributor to the 2008 financial meltdown:  GSE (government-sponsored enterprise) Fannie/Freddie’s Community Reinvestment Act-sponsored hari-kari subprime lending, purposefully and knowingly loosening the rules on leveraging and derivatives trading which precipitated the September 2008 collapse, signaling to the investment firms that they were playing with house money (privatizing successes, but nationalizing failures through taxpayer funded bail-outs) were behaviors encouraged by a federal government who believed them “too big to fail.”  Seriously, there should have been dozens of perp-walks of federal government officials and Congressmen as a result of this negligence.  But, somehow now we’re supposed to believe that MORE government regulation and oversight will solve this problem when they did such a bang-up job last time?

They think we’re dumb, and unless “sweeping” changes come in November, I’ll have to agree.

Tagged as: Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Community Reinvestment Act, Fannie Mae, financial reform, Freddie Mac, GSE, SEC