WASHINGTON Democrats said on Thursday that they would go it alone in an effort to pass an overhaul of financial regulation, increasing the likelihood of a bitter partisan showdown.
Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said he would put forward his own bill on Monday, despite the lack of a single Republican endorsement. Democrats concluded that bipartisan talks were not making enough progress and that going their own way was the only realistic hope of getting the legislation adopted in an election year, he said.
Mr. Dodd said the bill would rewrite the rules of Wall Street, end the too big to fail phenomenon and protect consumers from risky or abusive financial products. The Congressional calendar meant that further delay could imperil the legislations chances, he said.
The chief Republican negotiator on the bill, Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, called Mr. Dodds decision very disappointing and said, Theres no question that White House politics and health care have kept us from getting to the goal line.
Mr. Corker said the impasse was caused by the Democratic threat to use the parliamentary procedure known as reconciliation to overhaul health care. The elephant in the room is reconciliation, he said, describing Mr. Dodd as a victim of health care policy.
The White House, which has called the legislation one of its top priorities, rejected that explanation. Republicans in the Senate are going to have to ask themselves why they would stand in the way of financial reform, Mr. Obamas press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said at a news conference.
Mr. Gibbs, who said that lobbyists are being hired hand over fist to kill financial reform, said of lawmakers: I dont believe many are going to want to go home and face voters next November not having done something.
While Mr. Dodd and Mr. Corker took pains to praise each other and held out hope that a compromise could still be achieved, the developments clearly made the prospects for the legislation more difficult.
Mr. Dodd said he intended for the committee to take up formal consideration of the bill during the week of March 22, with the goal of a committee vote before Congress recesses on March 26. As time moves on, you just limit the possibility of getting something done, particularly a bill of this magnitude and this complexity, he said.
But Mr. Corker said it would be a travesty to push a bill of such length and complexity through in one week.
The lack of agreement put the process closer to a showdown. Democrats, who control 59 votes in the Senate, would have to successfully woo at least one Republican to achieve the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.
The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said that Mr. Dodd has done his very utmost to do something on a bipartisan basis. He said of Mr. Dodds impending proposal, I hope its something that we can move on quickly.
Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, top Republican on the committee, who found himself in the unusual position of being largely left out of the negotiations after his talks with Mr. Dodd broke down last month, issued a conciliatory statement. As long as we remain focused on policy and not politics, an agreement is still very possible, he said.
Labor, consumer and civil rights groups have been increasingly critical of Mr. Dodd, and Mr. Corker said he believed that Mr. Dodd, who is retiring at the end of this year, was responding to pressure from the left.
In a news conference, Mr. Corker disclosed significant details about compromises that he said had been reached with Mr. Dodd, as well as remaining areas of disagreement.
He said that both sides had agreed to house a new consumer financial protection agency within the Federal Reserve, with a director appointed by the president and broad ability to write rules governing mortgages, credit cards and the so-called shadow banking system of payday lenders, debt collectors, and loan originators and servicers.
Whether that agency would have independent enforcement powers has been a major point of contention. Mr. Corker said Mr. Dodd had agreed that the agency would not be able to conduct its own compliance examinations, as consumer advocates have urged. Instead, other regulators, who are already charged with ensuring the soundness of banks, would take on the responsibility for protecting consumers, too.
The negotiators had also agreed, Mr. Corker said, to strip the Fed of its power to supervise bank holding companies except those with assets of $100 billion or more. Whether to remove from the central bank its oversight of state-chartered banks that are members of the Fed system, he said, was still to be determined. WTH IS THIS NONSENE????
The Fed no doubt is going to have its wings clipped, he said.
Consensus had also been reached on the creation of an interagency council, led by the Treasury, to detect and monitor systemic risk; the establishment of an Office of Research and Analysis that would give the council daily updates on the stability of individual firms and their trading partners; and the removal of credit rating agencies exemption from liability under securities laws.
Mr. Corker revealed several areas that remained in dispute at the point that Mr. Dodd announced that he would move ahead on his own.
One of them, he said, was the extent to which banks would be exempt from new requirements for greater transparency in the trading of derivatives. While standardized derivatives would have to be traded through clearinghouses, some banks have pushed to have transactions of some of their most complex derivatives including the credit-default swaps that helped bring on the financial crisis shielded from public view.
Gary G. Gensler, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said on Thursday that the loophole some banks were seeking would exempt as much as 60 percent of derivatives. The banks have found allies in companies like Boeing and Caterpillar that use derivatives to hedge against risk, but such derivatives trades make up only 9 percent of the market, Mr. Gensler said.
Other areas of disagreement, Mr. Corker said, included whether shareholders should be allowed an advisory vote, by proxy, on executive compensation, and how much credit risk mortgage originators should be required to keep when they packaged and sold loans.
Mr. Corker also said that details remained to be worked out over a new resolution authority that would empower the government to seize and dismantle a systemically important financial institution on the verge of failure.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/business/12regulate.html?hp
Really? Really? We're going to push ahead with financial regulation but GUESS WHAT WE"RE GOING TO SELL OUT ANYWAY!!!!
