With the news focused on JPMorgan Chase & Company's $2 billion "mistake" and company's lobbying campaign at financial agencies to permit the sort of trades that led to the loss, it's worth reviewing some other examples where industry have pushed hard to limit the reach of the Dodd-Frank financial law, arguing as JPMorgan did against a heavy hand because they could handle the risk.
The emphasis is on "some:" the list really is much longer. The law famously set in motion more than 220 rulemakings of which just under a third have been completed. Dominating the dockets of ...
Continue readingBankers critical of Dodd-Frank meet with Geithner
The same day Jamie Dimon, chief executive and president of JPMorgan Chase & Company, publicly bashed the new Dodd-Frank financial law he and the company's top lobbyist, Peter Scher, had a meeting with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
In his public statements reported on April 5, Dimon had harsh words for nearly every aspect of the new law, from derivatives oversight to regulation of interchange fees to the establishment of a new federal office, the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) to oversee the stability of the financial system.
Dimon was also part of a larger meeting the following day with the ...
Continue readingPoised to make decision on regulating foreign swaps, Geithner meets with banks wanting exemption
In February, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner met with the CEO and two top-level executives from the London-based bank HSBC to discuss the issue of foreign exchange swaps.
The bank, which has a thriving foreign exchange business, wants Geithner to exempt such swaps from new rules designed to bring transparency to the derivatives market. Under the Dodd-Frank financial law, Geithner was given authority to make this decision, which he is expected to announce any day.
Amounting in the trillions of dollars per day, foreign exchange swaps are used in business to hedge bets on transactions involving different currencies. Typically, two parties ...
Continue readingGeithner meets with Obama campaign fundraiser
Penny Pritzker, who served as President Obama’s finance chair during his 2008 campaign and whose name was mentioned as a possible U.S. Commerce Secretary, met with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and several other top government heavyweights to discuss Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs), according to meeting logs released by the agency this week.
In 2008, Pritzker who has a stake in several real estate and hotel businesses across the country, came under scrutiny for her role in a failed bank that made subprime loans in the leadup to the financial crisis. Pritzker said at the time that the bank ...
Continue readingChamber of Commerce meets with CFTC chairman
Yesterday a lobbyist and executives representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has criticized the whistleblower provisions in the Dodd-Frank financial law, met with Gary Gensler, chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), to discuss the issue.
Under the new law, the CFTC is given the authority to award whistleblowers 10 to 30 percent of the amount recovered when information they provide leads to an enforcement action yielding sanctions of $1 million or more. They can also file for relief if they face retaliation for their disclosures.
"Put simply, the proposed rule creates a set of ...
Continue readingTop financial regulators meets with industry leaders, lobbyists
Elizabeth Warren, who has been charged with setting up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, reported more meetings with individuals outside the government in December than any other Treasury official working on implementation of the Dodd-Frank financial law.
Warren, who also played an advisory role to the bank bailout oversight committee, reported 15 such meetings with a total of 204 different individuals representing a wide range of interests, from Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America, to representatives of financial trade associations, to those from a long list of consumer groups, such as Consumer Federation of America and the Center ...
Continue readingBanking interests strive to get regulations written their way
New meeting records disclosed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) last week show that corporate banking interests, many of which lobbied on the Dodd-Frank Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, continue to weigh in on its implementation by the agency.
On November 9, the same day the agency issued new proposed rules changing the way banks are assessed fees for the exhausted deposit insurance fund, agency officials met with executives from eight banks, insurance companies, trade associations, and law firms on the issue. Institutions represented included the Financial Services Roundtable, Regions Bank, Hartford Financial, and State Street ...
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