Archive | June, 2010

First story on House passage

From the story:

The House voted 237-192 Wednesday to pass a sweeping package of reforms to the financial regulatory system, moving the bill a step closer to the finish line.

But the Senate isn’t likely to take up the measure until the week of July 12. And it’s not clear whether Democrats have secured the votes they need.

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House passes conference report

Majority Leader Harry Reid says the Senate won’t take it up until after July 4th recess.

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“The bill also has the wrong focus…”

From Rep. Jeb Hensarling’s piece in USA today

The bill also has the wrong focus, attacking gift cards and payday lenders while refusing to consider any reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The two failed mortgage giants have already cost the American people $147 billion, yet Democrats disappointingly claim they are “too complicated” to address here.

 Additionally, at a time when unemployment is hovering near 10%, this bill does nothing to create the jobs our economy desperately needs. Instead, it makes credit — especially small-business credit — less available and more expensive by creating a new federal loan czar with the power to ban and ration consumer credit products.

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Still interesting

From Roll Call: 

Brown Still Holding Out on Wall Street Overhaul June 30, 2010, 10:54am By Emily Pierce Roll Call Staff ?

Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) continues to refuse to endorse a newly negotiated Wall Street reform bill, despite Democratic attempts Tuesday to fix the measure to his liking.

 In a statement Wednesday, Brown said he does “appreciate the conference committee revisiting the Wall Street reform bill” and removing a $19 billion tax on banks and hedge funds. Though House and Senate conferees had announced a deal last week, opposition from Brown — as well as Maine Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins — to the bank tax forced them back to the negotiating table Tuesday evening.

 But Brown quashed any hopes that Senate Democratic leaders may have had about voting on the conference report before leaving for the July Fourth recess.

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Panic in Arizona

Among consumers.

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The unknown

From Moneynews.com

There’s one thing everyone can agree on about the financial overhaul agreement lawmakers reached early Friday: There’s a lot they don’t know yet.

The roughly 2,000 page bill intended to rein in risk on Wall Street and protect consumers contains nearly 400 items where regulators from various federal agencies must fill in the rules about how the law will be implemented.

Among the numerous details still to be ironed out: how mortgages will be overseen by the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and how the Securities and Exchange Commission will oversee credit rating agencies.

The lack of hard-and-fast specifics may be one reason investors had a muted response to the bill: the major Wall Street indexes barely budged Friday, and bank and insurance stocks mostly rose on the day.

“We will be able to conduct a fuller assessment of its impact after the regulators issue new rules,” Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit said in a statement. Similar comments came from other big banks.

It’s common for Congress to pass legislation and then leave the details to regulators, said J.W. Verret, a scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University who frequently consults with legislators and agencies on financial regulation. But with this bill, “open-ended authorizing legislation was passed at a more rapid rate than we’ve ever seen before.”

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Heat on Utah credit unions

From the story

The consumer group Coalition of Religious Communities charged today that eight Utah-based credit unions are offering predatory payday loan-type products to members, and it wants them to stop.

In response, Scott Simpson of the Utah League of Credit Unions said the interest rates offered on the short-term loans are about half the 521 percent average annual rate charged by payday lenders.

“For years, consumer advocates have asked credit unions to come up with an alternative to payday loans, and now we are being attacked for doing just that,” he said.

Well cry me a river.

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Arizona deadline tomorrow

The AP sums it up: 

Payday lenders charging triple-digit interest rates will no longer be allowed to operate in Arizona after a 10-year-old law expires Thursday.

Lending companies failed to persuade voters or the Legislature to extend the provision allowing the high rates.

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Starting July 1, loans with annual interest rates exceeding 36 percent will be illegal in Arizona. Fifteen other states and the District of Columbia already use rate caps to limit payday loans, according to the Consumer Federation of America, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group in Washington, D.C.

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The other side

Some Lefties think the bill isn’t tough enough: From the Huffington Post: 

The Democrats’ financial reform bill is weak tea that doesn’t fix the problem of too big to fail megabanks or prevent the next cycle of boom, bust and bailout.

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Senate supporters of real reform like Feingold and Cantwell still shouldn’t let Republicans block an up or down vote on the watered-down measure with a filibuster that requires a super-majority of 60 for passage. But having voted against the filibuster, they should insure that the legislation passes by the slimmest of margins with 51 votes, serving notice that, along with grassroots supporters of real financial reform, they’ll be back next year, and the next, and the year after that until its safe enough for the financial system to go back in the water.

It’s pretty delusional to think Congress will revisit financial reform again next year.

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Back on track

With Senator Scott Brown accommodated, the financial reform bill is back on track in the Senate.

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