Changing Financial Regulations

UNITED STATES
Banking and Financial Industry Regulatory Reforms

Updated January 2011 -

For almost three years the global banking and financial sectors have been in turmoil or entering the “recovery” stage.  Thanks to excessive risk-taking by boards and senior management of the major financial services holding companies, the damage has also spread far beyond the financial services sector and helped TO plunge the US and other countries’ economies into the Great Recession.

During the presidential election campaigns of 2008, and throughout 2009 and 2010 the political and public policy dialogue has revolved around increasing financial regulation and oversight reform.  To help make certain that “this will never happen again,” the US Congress, the Obama White House, new cabinet secretaries, investors, issue advocates & activists, and others have been busily prescribing financial services and banking regulation remedies.

After months of deliberation, “financial reform” is now the Law of the Land – the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was passed by the US Senate and the House of Representatives signed by President Barack Obama on July 21, 2010. 

The process moves on to the work of various regulatory agencies for creation of the rules and regulations that will make the legislation a workable oversight of the operation of the entire US financial system. The rule-making will stretch out well into 2011…and perhaps beyond.  It could be many months before the new laws are finally implemented through specific rules, regulations and guidelines. Already efforts are underway to undermine the Dodd-Frank provisions.

In the United States, the financial service organizations and bank holding companies have been closely watching the proposed statutes and regulatory rulemaking and lobbying to make sure that their voice is heard.  Those efforts continue into the arcana of the rule-making process.

Once the Rules of the Road are finally established we will see how these will be applied and the impact they will have on the operations, profitability and competitiveness of the American financial system at home -- and in the world marketplace.  While the European Union and member-states are also discussing various financial reforms and enacting some new laws and regulations, these have yet to achieve the level of comprehensive reforms adopted in the US through Dodd-Frank.

President Barack Obama said on January 8, 2009 that he would propose a “substantial overhaul of the US financial regulatory system, which “needs to be updated to the meet the needs of the 21st Century.”  Having said that, the Dodd-Frank reform legislation was more a creation of the Congress than the Administration, making it subject to all the rigors of lobbying from myriad perspectives.

Stay Tuned – Many questions are unanswered:  How will the coming moves affect investors…analysts…asset managers…corporate boards…”C” suite executives…advocates…?  In this Hot Topic section we help you track news, commentary, research and actions taken in the critical areas of financial services reforms in the United States of America.

GLOBAL
Banking and Financial Industry Regulatory Reforms

The movement to reform banking and financial services is not confined to the USA.  Over the past four decades there has been a steady harmonization, or at least collaboration among leading industrial nations in recent years focused on banking, brokerage, financial services, financial instruments, and capital markets mechanisms.

At the end of the Bush Administration, leaders of the “G-20” nations agreed that more cooperation is needed among nations to address the serious problems affecting domestic and global capital markets. 

President Barack Obama agrees and underscored the importance of working with the G-20 leaders in a pre-inaugural speech (January 8, 2009), and will propose his program to overhaul of the United States financial regulatory system before the leaders of the large developed nations and emerging nations leaders meet (the G-20) meet again in April 2009. The G-20 leaders will meet in London to continue work on a coordinated response to the global economic slowdown and will address system risks in the financial system.

Stay Tuned in this Hot Topic section to important developments in the important G-20 global collaboration as proposed new or amended regulations are identified, and be better prepared as this important gathering of sovereign leaders sets out the future of global and domestic regulation of banking, financial services, financial instruments, and addresses other aspects of the global capital markets.