Senate Passes Biggest Regulatory Overhaul of Wall Street Since Depression | Hacker News Reader

Senate Passes Biggest Regulatory Overhaul of Wall Street Since Depression

online.wsj.com

21 pointsepall5 comments

Actually, its a watered-down reinstitution of some Depression era measures. It cannot and will not prevent future financial crises. It represents a colossal failure of vision on behalf of the leaders of both parties.

It fails to address the most pressing financial regulatory concerns (Glass-Stegall), creates ineffective and burdensome new requirements for businesses (Consumer Protection Division), and fails to alter the basic incentives that encourage investment fraud and shortsighted thinking (Compensation based on annual returns.)

Such is the result of the continuing polarization in the 2 party system; in order just to pass ANYTHING the center gets stretched so thin as to be nigh invisible.

Great, they pass an incomprehensible bill, then allow us to read it later.

I know I've seen a few good blog posts warning us that this is going to be a startup angel funding killer. I'm sure eventually the investment community will work around it, but short term this may be a real kick in the nuts to many startups looking for funding.

Would love to see some smart startup lawyers read through this bill and post some analysis. Any takers? Thanks in advance

I wish political system was such that this sort of announcement was possible. "Today we reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act. Which the Republicans repealed 1999 thus allowing the excesses of Wall Street and the Banking Industry our country has suffered of late. And btw here's a list of politicians opposed to our actions and how much Banking/Investment lobbyists have paid them. And for good measure here's Banking industry profits and CEO salaries from 1999-2010."

Except that Glass-Steagall had almost nothing to do with the problem and its repeal allowed some of the measures used to try to save things (namely banks buying failing investment houses).

The crash was caused by govt trying to get people to buy houses that said people could not afford. There were tons of regulations aimed at that end and they all contributed. Yes, that includes CDOs.

Regulation is systemic risk.

And for those folks who think that "too big to fail" is a problem, what does "too big to fail" tell us about the Federal Reserve?

And for folks who think that incentives and "skin in the game" matter, what are regulators' incentives and what skin do they have in the game? Have any regulators lost their jobs over the financial crash? (The closest is Chris Dodd, but Barney Frank will be re-elected.)

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