Financial Reform Bill Update: House Staff Summary of the Conference Committee Bill is a MUST Read
Earlier this week, I posted a short summary of the Financial Services Reform Bill. Since then, the House Financial Services Committee posted the text of the overhaul agreed by the House-Senate Conference Committee late last week:
- Now called the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the bill is both long (2,193 pages), and being pushed for a vote in the House before the 4th of July.
(Hip, hip, hurrah for the 4th!) (Question: could you do this in a week - digest 2,193 pages, then think about it, complete the proper due diligence and investigation, and then vote on it - in one week? Bonus question: could you do this after that week - tell your constituents that your really understood those 2,193 pages?) (Looking for those cliff notes . . . ?)
- So, to assist everyone (maybe even a few Senators and Representatives - or at least those with a busy extra-curricular schedule), the House Financial Services Committee also posted a 10 page summary [PDF] of the 2,193 pages..
We now have our summary.
If you have one work-related item to read this month, this is it. (Since you won't be voting on it, just read the summary . . . not the 2,193 pages.)
At this juncture, we all start the hard work of figuring out "how" all of this will change the financial services industry; and how each of us will make a living, buy a house, etc.
One quick observation:
- some very important topics are pushed to the regulators (for their decision on important regulatory topics), which means we'll need to build in further delay and uncertainty in our business models pending those decisions
(First we blame and bleed the regulators in hearings staged for the 24/7 media coverage; and now we empower the same regulators or create MORE regulators. Is this political two-step simply an admission that we don't want to be responsible for the hard decisions? Or perhaps this simply is one political black hole in our representative government - the need to pass a bill and then climb the re-election podium?)
Happy 4th.
If you have some early predictions on the "how" flowing from these changes, please post them below.
This bill is going to create so many agencies to patrol the new rules. I hope they can be efficient enough to ensure the rules have the intended effect.