Obama wants new banking rules in place by year’s end - The Hill's RegWatch

Obama wants new banking rules in place by year’s end - The Hill's RegWatch
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
President Obama on Monday called upon regulators to complete a slate of regulations intended to prevent a repeat of the Great Recession.
In a speech marking the fifth anniversary of the 2008 financial crisis, Obama touted progress toward ending the risky banking, lending and investment practices that brought the economy to the brink of collapse.

Chief among that progress is enactment of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, and implementation of scores of hundreds of regulations that the Wall Street reform law requires.

“We put in place tough new rules on big banks, rules that we need to finalize before the end of the year, by the way, to make sure that the job is done, Obama said during remarks at the White House.

More than half of the requisite Dodd-Frank rules – which, by some interpretations of the law, total more than 400 – remain incomplete.

Regulators have said they expect the law to be substantially in place by the end of the year.

A lack of federal oversight was in large part to blame for the crisis, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said Monday.

“It was the culmination of many factors, including excessive risk taking, the accumulation of too much debt, and an outdated regulatory structure,” he said in a written statement. “Because President Obama took up the mantle of reform and made Dodd-Frank the law of the land, our financial system is now safer, stronger, and more resilient than it was before the crisis.”

Private employers have added 7 and a half million jobs over the past 42 months, Lew noted.

One of Dodd-Frank’s most contentious and substantive provisions was the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a new watchdog agency charged with looking out for the public’s interests.

Obama hailed the 2-year-old’s CFPB’s regulatory achievements to date, saying, “we put in new protections that crack down on the worst practices of mortgage lenders and credit card companies.”

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/regwatch/finance/322467-obama-wants-new-banking-rules-in-place-by-years-end#ixzz2fAGBqsKn
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