What We're Hearing

The Senate isn’t likely to act on the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency this year, or so we’ve been told -- but a few industry lobbyists believe that some type of CFPA could see the light of day next year via legislation. “I don’t think this is going to happen quickly,” one financial services lobbyist told me. “The White House wants a lot.”When the Obama Administration released its draft proposal on the CFPA a few weeks back it noted that, “We do not propose a new regulatory agency because we seek more regulation but because we seek better regulation” which leads me to ask: doesn’t such a statement mean that all federal financial service regulators have been doing a crappy job the past five years, especially since 2004 when subprime originations and securitizations began to boom? And what about credit default swaps – whose existence exacerbated this crisis? A CDS is not a consumer product. Who’s going to regulate that market?...