STOCK MARKET WATCH - Friday, 17 February 2012

[Demeter]

29. U.S. House Panel Approves Measure Limiting Swaps ‘Push-Out’

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-02-16/u-s-house-panel-approves-measure-limiting-swaps-push-out-.html

The U.S. House Financial Services Committee approved legislation that would let banks keep commodity and equity derivatives in federally-insured units by removing part of the Dodd-Frank Act’s so-called push-out rule.

The bipartisan measure, approved today by voice vote, calls for altering the 2010 law’s requirement that banks with access to deposit insurance and the Federal Reserve’s discount window move some derivatives trades to separate affiliates.

Blanche Lincoln, an Arkansas Democrat who led the Senate Agriculture Committee during talks leading to the regulatory overhaul, sponsored the original provision as a way to limit taxpayer support for risky derivatives trades. Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Sheila Bair, the former Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. chairman, opposed the provision and argued that it would drive derivatives trading to less-regulated entities.

“I never myself thought it made a great deal of sense,” Representative Barney Frank said today of the original measure. “Passing this bill particularly as amended will not in any way, shape or form reduce sensible regulation of derivatives,” said Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who co-wrote the law that bears his name...

I'M AFRAID WE WILL FIND OUT WHO IS CORRECT IN THE MOST DAMAGING AND DESTRUCTIVE WAY IMAGINABLE, AND VERY SOON...