What The Financial Bill Did And Didn't Do - from Fresh Air Interview

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Today, President Obama signed into law the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which overhauls the financial regulatory system. At the signing ceremony, the president said: For years, our financial sector was governed by antiquated and poorly enforced rules that allowed some to take risks and destroy the economy. The president describes the new law as the strongest consumer financial protections in history.

Republican Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama called the 2,300-page bill a legislative monster that will place new regulatory burdens on businesses.

My guest, Binyamin Appelbaum, is a financial reporter for The New York Times. He says these reforms will subject more financial companies to federal oversight, regulate many derivatives contracts and create a panel to detect risk to the financial system. It will also create a consumer protection regulator.

Appelbaum won a George Polk Award for his reporting on home foreclosures in North Carolina back in 2007, just as the housing bubble began to burst.

Binyamin Appelbaum, welcome to FRESH AIR. In a recent article, you and fellow reporter David Hershenhorn describe the bill as, quote, a catalogue of repairs and additions to the rusted infrastructure of a regulatory system that has failed to keep up with the expanding scope and complexity of modern finance.

http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=128644947

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1. The financial regulatory system was gutted and not rusted.

And non of the repairs are addressing the Freddie/Frannie wealth transfer.