SENATE, HOUSE BILLS COMPARED: Momentum builds toward a tough, far-reaching Wall St. reform package

[NJmaverick]

In the run-up to a conference committee, there would typically be talk about the outcome as a function of what lobbyists wanted from the final bill. But these are not typical times. The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression discredited the nation’s banks to the point where they lost their ability to ride herd on the political process. The bankers are not the ventriloquists operating their congressional dummies.

In other words, Wall Street is in retreat.

A Senate that might have taken the edge off of the House legislation instead ended up writing a much tougher bill —the two bills are compared below — a development that has scrambled every prior political calculation about what can and cannot make its way into a financial regulatory reform package. Now that the time has come for a conference committee to reconcile the two bills, and a mixture of congressional deal making, White House pressure and public opinion will shape the final product.

Before a word of substance is discussed, or even after the debate gets underway, don’t rule out a few procedural wrangles. Rep. Barney Frank, the acerbic chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, is insisting that the conference be open to the public, betting that sunlight is the best antidote to pressure for a weaker bill. “No agreements reached, no compromises, which are obviously being discussed, will be made part of anything without being publically presented and voted on and discussed,” he said Friday. The public show might sit badly with Republicans who opposed the House bill en masse and mostly voted against the Senate legislation.

That is one reason why the outcome of the legislation’s provisions on derivatives is not a snap to predict. Wall Street kept hoping for changes to provisions sponsored by Sen. Blanche Lincoln, (D-Ark.) requiring banks to, in essence, spin off this business. But Lincoln’s impending re-election bid trumped that fond hope. The House bill has no such language, and the Obama administration has reservations about it as well, suggesting it is on its way out. But will conferees be willing to publicly face down pressure from progressives to keep the rule? Barney Frank’s sunlight may well do in conference what Lincoln’s campaign did in the Senate: upend Wall Street’s business in derivatives.

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/99369-senate-house-wall-street-bills-compared-momentum-builds-toward-wide-reaching-reform

[msongs]

1. would be a shocking but nice change not to get the weakest bill possible nt

[Kingofalldems]

2. K and R for the teabaggers and freepers