Obama Proposes New Financial Regulations

[Silverback]

WASHINGTON — President Obama proposed a new regulatory structure for the country’s financial system on Wednesday, declaring that it is needed to protect the rights of ordinary consumers and to guard against the murky practices that led to the current financial crisis.

“A cascade of mistakes and missed opportunities” over decades led to the present problems, the president said. “It was easy money, while it lasted.” But, he added, “These schemes were built on a pile of sand.”

The president said he would send to Congress a package calling for a new “oversight council” to study regulatory gaps and issues that do not fit into the traditional framework; creation of an agency to monitor the financial system’s stability, not just the health of individual institutions, and enhancement of the Federal Reserve’s regulatory powers.

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[Jim]

This is one of the biggest issues for the talking heads last weekend. It will take some effort to get it through Congress, and I am not expecting to see any major improvements in the near-term.