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Ask HN: What happened to the financial reform bill?

13 points by davidbalbert ↗ HN
So the Senate just passed Chris Dodd's financial regulation bill and the House and Senate are getting ready to reconcile their two versions. What I want to know is what happened to the parts of the bill that we were up in arms about (adjusting the requirements to be a qualified investor, the 120 day SEC review, etc.)? Anyone have any info?

4 comments

[ 9.1 ms ] story [ 43.2 ms ] thread
gizmomagico
I suppose corruption happened. It usually does.
ahk
I was most interested in seeing whether the Volcker rule got through, but the news reports I've read are very conflicting, with some claiming it's in and some that it's been watered down to meaninglessness.

Given all that tough talk by Obama when he first proposed it in that news conference, I'm very surprised to see such poor mention of it subsequently. News channels seem to not even want to report on it. Sad (and maddening) to see such a visible act of Wall Street's power.

aaronsw
Currently the bill requires that the GAO do a study of whether it would be a good idea and report to Congress about it. (That would be the watered down to meaninglessness bit.)

Sens. Merkley and Levin proposed an amendment to make it a hard rule. The Republicans repeatedly blocked a vote on it. To get around this, they added it as an amendment to a Republican amendment. The Republicans withdrew their amendment to prevent this vote. Now there's word that they'll try to pass instructions to the committee in charge of combining the House and Senate bills to try to add the amendment there. If you want to support something like that, please sign our petition:

http://act.boldprogressives.org/act/petition_gambling/?sourc...