“an emerging strategy to put some relatively strong consumer protections in the bill while giving Wall Street much of what they want in areas that the public isn’t paying attention to. Derivatives reform — or the lack therof — is likely going to be the area where Wall Street gets their biggest win, and the Senate Agriculture Committee is set up to be the driving forces behind delivering it.”
“Words on the page are not that critical to the public. … The public just wants to see something done here. … To some extent, passing a bill [whatever the details] will be marketed as a success.”
April 6, 2010 – by Donny Shaw
Derivatives, those obscure financial products built off the value of other assets, have their historical roots in agriculture. Farmers and investors would place bets against the harvest as a way to hedge against the uncertainty involved in making your living off of raising food. The derivatives market is now a several hundred trillion dollar, highly complex financial market, but the congressional agricultural committees still hold legacy jurisdiction over regulating it.
TNR’s Noam Scheiber has a great piece on the state of financial reform in the Senate, describing an emerging strategy to put some relatively strong consumer protections in the bill while giving Wall Street much of what they want in areas that the public isn’t paying attention to. Derivatives reform — or the lack therof — is likely going to be the area where Wall Street gets their biggest win, and the Senate Agriculture Committee is set up to be the driving forces behind delivering it.
I’m going to excerpt a pretty big section of the article here — I hope you’ll read it and then click through to read the full article: More
The PPJ Gazette 