World Business
US Senate backs bill to end the Wall St 'joyride'
By Alison Vekshin and Phil Mattingly (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-05-22 09:35
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Legislation would have big impact on finance sector
WASHINGTON - The US Senate approved a sweeping overhaul of Wall Street regulation that would create a consumer protection agency, strengthen oversight of derivative trading and ban proprietary trading at banks.
The Senate's 59-39 vote on Thursday sends the legislation into negotiations designed to reconcile differences with the House bill approved in December.
"When this bill becomes law, the joyride on Wall Street will come to a screeching halt," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, said.
The bill contains measures that would have a profound impact on the US financial industry, creating a mechanism for liquidating large failing financial firms and a council of regulators to monitor companies for threats to the economy.
Among the strongest provisions is a plan to force banks to wall off their derivatives-trading operations, the subject of fierce lobbying by the industry and opposition from regulators including Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.
Derivatives language will be one of the matters discussed by House and Senate negotiators. Another will be the proposed consumer protection bureau, which the Senate has placed inside the Fed and would have powers to write and enforce rules banning abusive lending.
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who shepherded a financial-overhaul bill through his chamber last year, said in an interview that he intends to make sure the final bill has a free-standing Consumer Financial Protection Agency, reflecting President Barack Obama's original proposal.
Negotiators will have to reconcile differences over a pre-paid $150 billion fund created by the House bill to cover the government's cost of unwinding a failing firm. The Senate bill requires the industry to repay the government only after a firm collapses. Frank said he would not push to keep the industry-financed pre-paid fund in the bill.
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, said the bill is "hardly perfect" and will be improved in the House-Senate negotiations.
Dodd said he planned to consider strengthening language to ban proprietary trading by US banks. The issue was raised in an amendment offered by Democrats Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Carl Levin of Michigan that wasn't considered during debate of the bill on the Senate floor.
Dodd said he wants to present a revised bill to the Senate before July 4.
Republicans criticized the Senate bill, saying it failed to deal with government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were seized by the government in 2008. The Republicans also said the consumer financial protection bureau the bill would establish amounts to a massive new bureaucracy.
Senate Republicans largely stuck together in opposing the bill. Four voted with the Democrats, including Senator Charles Grassley, who became the first Republican to break ranks when he voted for the derivatives bill in committee.
"It was important and essential to engage in fundamental reform of financial institutions at this moment," Senator Olympia Snowe, a Maine Republican who backed the bill, told reporters after the vote. "The American people have to have the confidence that we're rectifying many of the issues that really contributed to putting our economy on the precipice."
The Obama administration welcomed the vote.
"The House and Senate have now each passed strong bills that protect consumers, limit risk-taking by large institutions and address the problem of 'too-big-to-fail'," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a statement.
Bloomberg News