Today's 212-page blueprint from the Treasury Department to reform financial regulation may include some good ideas, but it is largely a re-hashed, unsubstantiated industry wish-list that seeks to eliminate state enforcement authority over insurance, securities and other financial products, without even guaranteeing strong consumer protection at the federal level.
Congress needs to move forward with efforts to restore investor and consumer confidence in the financial markets before it considers this package. Congress also needs to take swift action to protect communities from the wave of foreclosures occurring today.
Further, the public needs to understand that the problems we face today aren't the fault of consumer protection laws, and aren't the fault of multiple state regulators.
We have problems today because the current federal regulators -- led by the Fed and Treasury -- allowed big, already-federally supervised institutions to play with dangerous products that no regulator understood. Those derivative instruments didn't spread risk, they acted as accelerants.
When Congress does take up this package, which includes some items worthy of review, we intend to demand stronger consumer protection and privacy laws, as well as greater safety and soundness protections. We also believe that the financial regulatory system benefits from shared state and federal duties. While the multiplicity of federal regulators has encouraged charter-shopping and a race to the bottom, state enforcers have often buttressed limited federal resources and, in many cases, responded more quickly to emerging threats.
It's Opening Day and it will be a long season. We look forward to an opportunity to present the case for reform that helps Main Street consumers and investors, too.
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Here are statements from the North American Securities Administrators Association and the Consumer Federation of America.