Obama's SEC and CTFC bribed by Wall St, will reverse key parts of Dodd-Frank [View all]

[brentspeak]

It's a certainty that Obama's handlers on the campaign trail will make sure he doesn't have to answer any questions on this topic. So how will he differentiate himself from Romney?

http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/18/news/economy/swaps-rules/?google_editors_picks=true

Big Business gets a break on financial reform

By Jennifer Liberto @CNNMoney April 18, 2012: 3:55 PM ET

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) -- Big business scored a major win Wednesday when two regulatory boards agreed to limit the impact of tough rules to regulate the complex trades that helped spur the 2008 financial crisis.

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But over the past two years, big business, ranging from Wall Street to energy and agricultural companies, have spent millions of dollars lobbying regulators. They wanted the regulators to back off on tougher rules that would require disclosure of the price of a swap as well as capital to back up those bets.

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On Wednesday, the CFTC and SEC voted to sharply narrow the pool of companies that must abide by tougher rules. The rule narrowed the definition of who qualifies as a swaps dealer by raising the threshold from a suggested $100 million to $8 billion in swaps traded each year

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Several veterans of the financial crisis cried foul, calling the new rules far too narrow to have much of an impact. One former CFTC official called the move one of the largest erosions of the Wall Street reforms passed as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. "It's just breathtaking. How did they get from $100 million to $8 billion? And there are so many exemptions written in there," said Michael Greenberger, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law who worked at the CFTC during the administration of President Bill Clinton. "It's an administrative veto of Dodd-Frank."

Mary Schapiro, head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Gary Gensler, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, agree to limit the impact of swaps rules.