Politics

New Financial Regulations and Read the Bill

By Paul Blumenthal

Two days ago, President Obama announced his plan for new regulations to police the financial industry in the wake of last year’s global financial meltdown. One of those proposals would require oversight of financial derivatives for the first time. The oversight of financial derivatives — the trading of which is commonly thought to have led to the high risk behavior of AIG and other companies that collapsed last year — was considered back in the 1990s, but was stopped when Congress inserted the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) into an 11,000 page conference report the day before a vote took place.

For the full story on the passage of the CFMA, read the case study I wrote a few months back. And if you find it outrageous that Congress passes bills like the CFMA without giving anyone, including themselves, time to read the bill, proceed to ReadTheBill.org to help us pass H. Res. 554, which would require bills to be posted online for 72 hours prior to consideration.

Full post as published by Sunlight Foundation on June 18, 2009 (boomark / email).