The Devil in the Details

A blueprint of the Obama administration plan to extend Federal Reserve Role in the markets was released last night. I have to agree with Felix Salmon at Reuters about the increased density of DC alphabet soup.  If  you want to wade through 85 pages of sleep inducing regulatory policy, knock yourself out here. Frankly, this sort’ve stuff is my job and I had to run for another cup of coffee.  Then again, you can rely on some of the folks that get paid to suffer through that kind of torture, like Salmon.

Do you know a FHC from a BCBS? If not, you’re going to have a hard time wading through the government’s white paper on financial reform, which is full of such things. (An FHC is a financial holding company; the BCBS is the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. The link is to the WaPo leak of the paper, there might be minor changes in the final document.) This, for instance, is a real sentence from the paper:

The United States will work to implement the updated ICRG peer review process and work with partners in the FATF to address jurisdictions not complying with international AML/CFT standards.

But never fear! Your tireless blogger has waded through all 85 pages, and I’m pretty sure I’ve got the gist of it at this point.

In a nutshell: If you thought this was going to make the current horribly-complicated system of financial regulation less complicated, think again.

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