Financial Reform and the Real Estate Industry

The long-awaited financial regulatory reform bill cleared its final legislature hurdle late Thursday, passing the Senate 60-39. President Obama is expected to sign the bill into law this week

More than 2,300 pages long, the Dodd-Frank bill is intended to address the myriad of problems believed to have caused the financial crisis.

The Mortgage Bankers Association worked with lawmakers on issues impacting the real estate finance industry and has provided a summary report of the Dodd-Frank bill, highlighting areas of interest to our community. 

Below is an overview of key provisions in the Bill, extracted from the MBA report. Click here for full report with expanded summaries of provisions of particular interest to mortgage banking. 

The bill would:

• Establish Financial Stability Oversight Council to address systemic risks;
• Provide liquidation authority to permit orderly liquidation of systemically risky companies;
• Revise bank and bank holding company regulatory regime by transferring Office of Thrift Supervision functions to Office of Comptroller of Currency (OCC) and clarifying regulatory functions of Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and Board of Governors of Federal Reserve (FRB);
• Establish regulation of investment advisers to hedge funds;
• Establish a new Federal Insurance Office to monitor the insurance industry including regulatory gaps that could contribute to systemic risk;
• Restrict banks, bank affiliates and bank holding companies from proprietary trading or investing in a hedge fund or private equity fund;
• Increase regulation and transparency of the over-the-counter derivatives markets;
• Establish new regulation of credit rating agencies;
• Establish new requirements regarding executive compensation including shareholder “say on pay;”
• Require securitizers to retain economic interest in assets they securitize;
• Empower new CFPB as an independent office in FRB with broad new authorities and functions and responsibilities under wide range of current consumer financial protection laws;
• Establish extensive requirements applicable to mortgage lending industry, including detailed requirements concerning mortgage originator compensation and underwriting, high cost mortgages, servicing, appraisals, counseling and other matters; and
• Preserve enforcement powers of states respecting financial institutions and restrict preemption of state laws by federal banking regulators.

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Financial Reform - can we keep it simple?

Finance reform is on hold, waiting for the successor to Senator Robert Byrd to vote it through. Will the new Bill do the trick though? Harvey Pitt, former chairman of the SEC, tells StreetWise columnist Suzanne McGee he's not happy with it.

We’ve got 2,500 pages, which ensures that pretty much no one in Congress has actually read it.

Ouch! Harvey Pitt would like to see three very simple elements:

First, a provision that anyone whose business or dealings have a significant impact on financial markets should be forced to supply significant data on their products and services, their liquidity and leverage, and so on to regulators.Secondly, we need to impose an obligation on government to analyze all this data and disseminate it... Finally, we need to set circuit breakers, something that will give government the ability to stop, look, listen... and identify any systemic threats.

A number of analysts are comparing Wall Street and BP. In his Global Research article, Can We Fix the Oil and Financial Crisis Before It's Too Late? Danny Schechter points to BP's frequent full-page ad “We may not always be perfect, but we will make this right” then asks "and who will make our economy right?"
I've been broadly quoted as saying finance is not that complicated and financial reform should not be that difficult. And yes, I do think you can explain it to a kindergartner (read my Mad Meat !). It should not be that hard to regulate