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Historic day in the War on Error: Obama to unveil sweeping plan for financial markets

By Ward Harkavy in Bankers, Featured, Obama Drama, Regulation
Wednesday, Jun. 17 2009 @ 8:40AM
OBAMA DRAMAPresident Barack Obama will present his team's major overhaul plan today for the financial system. This will truly be a big day in the War on Error. Gulp!

Vast power to the Federal Reserve. Gulp! Gulp!

OK, take a deep breath. The FDIC gets a piece of the action in handling bad banks. Under Sheila Bair, the FDIC has a pretty good track record of doing so, and from the start of the crisis has gone to bat for homeowners and other average Americans. (Mild sigh of hopeful relief.)

Another piece of the puzzle: Hedge funds and other massive and previously private pools of money will have to file with the SEC. (A tentative smile.)

Before Obama delivers the news (or sometime during the day), take a look at Simon Johnson's take, some of it from last night's Frontline episode. He focuses on the dangers that await all this fiddling with the banks.)

Summing up, the Wall Street Journal's preview says:

President Barack Obama's plan will touch almost every corner of financial markets, from tougher consumer-protection policies to stricter rules over exotic financial products, such as credit derivatives. The plan would bring many of the products and companies that previously operated outside of the banking system under federal scrutiny.

Obama himself delivered a preview during a pre-release interview with Bloomberg News by delivering an ass-chewing to Wall Street:

"Wall Street seems to maybe have a shorter memory about how close we were to the abyss than I would have expected," Obama said, referring to criticism of the government's growing role in the economy and markets.