The Federal Financial Forum

From: The Atlantic

This summer’s massive financial regulation bill ended “too big to fail” and bailouts for good, right? While we can certainly hope that such pleasant fantasy is closer to reality than fiction, regulators are becoming increasingly worried that the legislation may have merely transferred some of the catastrophic risk contained in big banks to clearinghouses.

The new regulation bill forced most derivatives to go through clearinghouses, which might render those organizations the new “too big to fail” concerns. The Wall Street Journal devotes a recent op-ed to noting that some regulators have become increasingly concerned about clearinghouses, including Federal Reserve and International Monetary Fund officials. WSJ’s editors warn:

From: Doug Bandow/Forbes Blog

The 2012 presidential election is likely to revolve around the economy.  Barack Obama hopes for an accelerating recovery, but if one comes it won’t be due to his efforts: far higher expenditures, vastly bigger debts, new and increased taxes and more expensive and intrusive regulations.  His principal hope is comparing his performance with his predecessor’s disastrous record of unnecessary war and excessive spending.

Regulation is one of the most important economic battlegrounds.  Unreasonable federal mandates do as much as high taxes to strangle the economy.

Editors Notes:

(1)  Both the proponents and the opponents of the merger should note that neither the FTC  nor the DOJ can utilize any information  from a third party unless the said party meets the requirements of the Data[Information] Quality Act .

(2)  Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski told CNBC Tuesday:  Competition and AT&T’s  market share will be one of the major factors in approving the telecom firm’s proposed $39 billion merger with Deutsche Telekom’s  T-Mobile.

The following article was published on Internet Industry Watch.

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Posted by Kevin Ford on Apr 12th, 2011    

From: Barrons

By Avi Salzman

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who proudly slapped his name on the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, is now willing to delay implementation of one of the most controversial sections of the law. Frank said he thinks that the rules limiting debit interchange fees should be delayed so that the Fed can study their impact.