Multiple outlets are reporting a deal on moving the Wall Street reform bill to the floor. The AP:
Senate Republicans are prepared to end their stalling tactics on new banking regulations and will attempt to change the bill on the Senate floor, Republican officials said.
Sen. Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the Senate Banking committee, said he has assurances that Democrats will adjust his banking regulation bill to address concerns that it perpetuates bailouts.
The concession sets the stage for Republicans to withdraw objections that have stalled the bill in the Senate.
However, if you read Shelby’s actual statement about this, he says that talks between him and Chris Dodd have reached an impasse, particularly on consumer protection issues, and he’s breaking them off indefinitely. There are assurances on the too big to fail piece but not much else. Shelby closed by thanking his Republican colleagues for standing strong with him while the bipartisan process played out, saying he would “defer to their individual judgments on whether the Senate begins a floor debate on this bill.”
So maybe that means a few members can get picked off for the motion to proceed, or maybe not. It’s unclear. Republicans probably don’t want to go through the threatened all-night session, and so maybe the motion to proceed passes. But it cannot until 1:00am, so before then Democrats would have to get unanimous consent on the bill to proceed.
This may be the best of all possible worlds, actually; the bill gets to the floor without a constraining, weakening bipartisan “deal.” If there are now open amendments to really improve the bill, we could have something.
UPDATE: Mitch McConnell, trying to declare victory and get out, touts a “key agreement on closing bailout loopholes” (this probably means ending the pre-funding of the resolution fund) and says that he will work in the coming days on the bill. He hopes the “partisan gamesmanship is over,” which you have to read in the voice of Mitch McConnell to make yourself laugh.



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While we are waiting to see if the politicians in DC will ever be able to do anything to keep us from being destroyed by the banksters, et al., we can dream. Ah, if only this could happen here:
Authorities raid Deutsche Bank and 50 other firms
LINK.
Looks like a face-saving moment. The deal would have been, “let us claim we got some undefined concession, and we’ll allow a republican or two to vote for the motion to proceed.” And harry would have said, “we didn’t have this conversation, so I won’t say anything.”
And just like that, the banks just escaped a $50 billion tax.
haven’t clicked on your link yet, does the name Greg Lippmann appear ? apparently DB’s head trader of toxics and master of the short universe
question – can anyone explain the difference btw Sherrod Brown’s TBTF amendment and Merkley-Levin’s ??
No, this is a short article, so no names listed. They’re after about 150 people. This appears to be a huge sweep.
Skimming through the article, it looks like what these guys might’ve done was truly illegal. Unlike the GS stuff which apparently isn’t, even though it’s positively vile.
Not to mention, Germany has to do something to shore themselves up now that Greece is belly up and Spain isn’t far behind.
or rather, an up-front payment. Which was probably their biggest goal to avoid in the near term.
The short answer is that Brown’s caps the size of financial firms and has a hard leverage cap, while Merkley-Levin bans proprietary trading among commercial banks, and does some other things which would have the effect of potentially capping size and leverage.
The long answer is long.
So Brown’s bill is Simon Johnson’s hard cap (4%/2%) from 13 Bankers? And M-L is just putting more tools in the regulatory toolbox?
Merkley-Levin is basically the Volcker rule. Yes, the Brown-Kaufman amendment is the hard cap and IMO the best amendment out there.
thank you David – it was confusing earlier in the day when TradMed hyped Merkley-Levin as if it superceded Brown-Kauffman