Republicans and Financial Reform: Kill or be Killed

The full-throttle push for financial reform legislation and all of its many possible components — centralized, exchange trading of over-the-counter derivatives, a ban on proprietary trading at banks, the codification of consumer protections, a new systemic risk monitoring entity, and more — is entering the home stretch.

For Republicans, this appears to be a ‘do or die’ moment, politically speaking.

Regardless of what Wall Street dislikes about the proposed legislation, or finds impractical or sees as grandstanding, there’s an end game now in sight. For the GOP, sucking it up and conceding yet another Obama victory could be the better alternative than trying to kill the bill outright.

后者策略 - 杀害账单，而不是允许奥巴马另一个胜利 - 在最近几周的计划中得到了计划A.计划否定克里斯多德在参议院中的单一共和党投票。它已经尝试过。它已经被回复了。

The trouble began with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his over reliance on the Frank Luntz’s talking points memo (endlessly repeating the line about endless bailouts) not to mention McConnell’s unseemly fundraising meeting with hedge fund managers at the Peninsula Hotel earlier this month, a story that ironically was reported exclusively by Fox Business Network before being bandied about on Capitol Hill, finally even winnowing its way into President Obama’s radio address Saturday.

The news of the SEC fraud charges against Goldman Sachs also undermined the GOP’s push to kill reform.

While neither the White House nor the regulatory agency would ever admit to the Goldman fraud charge announcement being timed to coincide with the thick of financial reform debate, there’s clearly a leap of logic to be made here, and it would seem illogical not to make it.

On Sunday morning, Mitch McConnell appeared on CNN, interviewed by Candy Crowley. McConnell did not deny the cozy meeting with Wall Street took place.

CROWLEY:Okay, so what the president is saying is you met with Wall Street leaders, with [Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas] the man who raises money for Republican Senate races, and talked about how to block this bill. Did the meeting take place? What was the conversation?

mcconnell：Well, we certainly didn’t talk about blocking the bill. I don’t know anybody who’s in favor of blocking this bill. I also met recently with the Kentucky bankers who are also opposed to this bill. The community banks, the little guys on Main street. We’re all meeting with a lot of people. This is the current subject.

On Tuesday, McConnell held a snap press conference.

mcconnell：好吧，下午好，每个人。关于金融规则，现在很清楚......大多数领导者向我表示严重讨论恢复。我认为上周的[信]表明共和党人希望看到发生严重谈判而不是仅仅是政治争吵，至少是短期。我们希望民主党人和共和党人在银行委员会加上参与衍生品作品的农业委员会的人可以聚集在一起，给我们一个两只妇女，但我们可以在参议院的地板上移动。亚慱体育app怎么下载但是，如果您愿意，至少可以实现这一目标。因此，我们有机会在这里做一些在代表中没有完成的事情，在那里他们制定了一个没有共和党支持的法案。

随着这些话，看来，计划一个，杀死账单，走了路边。

一个参议院员工接近这个过程，并要求不被命名，帮助解释了McConnell如何从试图杀死账单到一个新的立场，可能致力于帮助通过它：

“The Republicans, mainly Sen. [Richard] Shelby[, R-Ala.] and McConnell had two options. The first was to do everything they could to deny Obama another victory. The fallback was to have a bill that had one single Republican name on it, Shelby’s, so that it would be known for posterity as the Dodd-Shelby bill. To kill it they needed all 41 Republican Senators to oppose it. But there are at least a few Republicans [such as Olympia Snowe of Maine] who came forward and said they would be willing to vote for it. Even one single Republican vote in the Senate means it could go to debate.”

因此，虽然计划A是杀死账单并计划B是让谢尔比成为一个共和党人，所以他可以获得信贷，现在没有任何东西在石头上表现出整个过程可以突然，去计划C并获得Bipartisan支持。GOP参议员将在中期选举中涂上厌恶，与华尔街相同。

No wonder the Democrats are feeling emboldened.

When Sen. Blanche Lincoln, chairwoman of the Agriculture Committee, came out (on the same day the SEC announced its case against Goldman) with a bill proposing all OTC derivatives should be traded publicly on exchanges it seemed almost as over the top as allowing a short seller to secretly booby trap a CDO deal, but now even Lincoln’s aggressive measure appears firmly on the table.

民主党参议院员工来源：

“一个月前，华尔街游说者已经死于衡量标准化衍生品合同和集中交换的措施。但刚才他们承认他们会失去那种斗争。这是一个大问题。现在，现在没有更大的问题，那么如何规范衍生品。“

On Goldman’s conference call Tuesday morning, CFO David Viniar said that Goldman supports standardization of derivatives and centralized clearing.

“它使衍生品市场更安全，它使我们更具竞争力，”他说。

With that simple sentence, Wall Street — so protective of OTC derivatives, a market it owns and off which it makes mountains of money — appeared to signal the towel was being thrown in on an issue that even a month ago was worth waging a lobbying war that cost millions.

OTC衍生品会最终进入交流吗？标准化合同和集中式清算是一回事，但市场的全部投降到CME或冰的人，是另一件。这是现在的战斗，一个将使消费者保护局将被居住的地方似乎是90年代晚期的脑袋，这两家Corys之间的言语争吵，所有尊重都尊重了迦罗斯州。

Now there are reports that even the Volcker rule is back on the table.

The GOP can stand with Wall Street and fight, but standing with Wall Street could cost them in the mid-term elections. Plan A, killing financial reform at all costs, seems like it is being scrapped lest it kills the GOP. Time will tell what the new plan is, but Wall Street reform is taking shape.

为家庭伸展做好准备。