But when the Treasury proposed legislation in August, it included huge loopholes, and a derivative reform bill that passed the House in December has many of the same problems.
While President Obama and Democratic leaders say they are committed to more transparency and regulation over derivatives — the complex instruments that were at the heart of the financial crisis — they are supporting a dangerous exemption for big businesses in the derivative reform bill pending in the House.
Call or write your Senator and tell them to support real derivative reform or that they will pay the consequences come election time.
(That and other derivatives reforms could clip $1 billion from J. P. Morgan's revenues a year).
"On this anniversary, it is important to remember why the law's derivatives reforms are necessary," he told the House Agriculture Committee.
That was just one of many in the grab-bag of derivatives reforms that the Republican House, with some Democratic support, pushed for this year.
Theo Lubke, who until this fall oversaw the derivatives reforms at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said banks do not always think of the market as a whole as they help write rules.
Earlier this month, shortly before the House Financial Services committee voted on several bills to gut the derivatives' reforms in the Dodd-Frank law, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew sent a letter opposing the measures to the committee's chairman, Jeb Hensarling, Republican of Texas.
Under that 2010 law, the trading commission is supposed to extend new derivatives reforms — including tougher capital standards — if overseas trading has "a direct and significant connection with activities" of the United States.
The implementation of Dodd-Frank, particularly the derivatives reforms, has generated a significant amount of conflict and complaints from other countries, and from internationally active institutions, over suggestions that the US requirements have gone too far and have an excessive extraterritorial effect.
