White House to seek expansion of powers for Federal Reserve
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration will propose Monday that Congress give the Federal Reserve broad new authority to oversee financial market stability, in effect allowing it to send swat teams into any corner of the industry or any institution that might pose a risk to the overall system.
The proposal is part of a sweeping blueprint to overhaul the nation's hodgepodge of financial regulatory agencies, which many experts say failed to recognize rampant excesses in mortgage lending until after they ignited what has become the worst financial calamity in decades.
According to a summary provided by the administration, the plan would consolidate what is now an alphabet soup of banking and securities regulators into a powerful trio of overseers responsible for everything from banks and brokerage firms to hedge funds and private equity firms.
While the plan could expose Wall Street investment banks and hedge funds to greater scrutiny, it carefully avoids a call for tighter regulation.
The plan would not rein in practices that have been implicated in the housing and mortgage meltdown, like packaging risky subprime mortgages into securities carrying the highest ratings.
The plan would give the Fed some authority over Wall Street firms, but only when an investment bank's practices posed a threat to the entire financial system.
And the plan does not recommend tighter rules over the vast and largely unregulated markets for risk-sharing and hedging, like credit-default swaps, which are supposed to insure lenders against loss but became a speculative instrument themselves and gave many institutions a false sense of security.
Some of the reforms could actually reduce the power of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is charged with maintaining orderly stock and bond markets and protecting investors. The proposal would merge the SEC with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates exchange-traded futures for oil, grains, currencies, and the like.
The blueprint also suggests several areas where the SEC should take a lighter approach to its oversight. Among them are allowing stock exchanges greater leeway to regulate themselves and streamlining the approval of new products, even allowing automatic approval of securities products that are being traded in foreign markets.
The proposal began to take form last year as an effort by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. to make American financial markets more competitive against overseas markets by modernizing a creaky regulatory system. His goal was to streamline the different and sometimes clashing rules for commercial banks, thrifts, and nonbank mortgage lenders.
Almost every element of the proposal would have to be approved by Congress.
Paulson's proposal for the Fed echoes ideas championed by Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.
Both see the Fed taking a central role in overseeing risk across the entire financial spectrum, but Frank is likely to favor a stronger Fed role, and to subject investment banks to the same rules that commercial banks now must follow, especially for capital reserves.
