Word: oversight
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...Some of the answers are technical. Regulatory oversight, almost everyone agrees, needs to be beefed up. There's also an emerging consensus on the need for banks to hold more capital and for their appetite for risk to be curtailed. But bigger issues are at stake too, ones that are more political and philosophical in nature: Should any bank be too big to fail? What should be done with financial activities that seem purely speculative and of questionable social use? How can the short-term, get-rich-quick mentality that drove so much market activity before the crash - and inflated...
...scenes debate, these issues will be the elephants in the room at the G-20 summit meeting of major economic powers due to take place in Pittsburgh, Pa., on Sept. 24-25. Diplomats and analysts say that a growing convergence among nations on the technical details surrounding greater industry oversight may paper over a divisive philosophical gulf. The U.S. and Britain, with their instinctive support and dependence on free-market finance, are increasingly at odds with France and Germany, who are more skeptical about the benefits of unfettered capitalism and hope to win votes at home by controlling its excesses...
...None of this is simply academic theorizing. One year on, public fury about the massive banking bailouts continues to drive calls for greater oversight and regulation. Much of the outrage is directed at bankers who earned huge bonuses by taking outsized risks with complex financial instruments, only to walk away scot-free when their bets went awry, plunging the world into crisis. Bonuses are just one aspect of the larger issue of moral hazard that has been raised over the past year, as governments and central banks have spent tens of billions of dollars of taxpayers' money to rescue financial...
...financial derivatives by requiring the trading of them to be done through central clearing houses. Meanwhile, Trichet's group of central bankers wants banks to put up additional capital if they engage in especially risky types of financial market transactions. As the financial services industry braces for tougher oversight, it's keeping its fingers crossed. "There's a lot of wariness about all forms of financial market activities and that's perfectly understandable," says Richard Metcalfe, global head of policy at the International Swaps and Derivatives Association. "There's a huge amount of political pressure to do things...
...governments use of this privilege, laid out the new guidelines in a four-page memo specifying that state secrecy would only be invoked when genuine or significant harm to national defense or foreign relations is at stake. Danielle Brian, executive director of the non-partisan watchdog Project on Government Oversight, called the state secrets privilege an executive branch abuse that really needed to be curtailed, and Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, a liberal Democrat, said he was pleased with the Administration's move. But Michael Macleod-Ball, acting director of the American Civil Liberties Unions Washington legislative office, was more...