Word: reforming
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...anonymous. Suffice it to say the lobbyist is getting used to hostile greetings. "We get it: we're al-Qaeda, and nobody wants to be seen with us," he says. "Obviously, we're going to take some abuse in 2010." Like most bank lobbyists, he says he supports financial reform - as long as it doesn't include a consumer agency or a bunch of other provisions that Obama supports - but that hasn't stopped his industry from spending millions of dollars to kill it. What's interesting is that now, for the first time, the lobbyist thinks reform is going...
...formula for gridlock. Meanwhile, in the post-Massachusetts political climate - and with so much industry cash sloshing around in Washington - centrist Democrats seem to fear getting tagged as Obama liberals more than they fear getting tagged as Wall Street water carriers. And the White House would rather see reform blocked by Republican recalcitrance it can exploit at the polls than watch another round of interminable horse-trading that will ultimately be blamed on Obama...
...health care dies and leaves Democrats short on achievements to brag about in 2010. It's simply decided that the most plausible path to a bill is to warn the public that the financial system is still a ticking bomb, and to try to make opposition to strong reform tantamount to support for the terrorists in fancy suits. The problem is that on an issue this complex, with so many contentious provisions and alternative proposals floating around, naysayers are always going to be able to find a populist excuse to say nay. For example, some in both parties have turned...
...Financial reform, like health care reform, is truly complex. It's hard to explain controversies over pre-emption or end users or proprietary trading; as another Wall Street lobbyist puts it, "Americans don't care whether Morgan Stanley keeps its prop desk." Obama knows he has little chance to transform the system if regulatory reform gets bogged down over health-care-style intricacies. The good news for Obama is that nobody claims our financial oversight is the best in the world. He may have a chance for reform if he can boil it down to one simple question...
Read "Is Obama's Financial-Reform Plan Bold Enough...