Should the Fed take up the cudgel as America’s regulator-in-chief?
BARACK OBAMA’S government is using the firestorm over American International Group to press a priority of its own: new authority to take over any big, troubled financial institution and a watchdog to look for risk in the entire financial system. But the controversy has also created a new obstacle for those plans. The most logical agency to fill those roles had been the Federal Reserve, but political support for that idea may have been hurt by its role in the bail-out of AIG.
That is the view of Barney Frank, the powerful chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who suggested in an interview on Thursday March 19th that “The Fed has taken a bit of a hit over this AIG issue.” He argues that the “political case for the Fed as systemic risk regulator is going to have be rebuilt, re-examined. It has not changed my personal view of the Fed as the best possible [candidate] but it has substantially weakened their political position.” ...
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[Source: The Economist: News analysis - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]
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