Craig Pirrong summarizes the broad case against the Dodd bill and then focuses on two aspects I had not previously noticed:
Last week the Senate passed the financial “reform” legislation, which now goes to a conference committee that will produce a bill that combines the Senate bill with that passed by the House months ago. ...It's a good and important analysis. Go read the whole thing.
The Senate bill is best measured in pounds rather than pages. (Pounds of what I’ll leave to your imagination.) It is comprehensive, and from what I can tell, it is comprehensively wretched. Stephen Bainbridge, whose opinion I respect a good deal, strenuously objects to the nationalization of corporate governance embedded in some of the bill’s language. The infamous Lincoln swaps provision, which I’ve written about, is a horror. It is some kind of sick joke to remake the entire derivatives market–and the banking sector–with a transparently populist ploy heaved up by a rather undistinguished senator (but I repeat myself) from Arkansas in a desperate attempt to stave off a primary challenge. ... The clearing mandate is also a disaster in waiting.
Rather than deconstruct the whole abortion, I’ll focus on a couple of (relatively minor, in the scheme of things) features that illustrate its intellectual incoherence. The first relates to market manipulation. ... Another poster child for the intellectual bankruptcy of the Senate bill is its provision to empower the CFTC to extend position limits to OTC energy derivatives.