Senator Dodd Says it All

Chris Dodd, in a moment of candor he'll likely want back, said this about financial reform.

It’s a great moment. I’m proud to have been here,” said a teary-eyed Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), who as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee led the effort in the Senate. “No one will know until this is actually in place how it works. But we believe we’ve done something that has been needed for a long time. It took a crisis to bring us to the point where we could actually get this job done.”

Now, everyone should remember this moment of candor by Nancy Pelosi.




Between health care and financial reform, that's more than 4000 pages of bills. The reality is that both Pelosi and Dodd are right. In health care, there were more than one hundred new bureaucracies and regulators created. In financial reform, it's not even clear just how many there will be. There will, however, be an enormous amount of new power given to the Treasury. The new Consumer Financial Protection Agency will also have an enormous amount of power. Fannie/Freddie are left out of the reform and it's unclear if the big banks will lose or gain power. So, everything from credit cards, hedge funds, and derivatives will have new rules but Fannie/Freddie won't have anything? That's why Chris Dodd has never been more right.