The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform & Consumer Protection Act Pt 2

There has been no shortage of comments in the press.  They stated recently but — I’m going to give you some of the comments that I think are pretty interesting.

Here are probably the most important comments from President Obama.  He is talking about the consumer side of things, highlighting the consumer watchdog and Americans being duped into things that they didn’t understand.  That was published in the New York Time in July, just before he signed it.

Here are some other comments, certainly in support of the Bill.  Stating down on Wall Street, I’m not going to read it all to you, it certainly is targeting the excesses on Wall Street, fixing financial flaws, milestones, served the free-wheeling culture, certainly, the toughest financial reforms since the Great Depression, responsibility and accountability – you are going to see a lot of that throughout this bill and some of that throughout this presentation.  At the end of it, they just didn’t want to drive all the derivative business out of New York.

Here are some of the counter-points to that.  They are called “toothless measures”.  There are no facts, it actually speak for themselves.  It is targeting some people who got wealthy during this period of time.  It really doesn’t address the way that they were treated.  I like the last one, it’s kind of interesting.  “The result of 2,300-page legislative monster before us that expands its scope and power of ineffective bureaucracies.”

I think former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, put it interestingly and probably, very pragmatically, as he and President Obama first discussed this, it probably had more substance to it, but as he commented here, the Act meant from what is best to what to be passed and I think that is fairly common in the political circles.

Since this is the first legislation since the 1930s, I would like to take a snapshot view of what this country was like in the 1930s, in our security laws and certainly the 33 and 34 Acts where based upon a country that’s very different from today.  So let’s take a look at some of the things that this nation looked like in the 1930s.

– The population was just under 130 million.

– The average annual salary was under $1,400 a year.  Probably, all the things that I have done during this presentation for other groups, I heard back from so many people, saying that they had no idea that the salary was that low.

– Milk was 14₵ a quart.  Bread was $.19₵ a loaf and steak was $.42₵ a pound, so it’s very different conditions than we have today.

This is slide #9 which is a very important slide, in my opinion, because each of you will have your own agenda, your own interest and this is going to help you sort through the various sections of this monstrous document.  All of these put them all up and I will tell you that nearly the first half of Dodd-Frank is definitions, structure and just general comments.  They really get down to the substance of it and the substance of it is going to be Sections 8 throughout the end.  So, if you are trying to find something now that the documents that are available online for you to review are PDF searchable, so you can go in and say, you are interested in Statute of Limitations or you are interested in Fiduciary duties or you are interested in clearing arrangements.  You can use that as keyword search, but I will assure you that the first half of this is primarily definitions, and saying that, “We are not going to let things happen like they happened before.”

You really get to substance when you get to Section 9 and throughout the rest of it.  This is going to be a slide that’s probably going to give you some guidance, as you look at how this might impact your practice.  That wraps that up.

In Section 1256, we have folks here that are involved in Forensic Accounting or Accounting, the 1256 Contracts could be important to you.  Section 9-16, in my opinion, are the primary sections to begin with.  To begin, this is the slide that will help you sort through this monstrous documents.

Here’s the keyword search, as I mentioned, this is a PDF file and you can take a look at some of the things that were important to the policy makers as they drafted this.  These as the number of pages these terms are found on.  I thought it was interesting, aviation – it’s hard to imagine why aviation would be mentioned in this Bill, was found on three pages.  The elderly was only found on three pages.  In this document, aviation was given equal rating to the elderly.

The TASA Group, leaders in expert witness referrals, presents: The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform & Consumer Protection Act: The Impact on Regulatory Mandates & Securities Litigation Pt. 2

Leave a Reply