U.S. lawmakers on Friday finalized a historic overhaul of financial regulations, handing President Obama a major domestic victory as he heads to Canada Friday for the three-day G20 summit devoted to financial reform. Here's what the experts had to say on the new regulation.
“This is a populist surge of activity to say: ‘Hey, we'll get these bad guys on Wall Street that did bad things to you' ... I think that I would be buying bank stocks this morning (as) the bill is now behind us."
"Banks will raise prices to offset the costs of the bill and will be innovative enough to get around a new rule which would ban proprietary trading by banks unrelated to their clients. The people who get hurt are everybody else.”
—Dick Bove, financial strategist Rochdale Securities
"It’s an overreach in a lot of areas, in ways that are not essential or not related. While some of the core areas that are very important have gone completely untouched, we did not deal with Fannie and Freddie, the underwriting provisions, should have been much stronger."
—Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn)
"If this were a Clint Eastwood movie, this would be ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.’ From our point of view, there are good elements in this bill, from a main street community bank standpoint, there are some very bad elements in the bill. For example, the interchange amendment is horrendous and we will continue to work to improve that and see what we can do in the regulatory agencies. It’s going to take some weeks or months before anyone’s going to be able to see if this is a net positive for negative."
—Camden Fine, President and CEO of Independent Community Bankers of America
"There’s very little reaction in terms of the market’s response to this—we’ve had a very narrow range in the overnight session. While we take days and weeks or months to digest some of the information that’s breaking this morning, it’s really just a story at this point. The market’s taken a huge hit at this point, but I don’t think the news that’s developed is going to contribute to the downside activity."
—Ben Lichtenstein, TradersAudio.com
"Obama had the big BP agreement, the decisive action with (David) Petraeus, and now with this Wall Street reform by July 4th, he has two legs of his triple crown. In four months—signing both the health care reform and Wall Street reform. We will probably get an energy bill signed by the end of the year—a remarkable year."
—Mike Allen, Politico