New York Times on Financial Regulation

http://www.futureofcapitalism.com/2010/07/new-york-times-on-financial-regulation

The New York Times lead news article about the passage of the Dodd-Frank financial reform contains a pretty strongly opinionated section of historical context:

Over the last half-century, as traders and lenders increasingly drove the nation's economic growth, politicians of both parties scrambled to get out of the way, passing a series of landmark bills that allowed financial companies to become larger, less transparent and more profitable.

Usury laws were set aside. Banks were allowed to expand across state lines, sell insurance, trade securities. The government watched and did nothing as the bulk of financial activity moved into a parallel universe of private investment funds, unregulated lenders and black markets like derivatives trading.

That era of hands-off optimism was gaveled to an end on Thursday as the Senate gave final approval to a bill that reasserts the importance of federal supervision of financial transactions.

The idea that "the last half-century" has been characterized by deregulation of the financial industry during which "the government watched and did nothing" seems highly debatable. It ignores, for example, Sarbanes-Oxley, Eliot Spitzer's cases against Wall Street stock analysts, the 1974 creation of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the 1980s prosecutions by Rudolph Giuliani of Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky. What's more, the Times describes the changes as leading to increased bank profits, but it says nothing about what it meant for consumers -- increased availability of credit; an end to caps on interest rates for savers; the ability for a consumer from one state to go to an ATM machine or bank branch of his bank while traveling in another state and conduct hassle-free transactions as if the consumer were at home.

The description of derivatives trading as a "black market" is also strange; my (highly reliable Webster's Second Unabridged) dictionary defines a black market as "illegal dealing in commodities; sale and purchase of goods at higher than legal prices; outlaw trading, as in rationed goods; also, the place where this is done." There's nothing illegal about derivatives trading, so it's not clear why the Times would describe it as a "black market."

I can understand the Times reporters needed an "angle," because by the time the paper came out most people who cared about the matter already knew that the Dodd-Frank bill had passed the Senate. In this case it just seems a bit clumsily executed. The two reporters whose bylines are on the story are both pretty sharp, so maybe it's an editor's fault.

by Ira Stoll  |  Jul 16, 2010 at 8:00 am Related Topics:  Banking, Capital Markets Regulation, Press receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free futureofcapitalism.com mailing list