WASHINGTON (CN) - The news is: not much happened. After the hype of the weekend, instead of proposed rules to bring the promised "significant change" to the financial regulatory system, the Treasury Department delivered a 200-page suggestion of what Congress could pass as legislation, if it wanted to.
If the plan makes it through Congress it would rearrange which agencies have oversight of financial systems, but critics say it would do nothing to change current mortgage woes or similar future crises.
The initial impetus for the lengthy suggestion, called the "Blueprint for a Modernized Financial Regulatory Structure," was to stem regulation not to create it. In his speech releasing the document, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson admitted the department began the Blueprint before predatory lending showed its hand in August.
If a regulatory structure is built from this blueprint, a substantive change may be that the Federal Reserve gets the plan's "responsibility and authority to gather appropriate information, disclose information, collaborate with the other regulators on rule writing, and take corrective actions when necessary in the interest of overall financial market stability," instead of just watching over banks.
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