Financial Regulatory Reform: How Does It Help, How Does It Hurt?

If you follow on Twitter, this is the session I mentioned (on whether resolution authority will work -- the general sentiment is that it will not -- and on the need for derivatives to go through organized markets/clearinghouses).

More generally, it's been hard to get a read on the general sentiment and tone of the conference, but so far I'd say that it is mostly forward looking. That is, for example, a lot of the discussion in the past was about how to fix the financial system. There was a lot of disagreement about what needed to be done, the ideological divide was basically between those who said it our problems came from too much government involvement in the economy and those who said it was from not enough (including ineffective government, e.g. on the regulatory front). But this year the recession and particularly the responses to it are largely taken as given and all but complete, and it's more about how things have changed, which of the changes will survive, and how to thrive in the new environment. Unfortunately, in my view the problems are still with us -- for example, we need to build on the weak regulatory foundation that Dodd-Frank gave us, not weaken it further -- but most eyes seem focused on the future rather than on the big problems that are still with us. I hope that doesn't come back to haunt us when the next large shock hits the financial system:

Financial Regulatory Reform: How Does It Help, How Does It Hurt?  

Speakers:

• Kenneth Griffin, Founder and CEO, Citadel
• Raymond McDaniel Jr., Chairman and CEO, Moody's Corp.
• Jim Millstein, Chairman, Millstein & Co. LLC; former Chief Restructuring Officer, U.S. Treasury Department
• Thomas Wilson, Chairman, President and CEO, Allstate; Deputy Chairman, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

Moderator:

• Alan Schwartz, Executive Chairman, Guggenheim