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Obama Urges Renewed Focus On Wall Street Reform


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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/20/obama-wall-street-reform_n_3784384.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=3244900b=facebook

 

WASHINGTON -- Passage of a sweeping overhaul of Wall Street regulations in 2010 was a hallmark of President Barack Obama's first term. Three years later, amid delays and compromises that critics say have diluted its ambitious goals, the president is trying to rekindle the law's promise.

 

Obama prodded the nation's top financial regulators on Monday to act swiftly and finish writing rules designed to prevent a recurrence of the 2008 financial crisis that helped precipitate a damaging recession from which the country is still recovering.

 

Obama met privately with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and seven other independent agency heads to emphasize his desire for comprehensive new rules as the five-year anniversary of the nation's financial near-meltdown approaches.

 

The law was considered a milestone in Obama's presidency, a robust response to the crisis, which led to a massive government bailout to stabilize the financial markets. But its implementation is behind schedule with scores of regulations yet to be written, let alone enforced.

Obama hoped to convey "the sense of urgency that he feels," spokesman Josh Earnest said before the president convened the meeting.

Lehman Brothers collapsed into bankruptcy on Sept. 15, 2008, and the administration has wanted to use that dubious milestone to look back on the lessons of the crisis and to chart the progress so far to prevent a recurrence. In a statement at the conclusion of the meeting, the White House said Obama commended the regulators for their work "but stressed the need to expeditiously finish implementing the critical remaining portions of Wall Street reform to ensure we are able to prevent the type of financial harm that led to the Great Recession from ever happening again."

 

Not everyone feels that way about the law, known as Dodd-Frank after its Democratic sponsors, Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank and Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd.

 

Republican House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, an early opponent of Dodd-Frank, dismissed Obama's meeting with the regulators, saying, "Much like Obamacare, Dodd-Frank is an incomprehensively complex piece of legislation that is harmful to our floundering economy and in dire need of repeal."

 

The law set up a council of regulators to be on the lookout for risks across the finance system. It also created an independent consumer financial protection bureau within the Federal Reserve to write and enforce new regulations covering lending and credit. And it placed shadow financial markets that previously escaped the oversight of regulators under new scrutiny, giving the government new powers to break up companies that regulators believe threaten the economy.

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Start with Jamie Dimon and Llyod Blankfein

 

How about we start with those allowing the legislation that blatantly provides loopholes, then we move on to those who take advantages of said negotiated loopholes, then we move on to those who have knowingly benefited from these loopholes.   I'm not so sure we'd have many politicians left.   As Marvin would say......"and thats a good thing". 

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How about we start with those allowing the legislation that blatantly provides loopholes, then we move on to those who take advantages of said negotiated loopholes, then we move on to those who have knowingly benefited from these loopholes.   I'm not so sure we'd have many politicians left.   As Marvin would say......"and thats a good thing". 

 

 

Chicken and Egg argument. They allow that legislation because the corporate interests pay their campaign funds. Hell in some cases, ok most, those same corporate intersts are the ones writing the legisilation.

 

Its a broken system, that our corporate overloards have no real interest in fixing.

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No shit.  Like he's going to "Crack Down" on the guys holding his leash... 

 

Exactly.....

 

That's what kills me about this 2 party system.  We the people actually think we have a choice.  We think these are random people running for Presidencies and we have a choice among the 2 that made it through their party's system.  We don't realize that these douchebags are handpicked for us, both Republican and Democrats, and we choose between the 2 that will continue to carry out the agenda because they're both hand picked, following the same master.  

 

And these 'random' people we get to pick from are all related to one another....Obama, Bush, Cheney, Gore, Kerry, McCain etc....  they're all related.  What a coincidence huh?!?!?

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Exactly.....

 

That's what kills me about this 2 party system.  We the people actually think we have a choice.  We think these are random people running for Presidencies and we have a choice among the 2 that made it through their party's system.  We don't realize that these douchebags are handpicked for us, both Republican and Democrats, and we choose between the 2 that will continue to carry out the agenda because they're both hand picked, following the same master.  

 

And these 'random' people we get to pick from are all related to one another....Obama, Bush, Cheney, Gore, Kerry, McCain etc....  they're all related.  What a coincidence huh?!?!?

 

What other systems would you propose?

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  • 7 months later...

http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/30/investing/michael-lewis-flash-boys/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

 

Is Wall Street a rigged game? Michael Lewis thinks so, and the financial writer's new book blasts the so-called high frequency traders he says are gaming the market.

"Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt" explains how several insiders discover these firms are gaining an advantage over others: lightning-fast trades achieved through automation and advanced computer networks.

 

"The United States stock market, the most iconic market in global capitalism, is rigged ... by a combination of the stock exchanges, the big Wall Street banks and high-frequency traders," he said in an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes."

 

The victims, he said, are "everybody who has an investment in the stock market."

 

"The insiders are able to move faster than you and play it against orders in ways you don't understand," Lewis said.


 

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Did you watch it on 60 minutes last night?

 

It was very  interesting and maddening.

 

I don't claim to know anything about the market, but i was watching hoops and golf yesterday and kept seeing the commercials about it so I watched. I have watched a couple of documentaries about it. I knew that it was all computers and algorithms now...regular trading is out, but to see what they are doing now is just flat out stealing.

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Did you watch it on 60 minutes last night?

 

It was very  interesting and maddening.

 

I don't claim to know anything about the market, but i was watching hoops and golf yesterday and kept seeing the commercials about it so I watched. I have watched a couple of documentaries about it. I knew that it was all computers and algorithms now...regular trading is out, but to see what they are doing now is just flat out stealing.

 

Not sure what to make out of this.  This idea of " front running " is mere milliseconds of information ahead of your competition or opponent which in terms of Stock Market appears to be either legal or illegal depending upon which news story one listens to.

 

IF ( and please excuse my uninformed rant ) this is a matter of LATENCY, then simply place restrictions or a delay box on information provided to companies which run the high speed trading to level the playing field.  I dealt with versions of latency while an operator and maintenance tech in the military.  Some portions of a system operate so fast that the rest of the system can not keep up or receives the information from two sides of the ship at wrong times causing an issue with bearing and evaluation.  Latency is involved in computer systems, transmission systems, etc...  From what I have read, the high speed trading firms use a combination of both to get the advantage of those milliseconds which apparently is crucial to beating the rest of the bunch out of deals and obviously a lot of money.

 

Is this something which could be regulated ?  Is this something that should be regulated ?  Is there an answer to " even the playing field "  ?  ...or do companies just simply stop selling direct feeds of their information ?  I don't know.  The slow response of the government would lead me to believe they don't have an answer right now either.  This is something a lot more complicated than my knowledge of these subjects.

 

Note:  I believe Elflocko and others are more knowledgeable on the subject of latency and high speed computers and transmission, hopefully they chime in with information to digest.

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This has nothing to do with network speed and everything to do with the software being specifically written to rip us off.

 

We're traveling on the same road, but we're on a bicycle and they're in a Ferrari... 

 

  While watching the TV special on this subject, the graphic representation pointed out that most of them may be on the same road, we may not always take the same path.  In other words, the data is not transmitted the same way to all locations.  There are many strategies for High Frequency Trading and all of them almost exclusively, with the exception of one, deal with Computer algorithms/software of some sort.  The one that does not is Low-latency strategies which uses a combination of data transfer speed and computer algorithms.  Am I interpreting this right ?  Thank you for your input.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_frequency_trading

 

High-frequency trading strategies

 

1.  Trading ahead of index fund rebalancing

 

2.  Market making

 

3.  Ticker tape trading

 

4.  Event arbitrage

 

5.  Statistical arbitrage

 

6.  News-based trading

 

7.  Low-latency strategies:  A separate, "naïve" class of high-frequency trading strategies relies exclusively on ultra-low latency direct market access technology. In these strategies, computer scientists rely on speed to gain minuscule advantages in arbitraging price discrepancies in some particular security trading simultaneously on disparate markets.

 

Another aspect of low latency strategy has been the switch from fiber optic to microwave technology for long distance networking. Especially since 2011, there has been a trend to use microwaves to transmit data across key connections such as the one between New York and Chicago. This is because microwaves travelling in air suffer a less than 1% speed reduction compared to light travelling in a vacuum, whereas with conventional fiber optics light travels over 30% slower.

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So as I understand it, and I'm pretty sure I do, the charge is these guys bought locations and ran fiber to these data centers in these locations as well as having software that has algorythms ensuring that their data packets are routed as fast as possible to ensure their data gets there first. Nothing in and illegal of itself, however what is being charged that is of concern is that they are using the data they get in one location to get to the next location and buy stock based on the data they got from the market in the last location, thereby driving up prices for the people that get into the location behind them, this is called front running, and it's against the law, however I'm not sure if the law has accounted for this form of front running, so they may get away with it until the law gets changed.

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So as I understand it, and I'm pretty sure I do, the charge is these guys bought locations and ran fiber to these data centers in these locations as well as having software that has algorythms ensuring that their data packets are routed as fast as possible to ensure their data gets there first. Nothing in and illegal of itself, however what is being charged that is of concern is that they are using the data they get in one location to get to the next location and buy stock based on the data they got from the market in the last location, thereby driving up prices for the people that get into the location behind them, this is called front running, and it's against the law, however I'm not sure if the law has accounted for this form of front running, so they may get away with it until the law gets changed.

 

Thank you for your input.  I am always curious when technology manages to be used in new and creative ways.

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