World News
Financial reform provides benchmarks for a just and stable economy
Published:
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Now that financial reform legislation has been signed into law, the focus is shifting to ensure that the legislation works as intended. In the minds of financial reform proponents, that means adopting strong rules that allow government agencies to carry out their now-mandated watchdog role, protect average people in their financial transactions and end the casino mentality they say dominated markets before the worldwide economic free fall started in late 2007. Michael Masters, portfolio manager for Master Capital Management, and Oblate Father Seamus Finn, director of social justice for the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate and a leader within the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, are planning to take a simple message to the rule-makers in government and to leaders in the financial sector: Markets must work for everyone. "You don't need some crafty Wall Street lawyer ... to eviscerate what Congress intended to do," Masters told Catholic News Service. Both Masters and Father Finn were part of a coalition of 450 organizations that included consumer groups, social justice advocates and various industry trade organizations that pushed for the reform measures. In the end, they were pleased by the law's final language. One of the major reforms in the 2,330-page Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act requires greater transparency in the trading of derivatives, a financial instrument whose value is linked to the expected future price movements of the asset to which it is linked. The opaqueness of the derivatives market before reform is widely blamed for the near collapse of the banking industry in 2008.
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