Congressman Bruce Braley says new regulations for Wall Street are long overdue and he supports a bill that the U.S. House has been debating this week, with a final vote expected sometime today.
“This is a fulfillment of a great deal of effort to try to bring common sense reforms that’s going to hold Wall Street and big banks accountable,” Braley says.
Braley, a Democrat from Waterloo, was on the losing side of votes yesterday which weakened the bill. Moderate Democrats sided with Republicans and voted against broader regulation of complex derivatives trades. Agricultural futures trades are considered derivatives.
Braley says the bill has other key provisions. For example, it seeks to forbid future federal government bail-outs like the one the Bush Administration and congress enacted in the fall of 2008. And the bill, in its present form, still imposes some restrictions on derivatives to try to prevent the kind of manipulation that helped spark last year’s financial melt-down.
“It’s an important part of continuing to stabilize the U.S. and global economy and allow us to provide more certainty and transparency in our financial markets,” Braley says. “And I think it’s one that the American people have been waiting a long time for us to complete work on.” A final vote is expected mid-day today.