by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Wall Street on Parade
On March 7 of this year, President Obama called the full Financial Stability Oversight Council (F-SOC) to the White House for a meeting. F-SOC was created under the 2010 financial reform legislation known as Dodd-Frank to monitor systemic risks building up in the financial system and, ideally, nip them in the bud before they got out of hand. Every major Wall Street bank regulator sits on F-SOC.
Immediately following his meeting with F-SOC on March 7, President Obama held a press conference (see video below) with the F-SOC members sitting around him at a large conference table. Sitting two seats away from the President was Mary Jo White, Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Directly across the table was Thomas Curry, head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) that oversees national banks, and Jack Lew, U.S. Treasury Secretary who Chairs F-SOC. All three of these individuals (and likely everyone else around the table with the possible exception of President Obama) is intimately aware that the vast majority of derivatives today are not traded in central clearinghouses as was promised under the 2010 Dodd-Frank legislation almost six years ago.