Fed gets new oversight powers under Dodd bill

Dodd is going out with a bang, bestowing even more power upon the people responsible for getting us into this mess in the first place. But this is the nature of the Hegelian Dialectic: the solution to any problem is, always and forever, more money and power to those responsible. Hysterically, Reuters pretends that the Fed has made a remarkable recovery after a steep drop in its popularity, as if a bill introduced by a scumbag lame duck senator represents a boom in its public opinion, as Ron Paul's audit the Fed bill still makes its way through Congress. What fools they take us for. They're probably right.

Reuters -

The Federal Reserve would win sweeping new powers over nonbank financial firms and keep much of its authority over banks, under revised legislation to be unveiled on Monday by the chief architect of financial reform in the Senate.

In a remarkable recovery by the U.S. central bank after a steep drop in its political popularity, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd was poised to release a bill that leans heavily on the Fed, sources said on Sunday.

Not only would a new government watchdog for financial consumers be housed within the Fed, but it would also retain much of its present authority over large bank holding companies and gain new authority over selected nonbank financial firms.

Dodd's bill would give the Fed authority to supervise bank holding companies with more than $50 billion in assets, down from an earlier threshold of $100 billion, sources said.

The bill may also preserve the Fed's power over state-chartered banks with less than $50 billion in assets that are already in the Federal Reserve system, a source said. An earlier proposal had called for transferring responsibility for supervising such banks to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

That would put hundred of banks under the Fed's purview, including such giants as Bank of America and Citigroup, as well as branches of foreign banks, a source said.

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