Reform bill passes joint committee vote

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Reform bill passes joint committee vote
WASHINGTON, (UPI) -- House and Senate committee members in Washington agreed on final details of a financial reform bill early Friday after a 20-hour negotiating session.

President Barack Obama expressed his gratitude for the work of the House and Senate conference committee before he headed to Canada to attend Group of Eight and Group of 20 meetings.

"(We) are poised to pass the toughest financial reform since the ones we created in the aftermath of the Great Depression," Obama said. "Early this morning, the House and Senate reached an agreement on a set of Wall Street reforms that represents 90 percent of what I proposed when I took up this fight."

Wall Street reform will strengthen the U.S. economy in several ways, he said, such as making the financial system more transparent, ensuring banks can't engage in risky trades for their own profit and creating a resolution authority to help wind down firms whose collapse would threaten the country's entire financial system.

"No longer will be have companies that are 'too big to fail,'" he said.

The congressional conference session that ended at 5:39 a.m. included late agreements on derivatives trading and restrictions on proprietary bank trading, culminating in 20 of 31 House members and seven of 12 Senate members approving the bill, The New York Times reported.

The landmark bill sets out rules for taking over firms deemed a systemic risk, establishes a consumer protection agency for financial products and regulates ownership of hedge funds and private equity firms.

The bill heads to the House and Senate for ratification. Deemed likely to pass, it would then go to President Barack Obama's desk, where, after healthcare reform, it would be the second major domestic policy bill within a year for the president to sign.

The bill is both the culmination and centerpiece of a consumer protection movement two years after a financial collapse led to escalating home foreclosures and unemployment, and government bailouts of financial firms and car companies.

The bill pivoted on arguments that taxpayers paid the price of the economic downturn with a $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program made necessary by the reckless behavior of banks issuing subprime loans based on risky standards.

Although some see the consumer protection agency limiting options for borrowers, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., who wrote much of the Senate version of the bill, said the agency would "watch out for the average citizen … when they are abused by a financial market place that takes advantage of them on home mortgages and credit cards."
 
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