I. PROMOTE ROBUST SUPERVISION AND REGULATION OF FINANCIAL FIRMS
A. Create a Financial Services Oversight Council
1. We propose the creation of a Financial Services Oversight Council to facilitate information sharing and coordination, identify emerging risks, advise the Federal Reserve on the identification of firms whose failure could pose a threat to financial stability due to their combination of size, leverage, and interconnectedness (hereafter referred to as a Tier 1 FHC), and provide a forum for resolving jurisdictional disputes between regulators.
a. The membership of the Council should include
(i) the Secretary of the Treasury, who shall serve as the Chairman;
(ii) the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System;
(iii) the Director of the National Bank Supervisor;
(iv) the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency;
(v) the Chairman of the SEC;
(vi) the Chairman of the CFTC;
(vii) the Chairman of the FDIC; and
(viii) the Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA).
b. The Council should be supported by a permanent, full-time expert staff at Treasury. The staff should be responsible for providing the Council with the information and resources it needs to fulfill its responsibilities.
2. Our legislation will propose to give the Council the authority to gather information from any financial firm and the responsibility for referring emerging risks to the attention of regulators with the authority to respond.
B. Implement Heightened Consolidated Supervision and Regulation of All Large,
Interconnected Financial Firms
1. Any financial firm whose combination of size, leverage, and interconnectedness could pose a threat to financial stability if it failed (Tier 1 FHC) should be subject to robust consolidated supervision and regulation, regardless of whether the firm owns an insured depository institution.
2. The Federal Reserve Board should have the authority and accountability for consolidated supervision and regulation of Tier 1 FHCs.
3. Our legislation will propose criteria that the Federal Reserve must consider in identifying Tier 1 FHCs.
4. The prudential standards for Tier 1 FHCs – including capital, liquidity and risk management standards – should be stricter and more conservative than those applicable to other financial firms to account for the greater risks that their potential failure would impose on the financial system.
5. Consolidated supervision of a Tier 1 FHC should extend to the parent company and to all of its subsidiaries – regulated and unregulated, U.S. and
foreign. Functionally regulated and depository institution subsidiaries of a Tier 1 FHC should continue to be supervised and regulated primarily by their functional or bank regulator, as the case may be. The constraints that the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLB Act) introduced on the Federal Reserve's ability to require reports from, examine, or impose higher prudential requirements or more stringent activity restrictions on the functionally regulated or depository institution subsidiaries of FHCs should be removed.
6. Consolidated supervision of a Tier 1 FHC should be macroprudential in focus. That is, it should consider risk to the system as a whole.
7. The Federal Reserve, in consultation with Treasury and external experts, should propose recommendations by October 1, 2009 to better align its structure and governance with its authorities and responsibilities.
C. Strengthen Capital and Other Prudential Standards For All Banks and BHCs
1. Treasury will lead a working group, with participation by federal financial regulatory agencies and outside experts that will conduct a fundamental reassessment of existing regulatory capital requirements for banks and BHCs, including new Tier 1 FHCs. The working group will issue a report with its conclusions by December 31, 2009.
2. Treasury will lead a working group, with participation by federal financial regulatory agencies and outside experts, that will conduct a fundamental reassessment of the supervision of banks and BHCs. The working group will issue a report with its conclusions by October 1, 2009.
3. Federal regulators should issue standards and guidelines to better align executive compensation practices of financial firms with long-term shareholder value and to prevent compensation practices from providing incentives that could threaten the safety and soundness of supervised institutions. In addition, we will support legislation requiring all public companies to hold non-binding shareholder resolutions on the compensation packages of senior executive officers, as well as new requirements to make compensation committees more independent.
4. Capital and management requirements for FHC status should not be limited to the subsidiary depository institution. All FHCs should be required to meet the capital and management requirements on a consolidated basis as well.
5. The accounting standard setters (the FASB, the IASB, and the SEC) should review accounting standards to determine how financial firms should be required to employ more forward-looking loan loss provisioning practices that incorporate a broader range of available credit information. Fair value accounting rules also should be reviewed with the goal of identifying changes that could provide users of financial reports with both fair value information and greater transparency regarding the cash flows management expects to receive by holding investments.
6. Firewalls between banks and their affiliates should be strengthened to protect the federal safety net that supports banks and to better prevent spread of the subsidy inherent in the federal safety net to bank affiliates.
D. Close Loopholes in Bank Regulation
1. We propose the creation of a new federal government agency, the National Bank Supervisor (NBS), to conduct prudential supervision and regulation of all federally chartered depository institutions, and all federal branches and agencies of foreign banks.
2. We propose to eliminate the federal thrift charter, but to preserve its interstate
branching rules and apply them to state and national banks.
3. All companies that control an insured depository institution, however organized, should be subject to robust consolidated supervision and regulation at the federal level by the Federal Reserve and should be subject to the nonbanking activity restrictions of the BHC Act. The policy of separating banking from commerce should be re-affirmed and strengthened. We must close loopholes in the BHC Act for thrift holding companies, industrial loan companies, credit card banks, trust companies, and grandfathered "nonbank" banks.
E. Eliminate the SEC's Programs for Consolidated Supervision
The SEC has ended its Consolidated Supervised Entity Program, under which it had been the holding company supervisor for companies such as Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns. We propose also eliminating the SEC's Supervised Investment Bank Holding Company program. Investment banking firms that seek consolidated supervision by a U.S. regulator should be subject to supervision and regulation by the Federal Reserve.
F.
