Geithner says new ‘rules of the game’ required

updated 5:39 p.m. ET March 26, 2009

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration on Thursday unveiled a sweeping overhaul of the financial system designed to impose greater regulation on major players like hedge funds.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told lawmakers that the changes are needed to fix the flaws exposed by the current financial crisis, the worst to hit the country in seven decades.

The goal is to repair a system that has proven “too unstable and fragile,” he said.

“Over the past 18 months, we have faced the most severe global financial crisis in generations,” Geithner said in testimony to the House Financial Services Committee. “To address this will require comprehensive reform. Not modest repairs at the margin, but new rules of the game.”

The administration’s proposal, which will require congressional approval, would represent a major expansion of federal authority over the financial system. Highlights of the plan include:

• Imposing tougher standards on financial institutions judged to be so big that their failure would represent a risk to the entire system.
• Extending federal regulations for the first time to all trading in financial derivatives, exotic financial instruments such as credit default swaps that were blamed for much of the damage in the meltdown.
• Requiring hedge funds and other private pools of capital, including private equity funds and venture capital funds, to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission if their assets exceed a certain size. The threshold amount has yet to be determined.
• Creating a systemic risk regulator to monitor the biggest institutions. Geithner did not designate where such authority should reside, but the administration is expected to support awarding this power to the Federal Reserve.

The plan also includes a measure that Geithner and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke discussed before the committee on Tuesday to give the administration expanded powers to take over major nonbank financial institutions, such as insurance companies and hedge funds that were teetering on the brink of collapse.

That power was aimed at preventing a repeat of the problems surrounding insurance giant American International Group Inc., which sparked a furor last week when it was revealed the company had distributed $165 million in bonuses to employees of its financial products group. The unit specialized in trading credit default swaps, the instruments that drove the company to near-collapse last fall.

“Let me be clear,” Geithner told the committee. “The days when a major insurance company could bet the house on credit default swaps with no one watching and no credible backing to protect the company or taxpayers must end.”

The administration, pushing for quick action on its reform agenda, sent Congress a 61-page bill dealing with the expanded powers to seize control of nonbank institutions late Wednesday.

The House committee, chaired by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., has indicated it could move on the measure as early as next week.

Frank said the overhaul should ensure the government has more options and can avoid repeating the unattractive choices it faced last fall of letting Lehman Brothers fail, which sent a shock wave to the entire financial system, and propping up AIG with billions of dollars.

“We are looking for an alternative method to avoid those polar extremes,” he said.

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