Comment Text:
In and after the financial crisis of 2008, my four children and I and I lost more than 50% of our assets, built up in a lifetime of working, saving and carefully investing. I will never again allow my taxes used to bail out giant multinational corporations and Wall Street banks for their addiction to gambling.
The world rightly demands of us, as the planet's most powerful economy, that we act at once to institute effective oversight of the $700 trillion derivatives market. This is essential to any meaningful reform of the unregulated financial speculations system -- which has in recent decades spread throughout the world's economies like an invasive weed.
The derivatives market is by nature a global, so that extreme risks can be transferred worldwide with the touch of a button. Your proposed guidance on cross-border application of the Dodd-Frank derivatives rules clearly indicates that you understand this issue, and its critical importance.
But your proposal, as written, contains multiple loopholes that will allow foreign affiliates of Wall Street banks to escape regulation. Remember, the giant U.S. banks and other major derivatives users are global corporations, with hundreds and even thousands of foreign affiliates. If we don’t regulate them everywhere, we can’t regulate them anywhere.
Make your guidance stronger -- ensure that new Dodd-Frank derivatives protections will apply directly to the full global activities of all significant US participants in the global derivatives market.
Thank you for accepting my comments.
-- Mark W. Hein
Van Nuys, California
