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Financial Politics

cdelsola

Joined
4/24/10
Messages
5
Points
11
I am going to begin my MFE program this summer and in doing so will be making a huge financial investment. Because of this, I am disturbed by the language that I have heard in the media with regard to financial reform.

With legislators and the public so enthusiastic about really sticking it to the banks and financial institutions I expected to find some discussion on the web about the effect on financial engineering practitioners and recent graduates, but have found nothing. It has been said by many that legislators have gone to far on derivatives. Isn't this relevant or is there really nothing to worry about?
 
I don't think there is anything to worry about from the legislature. There is some noise about "reform" but it is getting watered down at bill stage. The financial industry more or less owns the political process at this stage.
 
There will be an effect; what it is won't be apparent until the law is passed and parsed. The "parsing" step is important, since often even the agencies charged with enforcing a law need quite some time to understand it and decide what it actually means.

There are always opportunities in uncertainty. The outfit I work for has generated a good amount of new business just in the past six weeks thanks to new regulatory requirements.
 
DanM said:
Let's hope that's the case.
Click to expand...

Hehe, finance is now the central pillar of the US economy. Law-makers -- who are more or less owned by the financial industry in any case -- are not going to seriously tamper with the industry. Their job is to make some populist noises to appease the plebs sordida (unwashed masses), but also to make sure none of this popular -- but uninformed and confused -- anger is translated into actual legislation. Besides making fake populist noises, their job is to further obfuscate the key issues. What will emerge eventually will be something like the 2000 pages of the health "reform" bill (the memory of which is making me laugh at the moment). So to all prospective quants: do not be apprehensive on this score at least. The politicos know where they have to trudge for their campaign contributions.
 
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