Wall Street bankers and some of the world’s top finance ministers are waging a bitter international campaign to block financial regulators from extending their policing powers far beyond the nation’s shores, the New York Times reported today. The effort—centered on oversight of the $700 trillion marketplace of the financial instruments known as derivatives—is just one front in the battle still being waged nearly three years after Congress passed the Dodd-Frank law, which revamped financial regulations in the United States in hopes of curtailing the risky trading practices blamed for the 2008 global financial crisis. Industry players have spent tens of millions of dollars to avert, delay or weaken new rules that are being drafted as part of the law. Members of Congress from both parties have joined in the effort, directed at an obscure but increasingly powerful agency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has written and must approve some of the most contentious provisions. Banks and overseas regulators are resisting an agency proposal, intended to go into full effect as early as mid-July, that would require overseas offices of American-based banks, foreign institutions and hedge funds to turn over information on foreign trades if they involve U.S. customers, or are guaranteed by a financial institution with American ties, requirements that the industry calls redundant and excessive.
