Chamber Releases Financial Reform Principles

Following up on its earlier call for smarter financial market regulations, the Chamber’s Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness (CCMC) unveiled seven key principles to help modernize the U.S. regulatory system and to protect businesses large and small, investors, and consumers.

CCMC’s principles are: (1) promotion of economic stability, efficiency, and growth; (2) management of systemic risk; (3) internationalization; (4) comprehensive regulation and oversight; (5) increased transparency; (6) investor opportunity, capital formation, and consumer protection; and (7) sustaining and enhancing financial reporting. 

Of particular interest, according to CCMC, are the recommendations for developing an effective approach for systemic risk regulation, which includes the recommendation to create a systemic risk regulator. Similarly, CCMC recommends considering the creation of a “unitary financial regulator” to address the issue of “dead zones”—high-risk derivatives or instruments that are not currently regulated, such as credit default swaps.

CCMC released its principles just as world leaders from the G-20 countries gathered in Washington D.C. for a financial crisis summit. “This is the first step in the process. The principles we are releasing today are meant to inform and guide the global and domestic efforts as they move forward,” said David Chavern, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Since its inception, the CCMC has led the bipartisan effort to modernize and strengthen the outmoded regulatory systems that govern the nation’s capital markets. Those efforts become more critical after this fall’s financial crisis hit the everyday operations of Main Street businesses.

Read the principles.

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