Financial Reform: A Student Perspective

Today Financial Reform took a huge step forward in our country, the actual reform is not as important as who voted on the bill. The supporters on the panel fell across party lines with the exception of Senator Grassley (R). This showed that Republicans are moving away from the Party of No approach. Now on to the bill itself: The bill requires that most all derivative contracts be traded on a public exchange and to be cleared through a third party to guarantee payment if one of the traders went out of business. Some of you may be asking what exactly a derivative is, a derivative is simply an agreement between parties on the future price of what is being traded. Ex: I want to buy stock in Apple at $130 a share (lets pretend that the current value of the stock is $120 a share) John currently owns apple stock and wants to sell but not at the current price. Me and John strike up a derivative that I will buy 300 shares when the stock hits $130 a share. The effects of this current bill are good and minor and will be packed into a larger financial reform bill as a whole. Currently a financial reform bill is cut down party lines. The vote that happened in committee on Tuesday shows that Constituents want a larger reform, It also shows that Republicans are starting to listen to the want of the people and bi-partisan is finally entering Washington. Now many of you may be thinking this is just one man voting it doesn't tell us anything about the party or system as a whole. I must say i would normally agree with you but when you take into context of the situation of Senator Grassley it changes the skew slightly. Senator Grassley is currently up for reelection and his campaign finances are dwindling and low, plain and simply he needs to do his constituents bidding and is in need of the Republicans parties help throughout his campaign. Now i may be completely wrong and this is the last that we will here about this part of financial reform and Grassley but i hope that i am write and that Bi-partisan politics become the norm for Washington.