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Geithner to ‘lay out the path forward’ in financial reform

In one of his first public appearances since reform passed, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner will be touting the good the administration says the new financial reforms can do.

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Steve Chiotakis: Right now, we’re going to ask this morning’s big question: How does the Obama administration win over big banks on a financial overhaul, one that already won? In one of his first public appearances since reform passed, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is going back to the lions’ den, and he’ll be touting the good the administration says the new reforms can do. Here’s Marketplace’s Alisa Roth.


Alisa Roth: The Treasury Department says the Secretary will “lay out the path forward” for the financial reforms and talk about the core principles behind the new regulations. Cornelius Hurley directs the Moren Center for Banking and Financial Law at Boston University. He says it’s not clear what those principles are. But he thinks Geithner will probably say something conciliatory. Like this:

Cornelius Hurley: Look, it’s been a long battle, we have a 2,319 page bill that we just passed and let’s all get behind it and make a good faith effort at complying with these complex rules and so on.

But Hurley says he’d like to hear about one set of principles: those held by the people who work on Wall Street. He’d like to hear Geithner say it’s time for a new ethic, one based on truth and fact:

Hurley: And I would like to see that be his message, that it’s not time to rally the lawyers and have them make Swiss cheese out of all of these new laws and regs that are coming, but rather that it’s a new day and a new ethic that we should be talking about here.

It’s a nice idea. But even before Congress passed the new rules, bankers were already looking for ways around them.

In New York, I’m Alisa Roth for Marketplace.

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