08.17.2017

Treasury Preps Market Review

08.17.2017

As the start of the 2017-18 academic year nears, Wall Street waits for its report card that the US Department of Treasury plans to provide to the executive branch.

One of the first executive orders issued by the Trump Administation during its first two weeks in office tasked the Treasury consult with the members of the Financial Stability Oversight Council and publish reviews of the US financial system by segment regarding their ability to meet core principles set out by the executive order. Those include empowering Americans to make informed, independent financial decisions, preventing future taxpayer funded bailouts, and analyzing regulatory impact regarding systemic risk and market failures. The executive order also seeks to enable US companies to be competitive with foreign firms domestically and overseas, advance US interests in international financial regulatory negotiation, restore public accountability within the Federal financial regulatory agencies, and rationalize the Federal financial regulatory framework.

The Treasury divided its review obligation into separate reports, Tyler Gellasch, executive director at the buy-side industry body Healthy Markets Association told Markets Media.

The Treasury published its 147-page report regarding banks and credit unions on June 12. Since then, it has turned its attention to the capital markets and reached out to a variety of stakeholders discussing market structure, liquidity, central clearing, financial products, asset management, and innovation.

“Just by the number of meetings they have been having and the discussions, there are signs that this is not a knee-jerk, ideological report but a much more thoughtful and carefully measured study and recommendations,” he said. “They were very careful not to tip their hand as to one side of things or the other. I was very encouraged by the types of questions that they brought to the discussion. They are looking at the key issues for market participants.”

Although the Treasury has not announced when it will publish its capital markets review, Gellasch senses that the regulator is close to shifting into a new phase. “They made it clear that they are wrapping up some of the outreach,” he said.

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