Wall Street Reform | featured news

The 2008 financial crisis roiled the banking system and swamped the global economy, leaving millions of Americans jobless, underemployed or facing foreclosure. In its wake, Congress set out to overhaul how the government oversees Wall Street. The result was a sprawling law, the Dodd-Frank Act, which aims to prevent future crises by giving the government new tools and restricting banks' activities. The law may make future crises less likely, but it increases costs for companies, especially banks, and their customers.

Democratic Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts does not intend to seek re-election in 2012, his office said Monday, closing out a career of more than three decades in Congress capped by last year's passage of legislation imposing new regulations on Wall Street.

Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff said in a magazine interview published Sunday that new regulatory reform enacted after the recent national financial crisis is laughable.

President Obama will sign into law Wednesday the Wall Street reform bill -- the most-sweeping set of changes to America's financial regulatory system since the 1930s.

Lawmakers were locked in an impasse over derivatives on Thursday as they struggled to finish their historic rewrite of U.S. financial regulations.

The chairman of the Business Roundtable sharply criticized the Obama administration's economic policies as impediments to U.S. growth.

Lawmakers on Tuesday spared auto dealers from new scrutiny and neared agreement on trading limits for banks as they raced to complete the biggest overhaul of the financial rule book since the 1930s.

The Senate's top Republican signaled Wednesday that a GOP filibuster of Wall Street reform legislation will end.