Dodd offers compromise on derivatives deadlock

The Washington Post reports:

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) has offered a last-minute compromise to resolve one of the few remaining disputes over the Senate's landmark bill on financial regulation: a disagreement over derivatives that has sent shudders through Wall Street.

Three minutes before the noon deadline for amendments, Dodd filed a proposal addressing language in the bill that would force the nation's largest banks to stop trading nearly all kinds of derivatives -- a move that would dramatically reshape several critical markets and deprive the firms of a major source of revenue.

Under the compromise, the Senate would keep the sweeping provision, but delay its implementation for two years while it's studied and quite likely kill it at the end.

Dodd's plan calls for submitting the derivatives rules, which were initially proposed by Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), for study by a federal council of regulators. Several key members of the council and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who could have final say under the compromise, have serious reservations about forcing banks to get out of the derivatives business altogether.

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