American Financial Regulatory Reform Announced

The New York Times published
the detailed proposals for Regulatory Reform for all American financial
markets, from the Treasury on Saturday.  The aim is to:

• consolidate
  all the regulations and authorities for everything from banking to
  hedge funds and private equity into three powerful overseers: a new
  Prudential Financial Regulator, the Federal Reserve and the SEC
  (currently there are five);
• merge the SEC with the Commodity
  Futures Trading Commission, and reduce the powers of the SEC by giving
  the Federal Reserve overall authority for the financial markets;
• eliminate the difference between 'banks' and 'thrifts', and close down the Office of Thrift Supervision;
• create a national regulator for insurance firms, eliminating the powers of state authorities over insurers;
• avoid any new regulations being introduced, but ensure regulatory authorities exert and implement their authority; and
• give
  the Federal Reserve the power to swoop into any part of the industry at
  any time to perform spot checks, including detailed examination of
  internal bookkeeping for any institution that they consider could pose
  a risk to the overall financial system.

The last bit is
quite radical, as the Fed had no power to do this before, and there is
expected to be a long and protracted debate between Democrats and
Republicans, Congress and the Senate, before this passes into law in
2009.

The full text of the Executive Summary is available here.   

Reuters
also reports that the US and UK have agreed a joint banking watchdog,
comprising senior treasury and regulatory figures from London and
Washington, to develop proposals to monitor and regulate the banking
system.