By Heather Grossmann
DNAinfo News Editor
MANHATTAN — Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd was set to introduce sweeping new banking reform that is being touted as the greatest overhaul of the laws regulating Wall Street since the Great Depression.
Two of the most hotly debated components of the bill, which he was introducing in Congress Monday, are the creation of a consumer protection agency within the Federal Reserve — this is an amendment to President Barack Obama’s vision of an entirely independent agency — and the empowerment of shareholders with advisory votes on executive compensation.
Under the proposed legislation, shareholders would also be able to nominate directors for the boards of public companies.
The Federal Reserve would be given even greater powers to intervene in banks that are posing risk to the country's economy.
The new credit agency would have a head appointed directly by the president and would not only write laws regulating credit cards, mortgages and other financial products, but be given the power to enforce those laws.
Wall Street investment banks that reorganized as commercial banks during the financial crisis, such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, won't be allowed to return to their original status to escape the Fed's purview under the law.
