Economix: Podcast: Dodd-Frank, Housing and Europe’s Power Banker

It’s been a year since Congress enacted the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law. That might seem plenty of time to get the new rules in good working order. But as it turns out, many haven’t even been written yet, and lobbying is under way to derail at least some of them.

Louise Story, who covers finance for The Times, has been writing about the obstacles to completing and implementing the regulations required by the law, and she discusses them on the new Weekend Business podcast. Some lobbyists are trying not only to slow the process, she says, but also to overturn the law, if not during this Congress then after the 2012 election.

In another conversation in the podcast, Robert Shiller, the Yale economist, says a social epidemic of rampant optimism caused the housing bubble. As he writes in the Economic View column in Sunday Business, the expectations of home buyers have since plummeted, making it likely that the housing market will remain weak for months to come.

And David Gillen talks to Liz Alderman about the central role of Josef Ackerman, the head of Deutsche Bank, in dealing with the European debt crisis. As she writes on the cover of Sunday Business, Mr. Ackerman may be the most powerful banker in Europe.

While he dispenses advice to European politicians, he is a servant of the shareholders of his own bank. Deutsche Bank’s interests and those of the citizens of an embattled country like Greece are hardly identical, as has been made very clear as the financial crisis continues.

You can find specific segments of the podcast at these junctures: financial regulation (31:07); news roundup (22:05); Deutsche Bank (18:22); Robert Shiller (10:38); the week ahead (2:08).

As articles discussed in the podcast are published during the weekend, links will be added to this posting.

You can download the program by subscribing from The New York Times’s podcast page or directly from iTunes.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=f257de830ce9ae1f534c8f069c8f1d30