On Wednesday the House passed H.R. 37, the Promoting Job Creation and Reducing Small Business Burdens Act.  Erika Eichelberger provides a top-level summary.  The law would:

• Delay the Volcker rule. The Volcker rule—one of the most important bits of Dodd-Frank—generally forbids the high-risk trading by commercial banks that helped cause the financial crisis. One high-risk product banks are supposed to stop trading are collateralized loan obligations, which are bundles of loans that are broken into pieces and sold to investors. In December, the Federal Reserve extended banks’ deadline to stop trading CLOs from 2015 to 2017. The Fitzpatrick bill would extend that deadline to 2019.
• Water down rules on private equity firms. Private equity firms are required to register as brokers with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) if they get paid for providing investment banking services such as merger advice. Brokers are subject to additional rules and more regulatory oversight. The bill would exempt some private equity firms from having to register as brokers.
• Loosen regs on derivatives. Derivatives are financial instruments with values based on underlying numbers, such as crop prices or interest rates. The Fitzpatrick bill would allow Wall Street firms that own commercial businesses such as oil or gas operations to trade derivatives privately instead of in central clearinghouses, which are subject to more oversight. The bill would also forbid regulators from requiring that banks take collateral from companies that buy derivatives. Collateral can help offset losses if one of the parties involved in the transaction defaults.
• Weaken transparency rules. The bill exempts about 60 percent of publicly traded companies from certain rules regarding how those companies must file financial statements with the SEC. The measure would also allow certain smaller companies to omit historical financial data in their financial statements. “This allows firms to choose a convenient history as they promote their securities,” the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen noted last week.

Commentary from Rep. Mike Capuano (D-MA):

On Wednesday the House again considered H.R. 37, the Promoting Job Creation and Reducing Small Business Burdens Act. You may recall that this bill was brought up last week under suspension of the rules which requires a 2/3 majority to pass. It didn’t receive that much support so it was brought up this week under regular order. This legislation is a combination of 11 different bills considered previously, some of which have actually passed with bipartisan support. However, H.R. 37 still contains some troubling provisions, including the provision delaying implementation of part of the Volcker Rule. The Volcker Rule prohibits banks from using its depositors’ funds to make risky investments. H.R. 37 gives banks two more years to divest from Collateralized Loan Obligations (CLOs). This is on top of the two extra years federal regulators have already granted banks to divest from non-conforming CLOs, which are risky investments that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is currently investigating. The SEC is determining how these instruments are used and traded and whether they are creating new avenues for fraud. The SEC is also reviewing whether banks and companies are using complicated bond deals to hide certain risks illegally. It’s worth noting that only three of Wall Street’s largest banks control almost 70% of CLO transactions. I again voted NO and the entire vote is recorded below: