Bloomberg News
Transcript

Peter: The president of the Financial Services Forum represents 17 CEOs of the biggest financial firms not only here in the US bus also in the world. What did you make of this speech? A direct message to Wall Street -- clean up your act on your own and essentially Congress is going to do as well.

Rob: It was a great speech. The president delivers a good speech. a couple of things stood out for me -- one was the identification of the need for a systemic risk a supervisor, someone to look at the entire system, not just specific entities. The idea of a wind down of resolution authorities so that heaven forbid, years from now, if we go through a crisis like we did a year ago, regulators will have tools in the toolbox too slowly and in a non chaotic way wind down these institutions. There were a lot of good things in this speech. One observation I would have is there's a lot happening on the industry in the last year in compensation over the long term

Peter: It sounds like this president is not totally satisfied when he talked about a return to normalcy becoming complacency. The financial industry has misread this moment.

Rob: Our group has been pushing proactively for years, even before this crisis, for the need to modernize the supervisory architecture so that we don't have a crisis like this happen again and we come up with a 21st century modern framework. I do understand the present's point about making sure we don't go to old ways, but there is more work to be done.

Peter: We know congress has to tackle capital liquidity requirements for large firms so they don't become too big to fail. We don't know the specifics yet, how worried are you that they will be so high that it will affect your members?

Rob: That is the critical question. Treasury is working on that now. They’re coming out with a report at the end of the year. That is one thing where you have to get the balance right. You cannot have too much leverage in the system, but if there's too little, there could be long-term, long lasting consequences that could affect the growth for years to come. That’s an issue we intend to work closely with President Obama and Secretary Tim Geithner on.

Peter: You served in the bush treasury department, what are the prospects for this legislation?

Rob: I think prospects are pretty decent trade I don't think it will happen in the next month or two, but you'll see in the next three, four, five months, perhaps by the end of the year, you'll see a pretty good chance legislation that passed. The president made it clear that is his expectation.

Peter: Do you have any fear health care will derail this entirely and you won't see reform?

Rob: The health-care debate is obviously impacting everything in Washington. It is dominating the congressional agenda. But at some point that will come to an end and Washington is going to turn to the next issue. President Obama has made it clear he makes it -- he wants financial sector modernization at the top of that list.

Peter: Thank you for your time.