While we wait for the US President's speech on regulatory reform, the Guardian summarises the 85 page white paper that holds the details.

Key points (with my comments) include:

• Federal Reserve would get powers to supervise big banks, but there will not be much simplification of the regulatory scene other than disbanding the Office of Thrift Supervision. This is disappointing. Regulatory fragmentation potentially leads to regulatory arbitrage and regulatory capture. The lobbyists won on this one.

• Hedge funds forced to register with watchdog. A good move to bring transparency to a sector that thinks it has the right to keep market-damaging risks close to its chest.

• A new consumer regulator, reported previously on APEsphere. This makes it sound a bit like the "twin peaks" regulatory structure that was considered in the UK in the 1990s, before a single powerful regulator was decided upon. One peak would cover institutional markets, the other retail financial products. It is good to see a focus on retail financial product regulation, assuming it has a strong focus on regulating sales practices.

• Mortgage firms forced to keep loans in-house. I like this a lot. Essentially, the Obama administration is proposing to ensure that mortgage houses cannot simply write up any business they find then palm all that toxic risk to investors through securitised products, as happened with CDOs this time round. Instead they will have to keep 5% of the value of each mortgage on their own balance sheet. If the mortgages they write up go sour, their 5% is at risk too, so reducing the moral hazard of the status quo. That said, I wish the percentage was higher. 10% should have been acceptable and more meaningful.