by Natsuya Uesugi
The Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was passed under President Obama in response to the Financial Crisis of 2007 and 2008. This sweeping legislation the most strict since the Great Depression wrangled in the financial industry with regulations and has said to have stabilized the financial section and the markets. The current President wants to do away with it. If you listened to grydscaen: dark, that may not be the best course of action to take as hackers and criminals will be right there ready to get in the back door, as well as corporations that were subjected to the regulations to ensure the financial crisis did not happen again.
The Dodd Frank act since its inception has saved billions of dollars for financial consumers and raised millions in fines against corporate entities doing these very shenanigans that we talk about in grydscaen. Dodd Frank was passed in 2009/2010. In June 2017 the congress released a new bill to roll back Dodd Frank provisions. In March 2018 the Senate passed a bill to ease back regulations and oversight on the financial industry setting up the case again for another financial crisis. The new administration has been eroding controls that were put in place to protect and stop corporate greed which caused the crisis in the first place, now with these provisions gone, it is just a matter of time until something once again can go awry.
Title VII – Wall Street Transparency and Accountability Act of 2010 controls regulation of the over the counter swaps market. This includes credit default swaps and credit derivatives that were the result of the financial bank failures of 2007. This rule said swaps have to be cleared through exchanges and clearing houses. The Act repeats other regulations in place and states that no Federal assistance may be provided to swaps entities or activity.
So, did all that make your head spin? I bet. Well, how this all plays out the affect it has on the United States economy is still being seen. Large financial institutions that hired many staff to deal with the new regulations are in a different place now on Wall Street with the rules being repealed. Other rules like Volker that require banks to have capital to handle any losses, a simple way to put it are also looking by this administration to possibly be repealed. What does this mean? That your markets are again once more in a curious situation and that the financial crisis could possibly happen again with regulations repealed. The lobbyists have spoken and now we will see where it goes.
So how does this related to grydscaen: dark. Well in the first chapter of the novel a clandestine meet in cover of darkness occurs where information on the stock market changes hands. The hacker Jester gets a hold of an insider tip that just might give him leverage in a stock market that has been hounded by government restrictions and oversight making it impossible to infiltrate. Rom the Level 9 hacker gets the information and relays that the Parliament is about to vote to repeal a critical stock market legislation as a favor to corporate entities that propped up ministers with illegal corporate campaign donations. Basically, the government is about to repeal just that which the hackers need to get inside. grydscaen: dark shows where the hackers rule. Once change in the laws, a single vote opens up that backdoor to exactly what main street does not need another financial crisis. In grydscaen: dark we see the possibility of what this means and the overreaching destruction that occurs in the Echelons because the wheels fell off.
The hacker Jester is smart, he has been waiting a long time for this very critical moment. With the “gridscan” rules and information on the network controlled by the government it is backdoors that Parliament put in place for every corporation in case they needed access that the hackers use to get in. Those very back doors become the keys to the castle and what inevitably the hackers take down.
Issues like the repeal of Net Neutrality which also happened recently which give the monopoly power back to ISPs and cable companies are also making inroads into people’s rights and the freedom of speech. Even encryption technology and public privacy has also been in the news recently. In grydscaen these things are under government control and the less regulations there are the more bottom line the corporation can make and the more control over the populace in the Echelons which has their freedoms curtailed by harsh enforcement by the Zone Police and the Elite government.
Did we just fall into a dystopian novel with the repeal of financial regulations? grydscaen: dark shows one reality. It will be seen what comes of the repeal and how that affects the markets. Already we have seen wild gyrations and the longest bull market in history. Violent price action in US stocks has made people wary and worried the market is in for a correction that will take out part of its increase. The market has seen the heaviest selling since May as investors dispel its staying power. This will all have to play out, hopefully the riots and food shortages, the power outages and chaos that Jester created in grydscaen will not spill over in reality with repeal of regulations. We can only hope the US economy and those with their head in the right place can counter any disastrous downturn or shock to the system.