June 09, 2009

The Obama administration is backing away from seeking a major reduction in the number of agencies overseeing financial markets, people familiar with the matter say, suggesting that the current alphabet-soup of regulators will remain mostly intact.Administration officials had suggested they might push for major regulatory consolidation in the wake of the financial crisis.

But now they expect to call for most existing agencies to have broader powers to limit risk-taking by financial institutions, say the people familiar with the planning.The administration, for example, is unlikely to call for merging the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, an idea it had considered, these people say. It also isn't expected to call for the Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.