I kinda think they went the opposite direction of anti-trust when they were encouraging and
backing the too big to fail banks to buy up the failing banks.
As far as what he could have changed, this guy made a few points:
Yes, I can actually point to a particular legal or regulatory barriers that were removed that allowed subprime lending to come into existence, although I have to go back three decades, not two. Prior to the Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980 it was not possible to charge high rates and fees to borrowers. Then the Alternative Mortgage Transaction Parity Act of 1982 permitted variable interest rates and balloon payments. Also important in the crisis was the Tax Reform Act of 1986. The Tax Reform Act eliminated the tax deduction of interest on consumer loans, but then allowed interest deductions for mortgages. Thus, even very expensive mortgage debt was now actually cheaper than consumer debt for a great deal of households. This helped create large amounts of cash-out financing and encouraged the market to grow.
The reform bill fails to address the role of accounting in providing the "sure thing" means for senior officers to exploit and profit personally from these perverse incentives. The financial industry used its lobbying power to induce Congress to extort FASB to change the accounting rules to hide mortgage losses. This is the (early) S&L and the Japanese strategy of the cover up. It leads to disaster (S&Ls) or lost decades (Japan).
Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama had adequate authority to close the major insolvent banks, a statutory duty to do so (under the Prompt Corrective Action Law of 1991), and the factual basis (insolvency) for appointing receivers.
http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/18/news/economy/finreg_law_incentives_bill-black.fortune/index.htm
As far as I can tell he didn't do like Emanuel said and
put the crisis to good use. He is going to lose big on Tuesday just as if he
had nationalized health care (instead of enacting a giveaway to Insurance co's) and
really gone big on the stimulus with, off the top of my head, a massive rapid transit project instead of pissing into potholes.
Nope, no change.
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)