Senate Introduces Hedge Fund Transparency Bill

The Senate Thursday introduced the Hedge Fund Transparency Act of 2009, which, most notably, would require hedge funds to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It would also require them to adopt anti-money laundering programs.

“There wasn’t much of an appetite for this sort of legislation before the financial crisis,” said one of the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). “A major cause of the current crisis is a lack of transparency. The wizards of Wall Street figured out a million clever ways to avoid the transparency sought by the securities regulations adopted during the 1930s. Instead of the free flow of reliable information that markets need to function properly, today we have confusion and uncertainty fueling an economic crisis.”

The bill is an amended version of a similar one that Grassley introduced in 2007.

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