Obama to step up regulation of asset-backed securities

According to a Treasury spokesman on Monday,The Obama administration plans to give the SEC additional powers to enforce issuers of asset-backed securities to disclose loan level data. This is a big difference from the previous rules, which allowed all data to not be made public, thereby creating a market with virtually no transparency to the investor. The plan which should be unveiled on Wednesday by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, would also require credit rating agencies to differentiate between structured products and corporate bonds.