CNBC's "On The Money" had a segment about the dubious prospects for the new online gambling laws to have much impact. Basically, it was financial talking heads and experts on the banking industry saying the same things we've talked about here--there's no way to enforce it, the gaming industry will find alternate payments methods and so forth. A couple of the more interesting points:
--They gave the figure that there are currently 2400 active online gambling sites.
--They had a banking industry expert on who said that the banking system can't do anything to stop online gambling unless they divert money and manpower from more serious threats like anti-terrorism and anti-money laundering efforts.
--Most significantly, the capo di tuti capo of the US financal markets, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke used two speeches to banking industry types today to criticize "US specific regulatory rules" for banks and questioned the wisdom of forcing banks to use resources better served for serious problems to regulate minor issues (like, presumably, Internet gambling). This was reported in the story in such a way to construe that he was speaking about it specifically--I'm trying to track down a full text of his speeches even as we speak. At the very least, he strongly opposes this type of legislation in general terms.
The entire tone of the piece was that while publicly traded companies have abandoned the US market, privately held firms have not and probably won't. Basically, the same stuff we've been talking about here but it was nice having a number of objective sources without a proverbial "dog in the fight" concur. Since Bernanke is arguably the single most important person in terms of influencing financial markets and policy, his opposition--even on theoretical grounds of burdening banks--could be very important going forward.
Not sure if and when they'll re-run it...if I can find a text of the Bernanke speeches I'll post a link...
--They gave the figure that there are currently 2400 active online gambling sites.
--They had a banking industry expert on who said that the banking system can't do anything to stop online gambling unless they divert money and manpower from more serious threats like anti-terrorism and anti-money laundering efforts.
--Most significantly, the capo di tuti capo of the US financal markets, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke used two speeches to banking industry types today to criticize "US specific regulatory rules" for banks and questioned the wisdom of forcing banks to use resources better served for serious problems to regulate minor issues (like, presumably, Internet gambling). This was reported in the story in such a way to construe that he was speaking about it specifically--I'm trying to track down a full text of his speeches even as we speak. At the very least, he strongly opposes this type of legislation in general terms.
The entire tone of the piece was that while publicly traded companies have abandoned the US market, privately held firms have not and probably won't. Basically, the same stuff we've been talking about here but it was nice having a number of objective sources without a proverbial "dog in the fight" concur. Since Bernanke is arguably the single most important person in terms of influencing financial markets and policy, his opposition--even on theoretical grounds of burdening banks--could be very important going forward.
Not sure if and when they'll re-run it...if I can find a text of the Bernanke speeches I'll post a link...
