Yves Smith writes;  SEC Commissioner Kara Stein has waged an uphill battle to have the agency stop giving financial firm miscreants waivers from sanctions that would otherwise take effect when they enter into settlements for bad conduct. Stein took issue with the SEC’s prior stance, that these “get out of jail” cards were issued freely to big firms by virtue of simply asking for them. The tacit assumption seemed to be that these firms were big reputable players and hence imposing the normal legally-mandated sanctions was overkill. In fact, as we know too well, the behemoth banks do disproportionate harm by their bad actions, and recent history has shown that they’ve misbehaved across a large swathe of businesses.

Despite the fact that a single SEC commissioner has limited power, Stein has managed to stymie the granting of some of these waivers by teaming up with like-minded SEC Commissioner Luis Aguilar on cases where Chairman Mary Jo White has had to recuse herself. Stein and Aguilar’s opposition to granting waivers on a recent Bank of America settlement led to further negotiations that imposed additional requirements upon the Charlotte bank. Stein and Aguilar has also been pushing for tougher punishments, including lifetime bans from SEC regulated entities for bank executives who break securities laws.

Below is Stein’s dissent on the granting of waivers to the five banks that admitted to a criminal conspiracy to rig the spot foreign exchange market in dollars and Euros. As Stein points out, the issue isn’t just the severity of this particular incident; it’s that theses firms are recidivist bad actors yet have been granted waivers on the barmy presumption that they are for the most part, corporate citizens in good standing.

Ian Talley writes: The Obama administration, facing a push by U.S. lawmakers to insert language that targets currency manipulation in a major Pacific trade deal, is pitching a less-aggressive approach that would bolster international oversight and transparency of currency policies.

The Treasury Department says the “historic new approach” it envisions would bring exchange-rate provisions into trade negotiations for the first time and strengthen U.S. efforts to persuade countries not to use their currencies to gain unfair competitive advantages.

The administration hopes its strategy would help fend off efforts—largely by members of the president’s own party—to include provisions for binding sanctions against currency manipulators. The White House says those measures would sink the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, a pillar of President Barack Obama’s plan to boost the U.S. economy and fortify economic and strategic ties in Asia.

The Senate late Friday passed legislation on what is known as fast-track authority, propelling the bill toward what is expected to be an even-more difficult path in the House next month. The Senate rejected a currency-manipulation amendment in the measure, also known as trade promotion authority, which would allow the Obama administration to complete the trade pact with Japan and 10 other nations and bring it to Congress for up-or-down votes as soon as this fall.

The Treasury Department’s proposal—pitched to TPP member countries in recent weeks—is preliminary and faces major hurdles. One option under consideration is to require better data on the key metrics for gauging currency management such as details on foreign-currency reserves and interventions. Many countries don’t provide that data to international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, often leaving outside economists guessing about the extent of exchange-rate interventions.