From Banking Day:
The eager and even slipshod reporting on one executive act of US President Donald Trump at the end of last week may lead some to believe that the new and activist administration had taken material steps to wind back or abandon the bevy of financial regulations linked to the six year old Dodd-Frank laws. But Trump has taken a tiny step, at best.
The principal aim of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 was to ensure that no financial institution in the US should be so big or complex that its failure would put the US financial system at risk.
Trump last week did no more than command his treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin (a cabinet officer yet to be confirmed by the Senate), to consult with the heads of the member agencies of the Financial Stability Oversight Council and report to the President within 120 days “on the extent to which existing laws, treaties, regulations, guidance, reporting and record keeping requirements, and other policies promote the Core Principles.”
These six principles are boilerplate, rather than radical. Reform tendencies are clear, such as “prevent taxpayer-funded bailouts”, “more rigorous regulatory impact analysis and “enabling American companies to be competitive with foreign firms in domestic and foreign markets.”
A genuine reform bent is clearest in the final principle: “restore public accountability within Federal financial regulatory agencies and rationalise the Federal financial regulatory framework.”
The USA, for instance, has a multitude of bank regulators, around half a dozen, with the FDIC the most vital. Mnuchin may set out to annihilate some supremely vested interests.
The repeal of Dodd-Frank, or gutting it? That starts with a bill in the US congress, the initiative of any member or senator in the thrall of Wall Street. No guessing games there, eccentrics (such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren) aside, that’s the lot of them.
