Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Having trashed the world economy


And brazenly stolen the homes of millions of Americans, a series of patchwork efforts reined in the worst of Wall Street's depradations. Sadly those regulatory efforts were made under President Obama and The Tangerine Shitgibbon is on personal crusade to remove every trace of that black guy from the government. The wreckers are about to grab control of the last best regulatory agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
A decade after the financial crisis, the federal government is easing up its policing of Wall Street and the banking industry, even without actually repealing broad swaths of regulation.

The public battle over who will serve as the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — with the White House trying to install Mick Mulvaney, a staunch opponent of the agency — is the most recent example of the banker-friendly approach that has gripped Washington. Less visible are the subtle but steady efforts at the White House, in federal agencies and on Capitol Hill to lessen the regulatory burden on banks and financial firms since President Trump took office.

At the Treasury Department, officials are trying to make it easier for financial firms to avoid being tagged as “too big to fail,” a designation that subjects them to greater oversight. A major banking regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, has become more forgiving of big banks when it comes to enforcing laws. And the Securities and Exchange Commission is reining in the power of regional directors to issue subpoenas.

In Congress, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing legislation to reduce regulation on small financial institutions. The proposal contains “targeted, common-sense fixes,” said one of the bill’s sponsors, Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat who now supports a handful of changes and exemptions to rules he voted to impose after the financial crisis.

The changes are the result of a combination of forces: business-friendly appointments by the president, a lack of financial and personnel resources at many federal agencies, minute changes in rules imposed by regulators and a relaxation in how bank examiners supervise large institutions.

It was a rare instance of a politician casting Wall Street as a victim — especially since the banking industry is on a roll. Commercial banks last year generated $157 billion in profits, the highest level ever, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Banks are making lots of loans. Their stock prices have been marching ever higher.

Critics of the Trump administration’s approach argue that the regulatory pendulum is swinging too far and too fast in favor of the banking industry, risking a repeat of the problems that led up to the financial crisis.

“The fear is that this administration will go back on all of the promises that it made on the campaign trail to look out for the little guy and will roll back all of the protections that were put in place after the 2008 economic collapse,” said Karl Frisch, executive director of Allied Progress, a consumer group. “What’s happening at the consumer bureau is a perfect example of that. They’re trying to put in charge a guy who doesn’t even believe that the C.F.P.B. should exist.”
When the government is in the hands of people who believe you should give up all you have in the quest for their profits.

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