The Atlantic: Trump Begins to Chip Away at Banking Regulations

By Gillian B. White:

Hours later, as promised, the president issued a memorandum that sets in motion his plan to scale back the provisions of Dodd-Frank and repeal the upcoming fiduciary rule—the latest in his slate of executive orders aimed at decreasing regulations. Named for Senators Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, the bipartisan act—formally, it’s the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act—was responsible for creating more stringent rules regarding bank capitalization (that is, the amount of money that banks must have on hand), increasing compliance and reporting standards for banks, introducing stricter mortgage requirements, creating the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and curbing excessive risk-taking and the existence of too-big-to-fail institutions on Wall Street.

Despite Trump’s calls for “cutting a lot,” Friday’s executive order is actually more of a command to review Dodd-Frank than to dismantle it. According to the order, the Treasury Secretary—Trump’s pick, the former Goldman Sachs banker Steve Mnuchin, has yet to be confirmed—will be tasked with meeting with various agencies that oversee and implement Dodd-Frank’s regulations, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, in order to find areas to be amended. That review is slated to be completed in 120 days, though there is little guidance on the what regulations or portions of the law will be most likely to change.

But while the executive order might seem less severe than others issued by Trump, that certainly doesn’t mean that the impact won’t be as important. “I think this is the opening salvo in their attack on consumer and investor protection,” says Michael S. Barr, a law professor at the University of Michigan and one of the architects of the Dodd-Frank Act. Barr says that despite the fact that the executive order on financial regulations seems gradual, the administration has already been quite aggressive when it comes to chipping away at financial-sector regulations. “They’ve already started,” he told me, citing recently-passed legislation that would get rid of one provision of Dodd Frank requiring oil companies to disclose payments to foreign governments.

The Full Story (February 3, 2017)