House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank predicted Friday that a Senate drive to consolidate prudential bank supervisors into a single agency would fail.
"There is no remote chance of it happening," Frank told reporters after remarks at a conference on underbanked consumers held in the Capitol.
The idea is being pushed by Frank's counterpart in the Senate, Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, who is expected to make it a key point of his regulatory reform legislation.
Frank said that the longstanding system of state and federal regulators sharing supervisory authority should be perserved. Regulatory consolidation should simply merge the Office of Thrift Supervision with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, he said.
Frank's next step toward regulatory reform is expected today when he introduces a bill to give the government more oversight of systemically risky companies.
