Romney Would Replace Dodd-Frank with … Dodd-Frank?

Mitt Romney is not against banking regulation per se, he explained to Time magazine last week.

“Capital requirements, levels of leverage which are appropriate and inappropriate, banks maintaining risk in assets which they gather," are what he’d like to see instead of Dodd-Frank. "Specifically, I'm referring to the idea [that] if a bank originates a loan or a mortgage that it should be on the hook for some portion of the loss if that loan or mortgage fails. These kinds of provisions, I think, would be directly applicable to the kind of crisis that we experienced before."

But, um…was the QRM debate all a dream?

When I first read that my sense of regulatory reality was shaken for a moment.  So I checked in with American Banker's Washington bureau chief Rob Blackwell. He and Kevin Wack confirmed in their analysis of the interview that "all of those ideas are already part of Dodd-Frank."  

To give Romney the benefit of the doubt, "it's possible that Romney was citing pieces of the law that he agreed with, or implying that implementation of those measures is proceeding poorly," they write. "But if so, he didn't say that."

For the full piece see "Romney's Muddled Message on Dodd-Frank" (may require subscription).

(psst Mitt, it's "systemically important" not "strategically")