The letter from 29 Republicans, including some who may chair the House Financial Services Committee next year, urges the Federal Reserve’s top regulator to "recalibrate" the capital surcharge for banks like JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup.
The Fed’s top regulator is reportedly gunning to run the international Financial Stability Board, but the president's trade wars and recent criticism of Europe are impeding that effort and weakening U.S. regulators' hand more generally.
The Fed's top regulatory official suggested that some banks could get a break from filing resolution plans and see the frequency of their stress tests reduced.
The president’s signature tax reform law muddled this year’s stress test results, causing several banks to incur greater-than-expected losses and spurring the Federal Reserve to constrain capital distributions at a handful of banks.
The rule hews closely to a 2016 proposal but the central bank made a notable change to reflect a higher threshold for banks considered "systemically important."
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the agency has its hand full between proposals on liquidity and capital requirements and additional mandates made by the recently enacted regulatory relief law.
