Regulatory relief

The new request for information is the 10^th in the series that is part of acting Director Mick Mulvaney’s “call for evidence” to assess the CFPB’s overall effectiveness.

One purpose of the Senate bill was for small banks to rein in skyrocketing costs, but some bankers question whether the changes will save them money, and adapting to the reforms may even increase spending.

In his last major speech as the agency’s No. 2, Thomas Hoenig said it would be a “serious policy mistake” to relax measures such as the supplementary leverage ratio, but he was more open to regulatory relief in other areas.

Payouts on Wall Street averaged $184,000, following only 2006’s record high; ethics office eying $500 million of real estate loans made to Trump son-in-law.

Congress has left Washington for a two-week recess, and credit union leaders are being urged to make their case for reg relief while legislators are back at home.

The biggest legacy of the current regulatory relief effort may be the increasing focus on whether organizing banks in supervisory buckets by asset size makes sense. Yet the bill deals with just one of the two big asset thresholds in the law.

Luckily for Amazon, the OCC is no longer “the angry dad on the porch with a shotgun," trying to keep tech companies from hooking up with banks. JPMorgan Chase’s Amber Baldet can pack a room for a lesson on blockchains. And it is the end of catcalls in France.

The regulatory relief bill frees some regional banks from the tough supervision reserved for larger companies, but regulators still can subject them to onerous requirements.

The information collection effort is consistent with acting CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney's efforts to set the agency on a more pro-industry, anti-enforcement course.

Just as promised, Republican lawmakers went to work Wednesday considering regulatory reform ideas that would go further than the Senate's tweaks of the Dodd-Frank Act.