Free Republic

Is there any ceiling, or floor, to what the CFPB can decide to spend?.. The Supreme Court on Tuesday heard oral arguments in a challenge to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s novel self-funding scheme (CFPB v. Community Financial Services Assn.) A telling moment came when Justice Neil Gorsuch pressed the Solicitor General on the limits to the agency’s appropriations power. Democrats insulated the CFPB from political accountability in the Dodd-Frank Act by letting it obtain its funding from the Federal Reserve, unlike any other federal agency. Payday lenders say this violates the Constitution’s command that “no Money shall be drawn...

there are no banking rules/laws in the Biden Fed/Treasury system. ... The Dodd-Frank laws are still on the books, but the FDIC decision to insure all deposits, regardless of size, now means those laws, rules and regulations are not required to be followed. Additionally, as a result of JPMorgan gaining another $100+/- billion in deposit assets, the law(s) surrounding the 10% U.S. deposit maximum, within too big to fail banks, no longer exists. Noted in the announcement, “JPMorgan Chase is assuming all deposits – insured and uninsured.” JPMorgan is also assuming assets consisting of $173 billion in loans and approximately...

The best outcome for the failed Silicon Valley Bank would be for U.S. officials to find a buyer for it on Sunday, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said, after its collapse last week. “The best outcome will be can they find a buyer for this SVB bank today before the markets open in Asia later in the day,” Warner said on ABC’s “This Week.” “The depositors can be taken care of and the best outcome will be an acquisition of SVB.” The fall of the bank last week sent shockwaves throughout the tech industry, which relied heavily on the bank for...

Federal regulators are conducting an auction for Silicon Valley Bank, with final bids due Sunday, according to a report from Bloomberg News. The bank was closed by regulators on Friday after massive withdrawals a day earlier created a bank run. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation took control of the bank on Friday, and started an auction process on Saturday night, according to the report. It is still possible that no deal is reached, the report said.

President Joe Biden has nominated Michael Barr, one of the designers of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act that overhauled the financial regulatory system, to serve as the Federal Reserve’s top banking regulator. Barr previously served as assistant treasury secretary for financial institutions under former President Barack Obama ...a Yale graduate and Rhodes scholar, currently serves as the dean of the University of Michigan’s public policy school.

MADISON – Aaron Rodgers has faced some of the most ferocious defensive linemen the National Football League has ever unleashed on professional football fields. The Green Bay Packers quarterback has passed his way to the top of his game, becoming among the most accurate, respected and highest paid players in NFL history. Now, Rodgers is taking on a much more brutal enemy: The murderous warlords of the Democratic Republic of Congo in command of a civil conflict that has claimed more than 3 million lives. Green Bay’s QB has signed up as a celebrity front man for Raise Hope for...

Dodd-Frank overregulation caused increased concentration in banking, squeezing out smaller banks in favor of bigger banks that could more easily absorb increasing regulatory costs. That naturally restricted credit to smaller businesses that were more regularly served by smaller, more regional banks, more likely to have developed relations with small local businesses. But in typical abundance of centralized bureaucrat overcaution, Dodd Frank over regulation also clamped down more harshly on small business lending as inherently more risky. More risky it is. But small business is also the lifeblood of the economy, as small business has long generated most new jobs in...

The Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and was designed to safeguard the banking system, appears to have made it more difficult for small businesses and entrepreneurs to obtain funding. In The Impact of the Dodd-Frank Act on Small Business (NBER Working Paper No. 24501), Michael D. Bordo and John V. Duca find that the 2010 legislation reduced the incentives for all banks to make small loans. It also raised the benefits of scale in the banking business, tilting the playing field away from small banks which...

After three months of saber-rattling on the trade front – including the implementation of high duties on imported steel and aluminum, and threats of similarly high tariffs on a host of business and consumer products both from and to China – the dust appears to have settled for a while, with an announcement that China will work to import more from the USA, and a tentative agreement that a trade war would be bad for everybody. Within days, there were fresh discussions of new tariffs on other products that hadn’t been discussed previously - like cars and trucks – also...

Seventeen Democrats voted to proceed on a bill that would roll back major portions of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Senators voted 67-32 to end debate on a bill that takes aim at a number of the protective barriers Dodd-Frank put between consumers, banks and the greater economy in the wake of the 2007-2009 Great Recession. Michael Bennet of Colorado Tom Carper of Delaware Chris Coons of Delaware Joe Donnelly of Indiana Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota Doug Jones of Alabama Tim Kaine of Virginia Angus King of Maine Joe...

Ten years after a financial crisis rocked the nation’s economy, the Senate is poised to pass legislation that would roll back some of the safeguards Congress put into place to prevent a relapse. The move to alter some key aspects of the Dodd-Frank law has overwhelming Republican support and enough Democratic backing that it’s expected to gain the 60 votes necessary to clear the Senate. Several Democratic lawmakers facing tough re-election races this year have broken ranks with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. The legislation would increase the threshold at which banks are considered too...

Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill ... The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was inserted in the bill, which passed on a partisan vote. All the Democrats voted for it. ... The power invested in the director of the CFPB was, and still is, unencumbered by any limiting authority of those elected to govern. He is a person who under Dodd-Frank answers to no-one. His agency receives its funding without any limitation or congressional oversight, as it has a “put” to the unlimited resources of the Federal Reserve rather than the congressionally-appropriated budget. The director of the bureau is essentially an unelected,...

A Senate panel on Tuesday approved legislation that would provide banks and credit unions with relief from some of the stricter regulatory requirements put in place after the 2008 financial crisis. The bill, which was approved by a 16-7 vote, raises the threshold at which bank holding companies are considered too big to fail, thus subjecting them to financial stress tests and a capital-planning review. The threshold would increase from $50 billion to $250 billion. The panel rejected an array of amendments that senators said could unravel a bipartisan agreement crafted over several months. The bill is much narrower than...

There are a few topics that usually elicit startling hypocrisy from both major political parties, depending on whether or not they hold power. One is judges and filibusters (although the GOP's application of the Reid Rule seems to have ended that debate), another is deficit spending (after applauding President Obama for nearly doubling the national debt over eight years, Democrats have rediscovered this problem, wielding it to oppose a plan to let Americans keep more of their own money), and yet another is good governance 'process.' The party in control tends to prize victory over pristine process, whereas the 'out'...

This CFPB was created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act and was largely designed by radical Senator Elizabeth Warren when she was an Obama advisor. Since the beginning, it has been used as a political weapon by the far Left as a way to intimidate businesses that the Left opposes ideologically. The CFPB consistently oversteps its bounds. It is prohibited from regulating car deals, yet it does so anyway. It is prohibited from collecting personal data from consumers, yet it does so at a scale that rivals the NSA’s most controversial data gathering operations. Further, the CFPB draws its funding from...

FULL TITLE - We Got a Vast, Unaccountable, Unconstitutional Agency Because Elizabeth Warren Compared Mortgages to Toasters. And we're the stupid ones Sixteen hundred bureaucrats with the power to charge billions in fines, with a $600 million budget outside of the congressional appropriations process, and all because Elizabeth Warren compared mortgages to toasters. "Of all the ideas that get published in … journals like that, not so many make it into law," Warren boasted in 2011, at the launch of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She was referring to her essay "Unsafe At Any Rate," published by the "lefty" Democracy...

Replay Mute Loaded: 0%Progress: 0% -0:00 Share Fullscreen The deputy director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on Sunday night sued President Trump in order to block Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney from taking over as acting director of the agency. Leandra English, who was tapped by former Director Richard Cordray to be the acting director, filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia against Trump and Mulvaney, whom the president nominated to be CFPB's interim leader. The office of the CFPB’s head council is expected to challenge her suit,...

It seems as though everyone and his publicist is commenting on Harvey Weinstein and the Hollywood sex culture, but there is an interesting exception: the Motion Picture Association of America.  The scandal is not noted on its blog, nor in its news section, nor in its press releases, nor in the recent speeches by its chairman extolling the First Amendment and the institution of copyright. One would normally expect a major trade association to be active on such a big issue, but the explanation for the silence seems pretty easy.  The MPAA chairman (until the end of this year, which...

In the private sector and during his short time as president, Donald J. Trump has never been shy about firing subordinates. Yet some powerful Obama holdovers seem to have a puzzling staying power. The recent decision of the Justice Department not to prosecute Lois Lerner for her alleged role in the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative non-profits brought criticism and also highlighted the fact that Obama’s appointee John Koskinen is still at the IRS’s helm. Even more frustrating is that Trump has yet to fire Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director Richard Cordray, despite Cordray’s actions that go directly against...

Seven years after its launch in 2010, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act has done nothing for American taxpayers besides provide 2,300 pages of impulsive and deceiving legislation. This disaster of a law has unfairly blanketed our entire financial system with more than 400 overreaching and costly mandates. Dodd-Frank was another ploy thought up by the Democrat-controlled Congress that was signed into law by President Obama in 2010. This failure, at best, was a Band-Aid disguised as the most significant piece of financial legislation of its time following the Great Recession. While there are many who argue...