6 thoughts on “Mike Rounds on Dodd-Frank: “It all comes down to what’s best for consumers.””

  1. I completely agree with Senator Rounds that financial advisors should not be held to a standard requiring them to put their profits after the financial gains of their customers. It’s just bad business. Additionally, perhaps we need to be less of a nanny state…..you run the risk no matter what you do, and why should the government have to step in.

    1. I agree if the consumer or investor falls “Hook Line and Sinker” it is their own fault!

  2. 1. The fiduciary rule may be repealed but the concept is here to stay. The industry has embraced it as a risk mitigant regardless of any federal repeal. Say goodbye to choice. At least it won’t be enforced by the Department of Labor, which had no business sticking its nose in the financial markets in the first place.

    2. Dodd-Frank reform has to include changes to the Patriot Act, money-laundering rules, expedited funds act, Fannie Mae rules and an entire other body of over-regulation to have any impact on small business borrowers and consumers. The hundreds of documents you have to produce for a mortgage are only loosely tie to Dodd-Frank.

    3. Mike introduced a bill last year to make federal regulators actually follow the Safe Harbor law (which exempted small banks from many Dodd-Frank rules and has been completely ignored by the regulators). There has to be a two-tiered system of regulation: one for the money-center players and one for the main street banks or any reform will be meaningless.

    4. All this mess could still be easily done away with and too big to fail ended by a return to Glass-Steagall. Congress has to break their money addiction and tell Goldman Sachs and Wall Street no more sucking at the FDIC teat. G/S worked just fine for 75 years of the greatest economic expansion in human history: never should have been repealed.

  3. Maybe Senator Round’s quote should of been “It all comes down to what’s best for donors.””

  4. The Volcker Rule is overly complicated but better than the alternative, which is limitless prop trading that creates competition between banks and their own clients in the open marketplace.

    The CFPB is a regulatory overreach, but it beats the alternative, which is having no single agency with the ability to rein in predatory payday lenders and fraudulent consumer retail sales practices.

    Leveraged Lending rules have slowed multiple avenues of commercial and consumer lending, but it beats the alternative, which is allowing companies to make risky bets that are 60-80 times larger than their capital.

    IHC is overly complicated for diverse multinational financial firms, but it beats the alternative, which is exempting foreign banks from following the same rules as US ones when they operate in our country, making our financial institutions less competitive.

    CCAR is overly conservative and draconian, but it beats the alternative, which allows banks to ignore institutional, environmental, and macroeconomic risks and destroy the financial system because they didn’t have enough capital in place to weather a sector-wide sub-prime loan meltdown.

    So, yeah, Dodd-Frank is a pain in everyone’s ass, but it beats the alternative, which is a financial sector that is its own worst enemy and all too eager to screw up knowing that Uncle Sam will happily bail them out again.

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