DD Support Board and Research Team

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Trump Begins Assault on Dodd-Frank Financial Regulations

By BEN PROTESS and JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS FEB. 3, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/03/business/dealbook/trump-congress-financial-regulations.html?ref=business

President Trump mounted an all-out assault on financial regulation on Friday, announcing an array of steps to tear down safeguards enacted to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis and turning to the Wall Street titans he had demonized during his campaign for advice.

After a White House meeting with the business executives on Friday, Mr. Trump signed a directive calling for a rewriting of major provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act, crafted by the Obama administration and passed by Congress in response to the 2008 meltdown, the White House said. A second directive he signed is expected to halt and possibly require an overhaul of an Obama-era Labor Department rule that requires brokers to act in a client’s best interest, rather than seek the highest profits for themselves, when providing retirement advice.

Taken together, the actions constitute a broad effort to loosen regulations on banks and other major financial companies, put into motion by a president who campaigned as a champion of working Americans and a harsh critic of global elites. Those elites include Wall Street companies like Goldman Sachs, whose alumni now populate his Cabinet and economic advisory teams.

“We expect to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank because frankly, I have so many people, friends of mine that had nice businesses, they can’t borrow money,” Mr. Trump said in the State Dining Room during his meeting with business leaders. “They just can’t get any money because the banks just won’t let them borrow it because of the rules and regulations in Dodd-Frank.”

As he announced his attack on financial regulation, Mr. Trump sat beside Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chief executive of the private equity giant the Blackstone Group and the chairman of his business council, who said the panel would “advise the government on the areas where we could do things a lot better in our country, for all Americans.”

The president had praise for Jamie Dimon, whose bank, JPMorgan Chase, was often a target of regulatory actions by the Obama administration.

“There’s nobody better to tell me about Dodd-Frank than Jamie, so you’re going to tell me about it,” Mr. Trump said.

The meeting underscored the degree to which the architects of Mr. Trump’s economic strategy are now some of the very people he lambasted in his campaign, which ended with a commercial that described “a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations.”
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/03/business/dealbook/trump-congress-financial-regulations.html?ref=business