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Phone: 501.376.3741
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News Center - White House |
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July 19, 2011
Obama Formally Nominates Cordray as CFPB Director
President Barack Obama has officially announced his nomination of Richard Cordray to serve as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Cordray currently leads the CFPB’s enforcement division and previously served as
Ohio
’s Attorney General.
In his remarks after announcing the nomination Obama pledged to fight efforts to weaken Dodd-Frank Act reforms. “We’re not going to go back to the status quo where consumers couldn’t count on getting protections that they deserved. We’re not going to go back to a time when our whole economy was vulnerable to a massive financial crisis,” Obama said. “That’s why this bureau matters. I will fight any efforts to repeal or undermine the important changes that we passed.”
Meanwhile Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) reacted to the nomination by repeating GOP senators’ concerns about the CFPB’s lack of accountability, and renewing their May 5 vow to block any nomination unless changes are made to the bureau’s structure and funding. Read the president’s remarks. Read McConnell’s remarks.
July 13, 2011
Obama Asks Independent Agencies to Reduce Regulation
President Obama on Monday issued a nonbinding executive order asking the independent regulatory agencies -- including the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Securities and Exchange Commission -- to produce plans within 120 days to review regulations and determine whether they can be streamlined, expanded or repealed.
The goal is to make the agencies’ programs more effective and less burdensome. Obama in January issued a binding order requiring the executive agencies -- those run by a cabinet secretary -- to do the same.
AmBA
responded to the January order by sending letters to eight agencies – including independent agencies -- identifying remedies to specific regulatory challenges that are impeding banks’ ability to lend, serve customers and support economic growth. Read the executive order. Read AmBA’s letters to the agencies.
July 5, 2011
Obama Nominates Curry as OCC Head
President Obama on Friday said he intends to nominate FDIC Board member Thomas Curry to be Comptroller of the Currency. Curry, a former
Massachusetts
state banking regulator, would succeed Acting Comptroller of the Currency John Walsh. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) said he plans to move the Curry nomination “as quickly as possible.”
Obama also said he plans to nominate Mary Miller, current Treasury assistant secretary for financial markets, as undersecretary for domestic affairs. Miller would succeed Jeffrey Goldstein, who last week announced he would leave the post later this month.
In related news, the Senate late Thursday confirmed Timothy Massad as Treasury assistant secretary for financial stability. Massad, who served as acting assistant secretary for financial stability, will oversee the winding down of the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Read the White House announcement on Curry and Miller.
June 27, 2011
Administration ‘Seriously Considering’ Risk-Retention Feedback
The Obama administration is “seriously considering” stakeholders’ feedback on the regulators’ proposed risk-retention rule, Jeffrey Goldstein, the Treasury undersecretary for domestic finance, said Friday at the National Housing Conference’s Policy Summit on Mortgage Finance Reform in Washington, D.C.
“We are seriously considering feedback and are committed to getting this rule right, so that we can ensure securitization is a stable and reliable source of credit for consumers, businesses, and homeowners,” Goldstein said.
AmBA provided such feedback last Wednesday by joining a large coalition of consumers, lenders, homebuilders, realtors and civil rights advocates -- along with Senate and House members -- in calling for significant revisions in the proposed risk-retention rule’s definition of a “qualified residential mortgage” that would be exempt from the rule’s requirements.
AmBA President and CEO Frank Keating explained that the proposed QRM definition goes far beyond congressional intent by mandating a minimum 20-percent down payment and severely narrow credit-history requirements -- restrictions that would prevent many otherwise qualified buyers from owning a home.
Goldstein assured the NHC, however, that the administration’s goal “is to strike a balance that preserves access to affordable mortgage credit in all communities for creditworthy borrowers across all incomes,” while strengthening the long-term health of the housing market and the economy. “We believe that risk retention, as part of comprehensive housing finance reform, is an important part of that effort,” he said. Read Goldstein’s speech.
June 21, 2011
AmBA Invites Obama Chief of Staff to Discuss ‘Untenable’ Reg Burden
AmBA invited White House Chief of Staff William Daley to attend next month’s Washington, D.C., meeting of bank CEO’s and state banking associations to hear about their untenable regulatory burdens and how those burdens are affecting community, state and national economies.
“[I]t is important to understand that the financial crisis has been replaced with a regulatory crisis. The financial regulatory system is in virtual chaos,” AmBA President and CEO Frank Keating said in a letter to Daley. Keating explained that the regulatory agencies have hundreds of major new rules to write, have too little time to write them, and the list of missed statutory deadlines for those rules is getting longer.
“With so much uncertainty, no bank in
America
today can develop a rational business plan. … We are being frozen in place by increasingly dangerous regulatory minefields,” he said. Keating questioned whether the economy can move forward if the banking industry can’t.
“New capital demands have gone well past reasonable, our lines of safe and sound business are under assault, and regulatory plans are making it hard for many banks to offer mortgages and business loans to many credit-worthy borrowers,” he said. “The only part of the bank that is growing is the compliance department.”
Keating cited three -- of many -- regulatory problems as examples: the Securities and Exchange Commission’s municipal advisers proposal; the proposed qualified residential mortgage standard; and the Labor Department’s rewrite of the “fiduciary” definition. Read the letter.
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