NTU: Finance desperately needs reform — start by ditching this draconian regulation
Shortly after President Trump was elected, congressional leaders set an aggressive schedule for addressing healthcare, taxes, and financial services this calendar year. With the prolonged fight over healthcare continuing, and now with United States involvement in Syria looming large, the calendar will likely need to be adjusted. The original goal was to get tax reform done by August recess, but now the administration is openly questioning whether that’s possible. One thing Congress shouldn’t do, however, is let wholesale reform of Dodd-Frank fall by the wayside. The financial services industry desperately needs reform.
Dodd-Frank, passed in the wake of the financial crisis, has strangled economic growth. The bill was needlessly complicated and added layers of regulation targeting things that were entirely unrelated to the causes of the financial crisis. It became a grab bag for left-wing grievances against the financial services industry. A perfect example is the so-called “Durbin amendment,” named after its sponsor, Senator Richard Durbin, D-Ill.