The Wall Street is back in play. And it is happening on the watch of Donald Trump. The same Trump who had railed against bankers on the campaign trail; the same Trump who is busy waging an undeclared war on immigrants. This situation makes one recall this line from Oscar-winning 2015 movie, The Big Short, where a protagonist resignedly remarks in the end, I have a feeling in a few years people are going to be doing what they always do when the economy tanks. They will be blaming immigrants and poor people.
The world has been here before. Crises result in firefighting by politicians; corporate excess and greed is lambasted; and belated regulations are imposed. But a few years later, as the public takes her eye off, the agents of chaos reappear; politicians are forced to unshackle big money; and drums are beaten that growth will return. Fickle markets, failing to learn from the past, again start believing that this time will be different. A bubble of one sort or the other reappears, only to be popped again, inflicting mass misery.
This isnt exactly Americas Glass-Steagall moment yet, but President Trump has begun the process of a gradual clampdown of regulations that were put in place after the 2008 financial crisis. Signed on February 3, the Presidential Executive Order on Core Principles for Regulating the United States Financial System, lists down seven core principles, which suggest a preference to rationalize regulations but show averseness to taxpayer-funded bailouts.
That executive order directs the Treasury Secretary to submit within 120 days a report that shall identify any laws, treaties, regulations, guidance, reporting and recordkeeping requirements, and other Government policies that inhibit Federal regulation of the United States financial system in a manner consistent with the Core Principles.
The same day, a presidential memorandum was issued that asked the Department of Labor to review the Fiduciary Duty Rule. The fiduciary rule, which is set to go live in April 2017 and covers an estimated $15 trillion of Americans retirement savings, requires financial advisors to put retirees interests above their own. Trumps memo asks the Department to propose a repeal or revision of the fiduciary rule if its review determines that the rule harms investors and retirees or if it has led to a rise in litigations.
Taken together, the presidential decrees take the first stab at the DoddFrank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was a bipartisan effort to prevent the likes of 2008 crisis from happening again. It will take about four months for the two reviews to complete, and likely another year after that to chip away at Dodd-Franks individual provisions.
Some of the already-implemented provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act such as enforcing higher capital requirements on banks, conducting periodic stress tests on banks balance sheets, enforcing the Volcker Rule (whereby deposit-raising institutions cannot make speculative investments), and the setting up of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have been credited with reining in Wall Street.
But the big financiers now have a chance to fight back. Yet, despite finding an unlikely friend in Trump, bankers seem to prefer a slow-burn instead of a big rupture. This intent to roll back the Obama-era regulations, whose rigor and scope motivated other central banks to follow suit, isnt sitting well overseas, especially in the Eurozone area. Several European banks still reel from the post-2008 weaknesses.
Few days ago, Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank (ECB), told the EU Parliament, "The last thing we need at this point in time is the relaxation of regulation. The idea of repeating the conditions that were in place before the crisis is something that is very worrisome, as per a Reuters report. Draghi also took issue with the Trump teams attacks on the Euro, arguing that the currencys valuation reflected Eurozones economic weakness, and not a deliberate attempt to keep it under-valued.
But that is not all. Trump allies have also started to attack the US Federal Reserve, especially its largely-informal but critical stewardship of global financial regulations. They are asking for Fed to be accountable to the American public. To the ECB and other overseas monetary authorities, who still look towards the US for guidance and coordination, this attack on apolitical financial technocracy is coming as a rude shock.
Such actions suggest that America is on its way to not only give up leadership of diplomatic, security and economic arenas; the new White House is also signaling that it wont lead the world on consumer-friendly financial regulations. With big finance roaring back to life, the populist-revolt thesis behind Trumps victory seems a little incompatible now. Couched in a nationalist spirit, more of the same old is being served.
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