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» VISIT US ONLINE @ DSNEWS.COM 63 alternative to Dodd-Frank. And if that's the case, Dodd-Frank may not look like Dodd- Frank for much longer. In its current form, CHOICE would scrap many of the stiff regulations enacted for too-big-to-fail banks after the financial crisis, doing away with a myriad of penalty provisions for offenders and orderly liquidation processes for institutions capable of toppling the world economy in a crisis like the Great Recession. Haedtler told us the CFPB is "one of the things most directly and immediately under threat" in the Age of Trump, and he isn't wrong in this case. A chunk of CHOICE's provisions deal with measures that would clip the agency's claws, making it harder to pursue offenders. Some watchdog groups worry particularly about mortgage rules that came through regulators like the CFPB. In a July letter to representatives, Americans for Financial Security expressed "grave concerns" over the proposed bill, which would roll back half of the CFPB's bank examination responsibilities and create potentially dangerous exemptions to the Qualified Mortgage rule. e group warned that passage of CHOICE or anything like it "would expose consumers, investors, and the public to greatly heightened risk of abuse in their regular dealings with the financial system, and our economy as a whole to heightened risk of instability and crisis." Critically, if Republicans choose to use CHOICE as a blueprint, the proposed bill's provisions would impose new restrictions on federal regulators and even open the door to lawsuits from large banks that could create a chilling effect in the regulatory culture. It would also defang the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC)—the body that Dodd-Frank created and tasked with designating whether a bank threatens the wider economy, eliminating its designation authority, stress tests for too-big-to-fail institutions, and 10-percent capital requirements put in place to guard against bank insolvencies without drawing on public funds, a la the Bush administration's Troubled Asset Relief Program. CHOICE also proposed jettisoning the Volcker Rule, which bars banks from COVER STORY INDUSTRY INSIGHT INDUSTRY INSIGHT INDUSTRY INSIGHT DODD-FRANK NAMESAKE WEIGHS IN Former House Rep. Barney Frank spoke to DS News about the future of the regulation that bears his name. President Donald Trump's executive order on February 3, titled, "Core Principles for Regulating the United States Financial System," called for an official review of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection. Former House Rep. Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts), and namesake of the regulation, spoke to DS News, saying Trump's latest executive order confirms his suspicions that Trump has no intention of maintaining strong regulatory controls over the financial industry. "He's not worried about a repeat of 2008," Frank said. "I think this is just confirmation that he believes we shouldn't regulate the financial industry. Instead, he's going to make people in business very happy." Frank first introduced the Act into the House of Representatives in 2009, which passed in the Senate with the help of co-author Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut). It was signed into law by President Barack Obama on July 21, 2010. Frank said the executive order itself is no real threat to Dodd-Frank itself, as it only orders the Secretary of the Treasury to prepare a report. "The executive order doesn't do anything. Literally it doesn't do anything," he said. "The reason is, he can't change the provisions of the law by executive order. These are specific statutes; I think we were very careful about adopting them. He would like to get Congress substantively to weaken the bill legislatively." Frank expressed his skepticism that repeal of financial reform will succeed in Congress. "Financial reform is very popular," Frank said. "When the Republicans were in power under President Obama, they kept voting to repeal the healthcare bill entirely but they never put the vote to the floor to repeal financial reform because the public supports financial reform." "He's not going to get this through the Congress, I believe," Frank said. 63

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