As Congress scrambles to wrap up its budget for this year, banks and their political allies are again angling to insert unrelated rule-reduction measures — and bracing for a new battle, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The two most significant changes under consideration this year: easing supervision requirements for banks with about $50 billion in assets; and changing the process for subjecting BlackRock Inc. and other big financial firms to bank-like regulation. In a Senate speech last Tuesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) warned that she wouldn’t let the proposals through “without a fight.” Among the most consequential of dozens of policy changes that could be attached to a December funding deal: exempting some big U.S. banks from annual “stress tests” and revamping the process by which regulators single out risky financial firms as “systemically important,” and thus subject to extra supervision.
