Trump-appointed regulators came into office saying they would pare back Wall Street’s postcrisis rulebook. More than two years into the administration’s tenure, most of the work remains unfinished, particularly for the biggest banks, the Wall Street Journal reported. That worries financial firms and some Republican lawmakers, who fear the window for a regulatory rollback could be narrow, especially if Democrats notch pivotal electoral victories in 2020. Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and a group of other Republican senators are urging regulators to move more quickly. The goal: lock in as many changes as possible by year’s end. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who met privately in March with top bank regulators along with other Republican senators, said that he wanted to see more progress on a regulatory overhaul signed into law last year. “The bill can’t work unless it’s implemented,” said Rounds, who, like Moran, sits on the Senate Banking Committee. The rollback efforts combine those required under last year’s law and those that can be put into place by the regulators on their own. Democrats and critics of the changes say that the initiatives already underway go too far, could undermine the financial system and aren’t warranted when banks are posting record profits. Daniel Tarullo, the Fed’s regulatory point-person during the Obama administration, in May said post-crisis rules “could be endangered by a kind of low-intensity deregulation consisting of an accumulation of non-headline-grabbing changes and an opaque relaxation of supervisory rigor.” Under the law passed a year ago, regulators face a fall deadline to simplify rules for midsize and small banks. They also want to make progress by year’s end to retool rules that limit speculative trading by large firms and test the ability of firms such as J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. or Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to continue lending during a severe recession.
