The travesty continues.
Congress rolled back most of the small-business destroying Dodd-Frank Act several months ago. This Act hammered small banks, with its regulatory overload putting about half of them completely out of business. It made access to capital virtually impossible for many truly small businesses. It helped keep the economy in virtual stagnation. Supposedly the Dodd-Frank Act was designed to regulate the too-big-to-fail banks, but those banks have thrived and …grown still bigger under its aegis.
I have written rather extensively on how the Dodd-Frank Act hamstrung small business and hence our economy (http://www.rightsidesd.com/?p=31951). What came as a complete surprise is my recent discovery that eliminating most of the Act has had little to no impact on the regulators—- swarms of unrestrained regulators continue to descend with full fury on small banks. They are especially concentrating on any changes that the bank might have made or be trying to make with respect to loan policies. In the process they are directly thwarting the intent of the roll back, which was to make capital more reasonably available.
Because regulators can shut down a bank, reporting their bureaucratic intransigence is a risky business; bankers are reluctant to speak on the record for fear of retribution. Even legal changes for the better apparently receive maximum resistance from an ensconced regulatory bureaucracy. The swamp continues to be bigger than I thought possible.
*** Gary A. Howie MSc, PhD *** is business owner/rancher and a Life & Liberty News contributor
