Ten Reasons to Oppose the Dodd-Frank Bill

The Editors National Review July 6, 2010

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July 6, 2010 4:00 A.M.

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The Democrats have removed the $19 billion bank tax, which prompted your initial opposition, but they have replaced it with other bank taxes and with deficit spending. As long as the Democrats refuse to cut government spending to fund the reforms they want, this will be an insoluble problem. This bill should be tabled and taken back up in 2011, when Republicans will presumably hold a stronger negotiating position and can push for further improvements. Your opposition can pave the way for this outcome. On this issue, you can be the 41st vote. Of the Democrats who voted against the bill, Maria Cantwell has now decided to support it, but Russ Feingold is holding firm in his opposition. From the Republican side, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe seem likely to vote yes, but Chuck Grassley is probably a no: He voted against cloture last time, even though he eventually voted for the bill. Depending on when and with whom West Virginia governor Joe Manchin fills the late Robert Byrd’s Senate seat, you are the deciding vote. There are many reasons to vote against this bill. Here are just a few:THE COST: The Congressional Budget Office has put the ten-year cost of the bill at around $19 billion. The Democrats initially tried to fund this obligation via a tax imposed on large financial institutions. You opposed them. They went back to the drawing board and emerged with a funding mechanism that, were a corporation to try it, would get its accountants sent to prison for fraud. The bill would now “cancel” the Troubled Asset Relief Program a few months early, thus “saving” the government around $11 billion. But the government wasn’t actually going to spend that $11 billion. As far as we know, the administration wasn’t planning on making any additional TARP loans. (The $11 billion over three months represents estimated losses on future TARP loans.) As House Financial Services Committee ranking member Spencer Bachus put it, the only way the math works is if the administration had made secret plans “to purposefully make loans in the next two months that would lose billions of taxpayer dollars.” We concur with Bachus: The Democrats are “rewriting the law to use TARP as their own personal slush fund to pay for new government programs.” You should oppose this move — it opens to the door to future, similar chicanery involving “unspent” TARP funds.You should also oppose the other funding mechanism the Democrats concocted: an increase in FDIC assessments that would fall on small and large banks alike, even though the FDIC’s new resolution authority only applies to large financial institutions. If you opposed the previous bank tax, which only applied to large banks, there is no reason why you should now support a bank tax that underwrites large financial firms at the expense of smaller depository institutions. VOLCKER UNDEFINED: You have expressed concern about the so-called Volcker rule, which would curb “proprietary trading” by federally insured depository institutions. Democrats have watered down this provision in order to win your vote. But the compromise version would still leave banks and bank holding companies at the mercy of federal regulators, who would have wide discretion over what constitutes prop trading. If Congress wants to ban specific investment practices, it should pass specific laws to address them, rather than rely on government bureaucrats to do the heavy lifting. Giving financial regulators more arbitrary power is a recipe for more uncertainty — and more lobbyists.THE MORAL HAZARD COUNCIL: The bill would establish a new Financial Stability Oversight Council tasked with seeing the next crisis coming. The folly of this council is that it creates the impression that the government has its eye on the ball, which breeds laziness and incaution in the banking sector and gives the bankers someone else to blame when things go wrong.BAILOUT AUTHORITY: Senate Republicans dug in and won some good changes to the new resolution authority that the bill would create, limiting the FDIC’s authority to bail out the creditors of large failed financial institutions as they are unwound. But too many loopholes remain. The FDIC retains the ability to structure GM- and Chrysler-like transfers of company assets that favor the politically connected at the expense of secured creditors. This legislation would also enhance the Federal Reserve’s authority to make broad extensions of credit to struggling financial entities. The Fed is only supposed to use this authority to help firms that are illiquid, not insolvent. But the line between the two is blurry, and regulators tasked with preserving “financial stability” have every incentive to blur it further during a crisis, as witnessed when former Treasury secretary Hank Paulson forced TARP money on healthy and weak banks alike.“CONSUMER PROTECTION”: The proposed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) would have broad powers to impose job-killing regulations. Though housed in (and funded by) the Fed, the CFPB would operate as an independent agency, with rule-writing ability and enforcement authority. We all favor prudent consumer safeguards, but those safeguards can be strengthened without creating yet another onerous bureaucracy. The CFPB could significantly reduce credit access for small businesses, and thereby jeopardize America’s wobbly economic recovery.DEATH BY PROXY: The corporate-governance language (“proxy access”) in Dodd-Frank would greatly expand the influence of Big Labor and harm the interests of mom-and-pop investors. Even if you favor the idea of “shareholder democracy,” this is the wrong way to promote it. The chief beneficiaries of proxy access would be politically connected activist groups (such as the AFL-CIO and the SEIU), not ordinary shareholders. You’re quite familiar with the union agenda. Do you think it would help or hurt shareholder value? 1 | 2 | Next >

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Ten Reasons to Oppose the Dodd-Frank Bill

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