How Trump Just Rolled Back MAJOR Consumer Protection Affecting You, I, and His Base.

• After a White House meeting with executives from Wall Street, Mr. Trump signed a directive aimed at the Dodd-Frank Act.
• Dodd-Frank promotes the financial stability of the United States by improving accountability and transparency in the financial system

• It brought the most significant changes to financial regulation in the United States since the regulatory reform that followed the Great Depression.

• This was crafted by the Obama administration and passed by Congress in response to the 2008 meltdown.  

• Trump is backing away from a measure intended to protect consumers from bad investment advice.

• It gives the Treasury the authority to restructure major provisions of Dodd-Frank, and it directs the Treasury secretary to make sure existing laws align with administration goals--
• Treasury Secretary is Steve Mnuchin--Chairman of OneWest, which became the largest bank in Southern California after the 2008 economic collapse.
• Deputy Treasury Secretary is Fannie Mae's General Counsel Brian Brooks
• Why this matters: Deputy Secretary is a pivotal role in the Treasury Department, and Wall Street has been keeping a close eye on the vacancy.   Brooks will be expected to play a driving role in tax reform and the other major agenda items.  Mnuchin wanted a loyalist in this key position.

• He also signed a memorandum that paves the way for reversing a policy, known as the Fiduciary Rule:
• This requires brokers to act in a client’s best interest, rather than seek the highest profits for themselves, when providing retirement advice.

• Trump’s action will make it harder for American savers to keep more of what they earn.

• Mr. Trump’s action on the fiduciary rule, was essentially a gift to Wall Street.
• His reversal directs the Labor Department to review whether the rule may “adversely affect” investors’ ability to access financial advice — and if it does, it authorizes the agency to rescind and revise the rule.

• The executive order affecting Dodd-Frank is vague in its wording and expansive in its reach.

• “There’s nobody better to tell me about Dodd-Frank than Jamie, so you’re going to tell me about it,” Mr. Trump said.
• Jamie Dimon, Chairman of JPMorgan Chase, was often a target of regulatory actions by the Obama administration.

• It gives the Treasury the authority to restructure major provisions of Dodd-Frank, and it directs the Treasury secretary to make sure existing laws align with administration goals.

• Taken together (rollback of Dodd-Frank & Fiduciary Rule),  Mr. Trump’s actions on Friday constitute an extensive effort to loosen regulations on banks and other major financial companies
• Even though the President campaigned as a champion of working Americans and as a critic of Wall Street elites.
• “We expect to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank, because frankly, I have so many people, friends of mine that had nice businesses, they can’t borrow money,” Mr. Trump said. Despite the president’s concerns, banks have increased their consumer lending like credit cards and auto loans, and have generally expanded their lending to businesses.

• Mr. Trump underscored the degree to which the architects of his own economic strategy are now some of the people he denounced in his campaign--
• His campaign commercials that described “a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations.”


• The advertisement flashed an image of the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, which has become a virtual feeder for top Trump administration officials.   Steven Mnuchin, his nominee for Treasury secretary; Gary Cohn, the chairman of his national economic council; and Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, all had worked at Goldman.

• "The administration apparently plans to turn over financial regulation to Wall Street titan Goldman Sachs, and make it easier for them and other big banks like Wells Fargo to steal from their customers and destabilize the economy,” said Lisa Donner, the executive director of Americans for Financial Reform, an advocacy group that supports Dodd-Frank.   “That betrays the promises Trump made to stand up to Wall Street.”

• House Republicans are moving legislation to “repeal and replace” Dodd-Frank, though they would need 60 votes to accomplish that.

• Even before the president acted, congressional Republicans on Friday started to chip away at Dodd-Frank --- The Republicans used an unusual parliamentary procedure to repeal a rule that stems from the law with only a majority of votes, rather than the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.
• The Senate voted 52 to 47 to void the rule, which requires oil companies to publicly disclose payments made to governments when developing resources around the world. 
• The rule, which Dodd-Frank assigned to the S.E.C. to enforce, was tangential to the law’s mission of reforming Wall Street, but lawmakers included it anyway with the hope of exposing bribes and corruption
• Some of the largest American oil companies objected to the S.E.C. rule--including Exxon Mobil, arguing that it put them at a competitive disadvantage with foreign companies.  
• Rex W.  Tillerson, Mr. Trump’s secretary of state, personally lobbied against it when he was Exxon’s top executive.