June 26, 2014 By Charles Lane Of all the purposes for which you might put U.S. taxpayer dollars at risk, helping wealthy petro-states borrow millions to buy Boeing jets would not rank among the most urgent. Yet that is what the Export-Import Bank does: In fiscal 2013, Ex-Im backed$8.3 billion in aircraft and related sales, including a $117.5 million loan guarantee to support Boeing 737 purchases by Dubai — a typical transaction for an agency that has, over the years, earned the sobriquet “Bank of Boeing,” though it does also support Caterpillar and General Electric, among others. Now Ex-Im su... Read More »
The Financial Services Committee will hold the following hearings this week: Tuesday, June 24 at 10 a.m. – The Committee will hear from Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew on the Annual Report of the Financial Stability Oversight Council. Wednesday, June 25 at 10 a.m. – The Committee will hold a hearing entitled: “Examining Reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank: Corporate Necessity or Corporate Welfare?” Thursday, June 26 at 9:15 a.m. – The Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government Sponsored Enterprises will hold a hearing entitled: “Oversight of the SEC’s Division of Trading and Markets.” A... Read More »
Committee Seeks Accountability at the CFPB On Tuesday, the full committee held a hearing with Director Richard Cordray to receive the fifth Semi-Annual Report of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. "Since Director Cordray last appeared before our committee in January, we have learned much. First, we have learned in the first quarter of this year we actually had negative economic growth of one percent. And when you speak to practically any small businessperson, any community banker they will tell you the sheer weight, volume, complexity of the regulatory red tape burden is one of the prim... Read More »
Note: The Financial Services Committee will hold two hearings about the CFPB on Wednesday, June 18. At 10 a.m., the full committee will hear from CFPB Director Richard Cordray. At 2 p.m., the Financial Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee will hear from CFPB whistleblowers during its third hearing on allegations of discrimination and retaliation within the CFPB. Both hearings will take place in room 2128 Rayburn House Office Building and will be webcast at /. POLITICO PRO: CFPB employee’s charges of retaliation to be aired at hearing 6/16/14 A Consumer Financial Protection Bureau... Read More »
WSJ Editorial | June 9, 2014 One issue that has Republicans at the grass roots tearing at each other instead of fighting Democrats is the sense that the Beltway GOP protects Beltway special interests. We can't think of a better way for the party's Washington leadership to show they get that message than by pulling the plug on the Export-Import Bank. Unless you are part of the Ex-Im brotherhood, you couldn't begin to guess when it was created—in 1934 by Franklin D. Roosevelt. It's now kept on life support by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and an in-crowd of current and retired Congressional Repu... Read More »
Why Is Obama Stockpiling Your Personal Financial Records? IBD Editorial | June 6, 2014 Diversity Police: Republicans are scratching their heads over the Obama regime's privacy-invading "National Mortgage Database Project." What's it for? That's easy: redistribution of wealth. In an unprecedented federal intrusion, the president's most radical financial regulators — Mel Watt of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and Richard Cordray of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — are creating a massive discrimination database on as many as 230 million Americans. It will encompass a mortgage holde... Read More »
Committee Examines the Dangers of FSOC’s Designation Process On Tuesday, the full committee held a hearing to examine the Financial Stability Oversight Council’s (FSOC) designation process for deeming banks and non-bank firms as “systemically important” and the impact of such designations. "FSOC was established—or so its supporters tell us—to make it easier for regulators to communicate and share information with each other. But the regulators didn’t need an act of Congress to do that, and information-sharing is not what FSOC is really about. Instead, FSOC is about one thing: increasing Washin... Read More »
“It is easy reverse engineer and identify the people in our database.” “At present we are allowed to have any federal employee gain access” to the database. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling and Senate Banking Committee Ranking Member Mike Crapo this week sent a letter to the CFPB and FHFA raising serious privacy concerns about the massive federal mortgage database the two agencies are creating. A recent notice in the Federal Register outlined how expansive the agencies’ database will be. Specifically, the notice proposes to vastly expand the scope of their data collec... Read More »
CLICK HERE TO WATCH Last week, the Financial Services Committee met to take up a number of strategies designed to spur job growth. Watch Rep. Mick Mulvaney (Twitter|Facebook) discuss those ideas and more in this week's FSC Video Message. Read More »
On Wednesday, the full committee marked up several bills designed to grow the economy, create jobs, and relieve the regulatory burden for community financial institutions. "We received some bad news recently that more than 800,000 Americans, almost a million, left the workforce last month alone. Many simply could not find a job to make ends meet, no matter how hard they tried. Millions of others remain out of work. The latest economic figures show that during the first quarter of this year the economy slowed to a stall, with a barely discernable 0.1 percent annual growth rate," said Chairman J... Read More »
