Blog

Tomorrow, the Capital Markets and Government Sponsored Enterprises Subcommittee will hold a hearing on five proposals designed to help small businesses access the capital markets for the financing they need to grow their companies and hire more workers. This hearing continues the Full Committee’s ongoing efforts to promote small business capital formation and job creation. One of the bills on tomorrow’s agenda is H.R. 2167, the Private Company Flexibility and Growth Act. The bill has been introduced by Rep. David Schweikert. Witnesses scheduled to testify before the Subcommittee are praising t... Read More »

The SEC’s budget is three times larger than it was 10 years ago. Is its performance three times better? Read More »

With a growing regulatory burden weighing our economy down, President Obama’s executive order #13563 issued in January was welcomed news. That executive order requires government agencies to conduct cost-benefit analyses to ensure that the benefits of any rulemaking outweigh the costs. It also requires that both new and existing regulations be accessible, consistent, written in plain language and easy to understand. Unfortunately, this executive order does not apply to agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). And according to the SEC, the Dodd-Frank Act alone contains more t... Read More »

Associated Press: Congressional panel investigates Ga. bank failures Published: Tuesday, August 16, 2011 Georgia holds the dubious distinction as the epicenter of bank failures in the aftermath of the Great Recession. But lawmakers who gathered at a congressional hearing Tuesday to investigate the causes questioned whether some of the shuttered banks were victims of overzealous regulations and strained relations with examiners. Georgia has suffered 67 bank failures since 2008, far more than any other state. Many of those banks collapsed due to lax lending practices that left them laden with ba... Read More »

Promises are unfulfilled while the costs are real By Rep. Sean Duffy It was one year ago today that President Obama signed the so-called "Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010." Like other signature pieces of legislation of this administration, the name can be misleading. Like the so-called "stimulus" that stimulated nothing but more government debt, this bill fails to actually reform Wall Street or protect consumers, which is a remarkable accomplishment, considering it was more than 2,300 pages long and contained more than 400 regulations and mandates. For small co... Read More »

The failures of the Dodd-Frank Act continue to mount. Dodd-Frank Risk Panel Delays Create ‘Guessing Game’ By Cheyenne Hopkins and Ian Katz - Jul 18, 2011 Posted at Bloomberg.com A team of regulators charged with preventing another financial crisis is fending off criticism it’s moving too slowly to identify the firms whose failure could pose a threat to the economy. The year-old Financial Stability Oversight Council planned to start designating systemically important non-bank financial companies, such as insurers, as early as the middle of this year. The council met today without setting the cr... Read More »

Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus today announced the Committee’s schedule for the remainder of July. “Our Committee will continue promoting policies that encourage growth, investment and new jobs, and we will remain focused on our important oversight duties,” said Chairman Bachus. The Committee schedule remains tentative and will depend upon witness availability and other factors that may require changes. Therefore, each meeting will become final only when the official notice is distributed. Additional information about each hearing, as well as hearing witnesses, will be a... Read More »

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (the government bureaucracy that’s supposed to “nudge” you to make decisions about your life that it deems are correct) doesn’t start operating until July 21. The President still has not even nominated someone to lead the agency yet. But it does have an office softball team and it is hiring at a rate of more than 80 new government workers per month. (Is this the Obama jobs plan?) That may explain why the CFPB has already outgrown its office space in two buildings! From the Bloomberg BusinessWeek cover story out this week: “[Elizabeth] Warren is not wait... Read More »

Yesterday, Financial Service Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus presided over a field hearing that highlighted the role of the National Computer Forensics Institute (NCFI) in Hoover, Alabama in fighting cybercrime. “The National Computer Forensics Institute is providing valuable training to the state and local law enforcement officials who are our first line of defense against crime. They are being equipped with the skills needed to combat the new wave of cybercriminals. Investigations based on information drawn from computers and electronic devices can be highly complex, and the training provi... Read More »

The Capital Markets and Government Sponsored Enterprises Subcommittee gathered on Friday, June 24th for a hearing titled, "Oversight of the Mutual Fund Industry: Ensuring Market Stability and Investor Confidence". Subcommittee Chairman Scott Garrett stated the intent of the hearing was to “to focus …on different efforts and proposals meant to provide more certainty to policymakers about the long-term stability of money market funds.” Garrett noted that the hearing was all the more timely due to “attention in the media this week regarding how the Greek debt crisis may affect money market mutua... Read More »