The Trump administration is delivering on its promise of financial deregulation. Mick Mulvaney has eroded the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since being installed as acting director in November. The agency’s new strategic plan says it will “fulfill the Bureau’s statutory responsibilities, but go no further.” In practice this has meant freezing or dropping investigations against miscreant financial institutions like Wells Fargo and Equifax; delaying new rules regulating high-cost payday loans; preventing enforcement personnel to collect data on wrongdoing; and generally doing more to protect lenders than consumers.
The light touch extends beyond the CFPB. The Justice Department has thrown out “guidance documents” that dictate when to prosecute companies accused of misconduct; the effect will be to limit enforcement actions. The Securities and Exchange Commission doesn’t even publicize its weak attempts at punishment, burying announcements of fines in legal documents. Trump’s new choices for the Federal Reserve want to weaken rules on leverage that even many conservatives support. And a bill moving through the Senate with enough bipartisan support to beat a filibuster would represent one of the first statutory rollbacks of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law.
The Trump administration insists this financial deregulation will relieve costs from businesses and jumpstart the economy. But it’s clear where this laissez-faire approach leads: Without a cop looking over their shoulder, banks take more risks, increasing the danger of another crash. That theory has been surprisingly understudied in the academic literature, but a new working paper from the International Monetary Fund provides empirical support for the idea that large-scale deregulation generates financial crisis.
The report slipped by after its release last month without much notoriety. But it comes from an organization without a tradition of left-wing activism. It also adds context to what the Trump administration’s forays into financial deregulation may cause. This is what the prelude to a financial crisis looks like, historically speaking.
