Banks have never before had to establish policies and procedures at the granular level required under the new regulation. Doing so in a timely manner will be a challenge for most institutions. For some, it will be impossible.
Politicians must acknowledge the unintentionally harmful consequences of the Dodd-Frank Act, while bankers need to accept that the financial system has deficiencies and act to remedy the problems under their control.
Unless regulators coordinate their efforts to reform banks' home lending, mortgage servicing and remittance businesses, American consumers will continue to lose access to affordable financial services.
Before regulators require the country's largest banks to take on more burdensome regulations, they need to reconsider the parameters used to assess the threat of systemic risk.
In order to make homeownership more affordable, the FHFA should make sure that GSE guarantee fees fully recognize private mortgage insurance and restore the longstanding tax-deductible treatment of mortgage insurance premiums.
Bankers should temper their criticism of new regulations with some support for reform, lest the American public think the industry has failed to heed the lessons of the financial crisis.
The same broad powers that allowed the federal government to place Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship also allow it to reconstitute both companies.
The Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion should require financial institutions to perform regular, standardized and data-driven assessments of workforce and supplier diversity.
The FSOC must provide well-reasoned justifications as to why it chooses to designate a firm as systemically important Â-- and provide a clear outline of the steps that companies can take to rid themselves of the SIFI label.
While the Volcker Rule has been in the works since 2009, the final rule is new to professionals at both banks and regulatory agencies. Everyone involved faces a steep learning curve.
