Free checking accounts, once considered common, are becoming increasingly rare as the enormous costs of new regulations hit banks’ bottom lines. According to the just released 2012 Checking Survey by Bankrate, Inc., a publisher of financial information, only 39 percent of banks continue to offer free checking accounts, a sharp …
The states of Michigan, Oklahoma, and South Carolina have sued the Obama Administration in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia over provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act that allow the government to seize financial institutions. Several private organizations joined in the legal complaint, to challenge also the constitutionality …
On Wednesday, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted a little-known section (and there are many) of the Dodd–Frank financial regulation bill that will end up doing the most harm to the people in the Congo that it purports to help. The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, Title …
The now defunct Countrywide Financial Corp. issued hundreds of discounted loans to government officials and Fannie Mae employees in order to build clout with influential policymakers, a new House report shows. The report, issued by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, details several Countrywide VIP loans that were given …
The Dodd–Frank financial strangulation statute transferred a portion of the duties once performed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That’s left the FTC to tap its $292 million budget and 1,176 full-time employees for devising stricter regulation of…appliance labels. Specifically, the agency intends …
The House Judiciary Committee, by a vote of 15–13, recently approved a proposed moratorium on new regulations in order to spur job creation. The Regulatory Freeze for Jobs Act, introduced by Representative Tim Griffin (R–AR), would freeze all new “significant” regulations from being proposed or finalized until unemployment nationally falls …
President Obama famously declared in this year’s State of the Union: “I’ve approved fewer regulations in the first three years of my presidency than my Republican predecessor did in his.” Heritage’s James Gattuso and Diane Katz have run the numbers. And Obama shouldn’t be bragging. Obama’s comparison encompassed all regulations, including …
Remember when last September Senator Dick Durbin (D–IL) claimed that his contribution to the Dodd–Frank financial regulation statue—“the Durbin Amendment”—would benefit consumers? Well, more evidence has surfaced that his price-control regulation is costing consumers more and more money. According to a study by Javelin Strategy and Research reported by Bloomberg …
