How surprising. Not sure if that disproves the entire contents of the study done by the bi-partisan committee, but it's not adding any credibility.

Which saddens me as there are legitimate problems in many of these regulatory agencies, but sadly the guys who fight against this stuff are often merely pawns for the interests of mega-corps. Rather than the interests of the general public and small/medium businesses owners who are most affected by bad policy. There's a reason only 6 mega banks are left following the 2008 crisis and hardly any small regional banks any more :/.

The reason there aren't more regional banks is precisely because of all the regulations. I have represented numerous small banks over the last decade. Every single one of them has been sold to larger banks because they cannot compete due to the regulations, which require at least one, and more typically two compliance officers just to deal with the red tape created by the CFPB. These people don't contribute anything to the bottom line. The only way to become profitable is to get big enough that these compliance costs can be spread over more borrowers/account holders.

> The reason there aren't more regional banks is precisely because of all the regulations. I have represented numerous small banks over the last decade. Every single one of them have been sold to larger banks because they cannot compete due to the regulations, which require at least one, and more typically two compliance officers just to deal with the red tape created by the CFPB. These people don't contribute anything to the bottom line. The only way to become profitable is to get big enough that these compliance costs can be spread over more borrowers/account holders.

Counterpoint, a bank fraudulently sold a mortgage loan to Fannie Mae on a property I owned and I got it resolved via the CFPB instead of needing a lawyer and a court case.

I'm not sure why "red tape" is a problem when it protects me from having 6 figure sums stolen from me by a private corporation without needing the court system.

There's no question the CFPB has helped some consumers resolve disputes. The parent's complaint was about the death of small banks. That has been caused directly by the cost to comply with new regulations.

Banks (including small banks) frequently make errors that they stubbornly resist resolving without a gun to their head. Hence, the regulation that kills many of them.

If they were capable of self-regulating to a reasonable degree, the political pressure to create those regulations never would have existed. If you can't afford to fix your mistakes, you shouldn't be in business in the first place.

That is the fatal flaw in many of these anti-regulation arguments. Self-regulation doesn't exist in capitalism outside of the court system and you can't expect poor people to afford to fight in court every time there is a problem.

That's certainly an interesting take. In all of my dealings with small banks, it was always easy to get an EVP on the phone to sort out problems. That's now virtually impossible dealing with large banks. Frequently I find that even people whose titles indicate they should have power to solve small problems frequently don't. They need to get committee approvals for anything that isn't already governed by their procedure manual. As with any organization, as banks get bigger and bigger, they have less ability to self-regulate and quickly fix mistakes.

BTW, it's not that anyone who has problems with things like the CFPB is necessarily ANTI-REGULATION. It's just hard to grasp how much regulation exists if you're not involved in this industry. And you need to consider the consequences of this kind of regulation. You can't complain that banks are too big to fail if you're simultaneously implementing regulation (even with the best of intentions) that is directly driving banks to get bigger and bigger.

> That's certainly an interesting take. In all of my dealings with small banks, it was always easy to get an EVP on the phone to sort out problems. That's now virtually impossible dealing with large banks. Frequently I find that even people whose titles indicate they should have power to solve small problems frequently don't. They need to get committee approvals for anything that isn't already governed by their procedure manual. As with any organization, as banks get bigger and bigger, they have less ability to self-regulate and quickly fix mistakes.

The EVP (or at least someone with that title) basically told me their records were correct and to pound sand. It was escalated pretty quickly when I made it clear I had a full record of my previous contacts with the bank (including a bank employee agreeing in writing I had cancelled the application) and the dollar amount was large enough I was not going to let it go.

> BTW, it's not that anyone who has problems with things like the CFPB is necessarily ANTI-REGULATION. It's just hard to grasp how much regulation exists if you're not involved in this industry. And you need to consider the consequences of this kind of regulation. You can't complain that banks are too big to fail if you're simultaneously implementing regulation (even with the best of intentions) that is directly driving banks to get bigger and bigger.

Honestly, I'd rather have _well regulated banks_ than no big banks. I don't care if some bank has 15% of the market. I care that there are at least enough competitors (10+) in the market for it to be a competitive market.

But yeah, from my perspective the CFPB is really just a separate arbitration process that keeps people from having to go to court to dispute issues + some post-2008-meltdown regulations. Sure, some problem are excessive but 90% of them likely are not.

> with the red tape created by the CFPB

I won't disagree with regulations necessarily, but the rate of small banks closing has actually gone down since 2011 when the CFPB was created. It was higher during 2000-2008.

Bank consolidations predate the CFPB. And some of the banks that seem to have had the most issues would not be called small by anyone (e.g. Santander)

Define "closing". None of the banks I represented "closed". They have all been swallowed up by larger banks.

its not even a little surprising