President-elect Donald Trump has named Paul Atkins, a former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissioner under President George W. Bush, to lead the transition team’s review of financial agencies.
Trump had made claims to repeal the Dodd-Frank Act if elected; and Atkins, who left the SEC in 2008, also has expressed strong criticism of the act, calling it a “calamity” while testifying before the Senate Banking Committee in 2011.
Trump’s transition team affirmed its opposition to the Dodd-Frank Act, publishing a post online that reiterated the Republican candidate's calls to dismantle the financial reform law.
That post reads: “Financial markets are vital to the American economy. Capital markets bring investors together with creators to fund new ideas and fuel economic growth. Banks and other lenders provide funding to small businesses and mortgage borrowers to help fund the American Dream. Federal policy should focus on free enterprise, while protecting consumers by policing markets for force and fraud. Both Wall Street and Washington should be held accountable.
“Following the financial crisis, Congress enacted the Dodd-Frank Act, a sprawling and complex piece of legislation that has unleashed hundreds of new rules and several new bureaucratic agencies. The proponents of Dodd-Frank promised that it would lift our economy. Yet now, six years later, the American people remain stuck in the slowest, weakest, most tepid recovery since the Great Depression. Paychecks have been stagnant. Savings are being depleted, millions are unemployed or underemployed, and millions more have dropped out of the workforce altogether. Economic growth remains below 2 percent, about half the historic average. The big banks got bigger while community financial institutions have disappeared at a rate of one per day, and taxpayers remain on the hook for bailing out financial firms deemed ‘too big to fail.’
“The Dodd-Frank economy does not work for working people. Bureaucratic red tape and Washington mandates are not the answer. The Financial Services Policy Implementation team will be working to dismantle the Dodd-Frank Act and replace it with new policies to encourage economic growth and job creation.”
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