Making America great again

As great as it was in 2008 when banksters broke the world. We know they never stopped subprime packaging, because none of them paid a dear enough price for doing it in the first place. Now, apparently Congress is about to roll back what little controls were placed on them in the first place.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Tuesday blasted Republicans and fellow Democrats for backing a sweeping rollback of banking regulations that the Senate will likely pass as soon as this week.

Lawmakers will vote to begin debate on the legislation on the Senate floor later this morning, a move that will expose a long-simmering rift over banking industry oversight that has divided Democrats since the financial crisis.

[...]

She said Democrats and Republicans were backing the legislation because of years of sustained bank lobbying in the wake of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, the landmark law that strengthened banking oversight in the wake of the Wall Street meltdown.

"The people in Congress may have forgotten the crash 10 years ago, but I guarantee that people across this country have not forgotten the pain that these giant banks caused, and they do not want to see Congress move toward deregulating these banks," she said.The bill has several elements aimed at scaling back lending rules. They include: relaxed mortgage regulations for small banks; broad exemptions from oversight for regional banks with up to $250 billion in assets; a mandate that the Federal Reserve tailor its rules for big banks, and easier capital and liquidity requirements for a number of the nation's largest lenders.

  Politico

But Congress quit caring what the people across this country want a long time ago when corporate finance took the place of constituent influence.

The bill has several elements aimed at scaling back lending rules. They include: relaxed mortgage regulations for small banks; broad exemptions from oversight for regional banks with up to $250 billion in assets; a mandate that the Federal Reserve tailor its rules for big banks, and easier capital and liquidity requirements for a number of the nation's largest lenders.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

THE CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET Office confirmed on Monday that bank lobbyists had successfully altered language of the so-called Citigroup carve-out, potentially allowing mega-banks Citi and JPMorgan Chase to add leverage and put more debt-fueled risk on their balance sheets.

[...]

CBO’s cost estimate of S.2155, the bipartisan bank deregulation bill that faces its first test vote today, was obtained by the Washington Post on Monday and released publicly Tuesday morning. S.2155 would cost taxpayers $671 million over a 10-year period, CBO estimated, because of the increased possibility of bank failures and financial crisis from using more leverage and other deregulatory changes. “The probability is small under current law and would be slightly greater under the legislation,” they concluded.

[...]

Among other parts of the bill, CBO analyzed Section 402, which would change the supplementary leverage ratio, or SLR, a simple calculation of total equity divided by total assets. The section lets “custodial banks,” which do not primarily make loans but instead safeguard assets for rich individuals and companies like mutual funds, to eliminate reserve funds parked at central banks from the calculation, reducing leverage by as much as 30 percent. This would juice returns for these banks but also layer on additional risk, by allowing them to hold less equity to offset losses in a crisis.

[...]

While the definition of a custodial bank used to stipulate that only a bank with a high level of custodial assets would qualify, it subsequently defined a custodial bank as “any depository institution or holding company predominantly engaged in custody, safekeeping, and asset servicing activities.”

  The Intercept