Monday, August 30, 2010

Morning Bell: The Lawyers and Lobbyists Full Employment Act

An excellent example of how not to do full employment. Instead of real jobs, the Obama administration gives us make work for lawyers. ...rng

From blogheritage.org

Posted July 16th, 2010 at 9:21am in Enterprise and Free Markets

Without spending a single dime, the Obama administration did more yesterday to create jobs for the U.S. economy than it has throughout its entire existence. With the single stroke of a pen, President Barack Obama signed the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill that set in motion 243 new formal rule-makings by 11 different federal agencies. Each of the 243 rule-makings will employ hundreds of banking lobbyists as they try to shape what the final actual laws will look like. And when the rules are finally written, thousands of lawyers will bill millions of hours as the richest incumbent financial firms that caused the last crisis figure out how to game the new system. Yesterday, the Washington law firm Jones Day snapped up the Securities and Exchange Commission head enforcement division lawyer, and J.P. Morgan Chase, one of the biggest U.S. banks by assets, assigned more than 100 teams to examine the legislation. University of Massachusetts political science professor Thomas Ferguson tells The Christian Science Monitor:

By delegating so much to the regulators, Congress is inviting everyone interested in the outcome to make more campaign contributions, as they intervene in the regulatory process to influence the regulators. Nothing is settled. It’s a gold mine for members of Congress.

So if the richest big banks, lawyers, lobbyists and Congress were the big winners yesterday, who are the losers? Small banks, entrepreneurs and you.

Smaller community banks do not have the same resources that the Goldman Sachs of the world do to hire armies of lawyers and lobbyists to shape and comply with new regulations. The cost of compliance will eat up a much larger share of small bank revenue. Jim MacPhee, CEO of Kalamazoo County State Bank in Michigan and chairman of the Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA), told USA Today: “We weren’t part of the subprime (mortgage) meltdown. Why throw more regulations at us?”

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