There’s move afoot in the lame-duck Congress to strip power and independence away from financial and other regulators, according to David Dayen of Firedoglake. He’s talking about S 3468, the Independent Regulatory Analysis Act. In the name of more cost-benefit analysis, it would (as AFR says in a letter from which the Firedoglake story quotes at length), “add at least thirteen new resource-intensive analyses of regulatory costs before a rule can be finalized.

“In addition, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) would get to review any significant new rule, guidance, or policy – a process could add far more time and possibly lead to new rules being abandoned altogether,” the article continues. “OIRA has a long standing reputation for blocking environmental and safety regulations, as well as generally being sympathetic to industry arguments that regulation is excessively costly. The big banks could use their influence to turn this tiny office into a bottleneck for all financial regulation. Wall Street lobbyists would have another powerful set of tools to delay and derail the implementation of the safeguards that are needed to protect our banking system and the wider economy.”