AFR Statement: Oppose Quarles and Otting Nominations as Bank Regulators
The Senate should reject the Trump nominees for vice-chair of the Federal Reserve Board, Randal Quarles, and the Comptroller of the Currency, Joseph Otting.
The Senate should reject the Trump nominees for vice-chair of the Federal Reserve Board, Randal Quarles, and the Comptroller of the Currency, Joseph Otting.
“Mr. Otting previously served as the CEO of OneWest from 2010 to 2015. During that time, the bank had a well-documented record of consumer complaints, a questionable response to regulatory inquiries, and executed tens of thousands of foreclosures. “
The OCC’s proposals would directly weaken financial regulatory protections and push aside other agencies so the OCC could take critical guardrails off of Wall Street on its own
“State laws often operate as the primary line of defense for consumers and small businesses; thus, the proposal puts them at great risk. The OCC must not undermine state rate caps. Interest rate caps are the simplest, most effective way to protect borrowers from unaffordable, high-rate loans and to align the interests of lenders and borrowers.”
“As the consent orders highlight, Wells Fargo’s egregious violations of consumers’ rights were fueled by sales quotas imposed on front-line bank workers. These settlements underline the importance of strong consumer protection enforcement from federal and local regulators. They highlight the particular importance of attention to bank compensation practices, including the need to make sure banks are not pushing their employees to harm consumers and break the law by requiring them to meet otherwise unattainable sales goals.”
“Mandatory margin requires participants in the swaps market to take full account of the risks of their derivatives transactions and provide some level of advance provisioning for such risks. The availability of properly segregated margin is clearly of enormous value in case of the default of a swaps counterparty.”
“’This is a really important rule,’” said Marcus Stanley, policy director at Americans for Financial Reform. ‘Margin is the first line of defense in the derivatives market.’ The regulators made the changes to bring American margin rules in line with new international ones approved in 2013, and in response to public comments.
“’While it has taken us some time to get to this point, today’s action does represent significant progress,’ Thomas J. Curry, the comptroller of the currency, said in a statement.”
AFR join civil rights, consumer, and community groups in lauding the OCC for issuing a strong guidance regarding banks’ selling of charged-off consumer debts to debt buyers. The groups urged the agency to also take the next step and issue strong regulations to ensure that national banks do not continue to facilitate unfair, deceptive, and abusive debt collection practices.
“The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, criticized for missing some high-profile problems such as JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s London Whale losses, will institute a five-year rotation schedule for in-bank examiners, the agency said today in response to a review of its practices by non-U.S. regulators. The regulator also said transfers to the risk-analysis group would reduce the number of on-site examiners.”
“The OCC and FDIC got it right in standing up for borrowers who have been taken advantage of,” said Lisa Donner, AFR’s Executive Director. “Now it’s up to the Federal Reserve to follow the OCC’s and FDIC’s lead with the institutions it regulates.”