Though lawmakers are still hammering out details, and the Senate’s banking reform bill would need to be reconciled with one from the House of Representatives, there’s been a common theme, said Scott Astrada, director of federal projects for Center for Responsible Lending: That would be less regulation — even for big banks that arguably don’t need it.
“On a thematic level, this is pretty much on the mantra of traditional, deregulatory ‘let’s use the magic of the market to fix everything,’” Astrada said. “This bill has been kind of hijacked by the stadium banks, the Wall Street... institutions, that are really packing in a lot of provisions that are not only harmful but a significant rollback of Dodd-Frank.”