Today a number of Obama administration agencies with financial-sector regulatory responsibilities have jointly published in the Federal Register a proposed “Policy Statement Establishing Joint Standards for Assessing the Diversity Policies and Practices of Entities Regulated by the Agencies.” The statement comes as a result of Section 342 of the Dodd-Frank legislation. . .The proposed statement is even worse than the bill itself, since it . . . insists on the use of “metrics” and “percentage[s]“ (i.e., numerical quotas) to ensure compliance.
This provision of the statute was championed most prominently by Representative Maxine Waters (D., Calif.) and has been criticized by the Wall Street Journal, four members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Hans Bader, and myself, among others (I also wrote a short summary of Section 342 here, and Christopher Byrnes wrote a much more comprehensive analysis of the statute.