CEI has fought excessive regulation in the financial sector from laws such as Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank. We have scored major bipartisan victories for deregulation. These include the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, signed by President Obama in 2012, that lifted or relaxed some of the biggest burdens preventing small and midsize firms from raising capital and going public; and the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, signed by President Trump in 2018, that lifted some of Dodd-Frank’s crushing burden on community banks and credit unions. We continue to fight to remove regulatory barriers that limit choices and increase costs for entrepreneurs, investors, and consumers.
Banking and Finance Issue Areas
Featured Posts
Blog
A tariff-funded UBI? Trump just gave progressives their blueprint
Donald Trump’s pitch for a $2,000 “tariff dividend” check to be issued sometime next year (during election season) is being marketed as a windfall…
News Release
Visa and Mastercard settlement with US merchants will cause confusion for consumers and harm community banks
Visa and Mastercard have reached a settlement in their 20-year-long legal battle with US merchants. The settlement gives merchants the ability to reject reward-based credit…
News Release
CFPB budget woes underscore fundamental problems with bureau’s set up
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) may run out of money soon, according to news reports. The bureau has been controversial from the start due…
Search Posts
Insurance & Financial Advisor
Bill Extending National Flood Insurance Program to Nov. 18 Approved
Live Insurance News
SmarterSafer.org Statement Urges Congress to Stop Passing Temporary Extensions of Flood Insurance
Housing Wire
House Extends National Flood Insurance Program
Housing Wire
Dodd Frank and the End of Free Checking
Housing Wire
Austerity Hardly To Blame
Re: “Harper rejects warnings austerity will spark recession,” The Journal, Sept. 28. Former U.S. president Herbert Hoover did not practice austerity, so it is…
Housing Wire
Stimulus Slows Our Economy
Why does government stimulus spending fail? When considering the success of economic programs, the 19th-century French economist Frederic Bastiat urged us to look at both…
Housing Wire
Farewell Free Checking?
Housing Wire
Capital Gains Tax Far Too High
Warren Buffett was wrong to suggest that capital gains taxes are too low (“Calling Buffett’s bluff,” Comment & Analysis, Monday). They are actually much too…
Housing Wire
Today’s Red Tape Would Have Killed Home Depot’s IPO
Your editorial “The Anti-Solyndras” (Sept. 22) is right on target in detailing the devastating impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 on job and…
Housing Wire
Debit Durbin
Read the headlines — and your bank statement — and weep, but don’t say TAS didn’t warn you. As I detailed here in February…
US News
Congress Should Let Market Take Care of Energy Industry
News Release
Free Checking’s Demise: Blame Big Retailers and Big Government
Washington, D.C., September 28, 2011—“Free checking is going the way of the free checked bag,” declared USA Today this week. And for more than…
US News
White House Wants Bailout Tax
US News
D.C. Summit Focuses on Consumer Credit
Comment
CEI Submits Supplemental Comments on SEC’s Proposed Conflict Minerals Rules
The Competitive Enterprise Institute has submitted supplemental comments regarding Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, a provision that would…
Comment
CEI Submits Comments on Conflict Minerals Rules of Dodd-Frank
The Competitive Enterprise has submitted comments regarding the implementation of Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act which attempts to…
US News
Public Symposium on Capitol Hill Focuses on Acute Credit Needs
US News
Public Symposium On Capitol Hill Focuses On Acute Credit Needs
US News
Obama the Greek
Greece is in economic meltdown. Its economy has become so biased towards the public sector that it is now literally unsustainable. It cannot afford to…
US News
Google And The Antitrust Case Against Antitrust
Now that the economy has recovered to robust health and unemployment is back below 5%, the U.S. Senate has ample time and resources to spend…
Texas Insider
Is Administration Going to Use GM to Distract from Solyndra Failure?
Texas Insider
Putting the Jobs Cart Before the Growth Horse
Among the colossal fallacies that keep our economy mired in unemployment, few loom as large as the notion that “creating” jobs leads to growth and…
Texas Insider
Liberate the Jobs!
The most fascinating aspect of House Speaker John Boehner’s very effective address to the Economic Club was not the specific solutions he presented but the…
Texas Insider
Anti-Immigration Laws Hurt Economy
Arizona’s immigration laws — Senate Bill 1070 and the 2007 Legal Arizona Workers Act (LAWA) — were designed to drive undocumented immigrants out of the…
Texas Insider
Is Obama Ready to Drop Sarbanes?
In U.S. President Barack Obama’s 33-minute speech to Congress on job creation, one sentence was worth nearly all the rest of his 4,000 words. In…
Washington Times
In Wake of Quake, Californians Would Benefit Most From ‘Affordability Act’
Washington Times
Will Obama and Congress Slay the Sarbox Job-Killing Monster?
In President Obama’s 33-minute-long speech to Congress on job creation, one sentence was worth nearly all the rest of his 4,000 words. In the…
News Release
CEI Praises Obama’s Review of Sarbanes-Oxley Overregulation
Washington, D.C., September 14, 2011—Hours before President Obama’s address to Congress last week, scholars from the Competitive Enterprise Institute presented a “Ten-Point Plan…
Washington Times
Did Feminist Groups Derail the Stimulus Bill?
Washington Times
Nice Talk. When’s the Jobs Speech?
Hauling the United States Senate and a reluctant House together to listen to you on NFL kickoff night–when it’s not even State of the…
Washington Times
A Plan Better than Obama’s to Create Jobs
Washington Times
Obama Administration Planning to Freeze Foreclosures
Washington Times
California’s Big Deal Bought on Amazon
All eyes are on the California statehouse today. On the table is a deal between online retail juggernaut Amazon and California lawmakers to postpone a…
Washington Times
Obama’s Costly, Unaffordable, Harmful New Stimulus: The “American Jobs Act”
National Review
What the President Should Say Tonight
National Review
Obama’s Jobs Agenda: An Infrastructure Bank that Robs You
I stopped by our bank Friday to get something notorized, and, damn, they were all out of free Jolly Ranchers. For a moment, I’d forgotten…
Orange County Register
Cellphone Merger a Good Call
Ecomerce Times
AT&T May Have to Break Out Its Dancing Shoes
Yahoo! News
Challenge To T-Mobile Deal Brings Out Fans and Critics
News Release
Zero August Job Growth Reflects Anti-Business, Red Tape Climate in Washington
Washington, D.C., September 2, 2011 — Today’s job numbers from the US Department of Labor are downright dismal: the economy failed to add new…
Los Angeles Times
U.S. Fears Lost Jobs If AT&T Merger is Approved
Los Angeles Times
The Day After: More Reaction To DoJ’s AT&T/T-Mobile Civil Suit
RBR
AT&T Vows to Pursue T-Mobile Merger Despite DOJ block
E Week
U.S. Suit to Block ATandT, T-Mobile Deal Draws Sharp Interest Group Reaction
Citation
Green Crony Capitalism
"Green" jobs Created by the stimulus are shutting down after the public money has dried up. CEI Senior Fellow Chris Horner explains how many jobs would…
E Week
Justice’s New War Against Lenders
Daily Caller
The DOJ’s Antitrust Seers
The philosopher Yogi Berra once said that “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” Let’s apply his lesson to the proposed $39…
Daily Caller
Do We Really Need a National Weather Service?
CEI Vice President for Strategy Iain Murray knows that up-to-the-minute weather information is too crucial to leave in the hands of government. He argues that…
Daily Caller
Letter Writer Wrong About Hoover’s Tactics
A recent letter writer erred in claiming that Herbert Hoover cut taxes and government spending in the Great Depression (“O’Reilly Missed Lesson on Great Depression,”…
Daily Caller
Rekindling the Dream
Martin Luther King Jr. is now memorialized with an imposing statue on the D.C. National Mall. While the honor is long overdue, his legacy should…
Red State
$500,000 of Green for Green Jobs, Red for the Rest of Us
Red State
Debt Downgrade: Why Did It Take S&P So Long?
Now that Standard & Poor’s has downgraded America’s government credit rating, the real questions everyone should be asking are: What took them so long, and…
Red State
The Government War on Young Enterprise
Let’s start in Britain so we can see where we’re going. The first thing to know is…
Red State
Hoover’s Budget Wasn’t Balanced
David Elbert made the dubious claim that President Herbert Hoover “was a firm believer in balanced budgets” (“Obama’s Situation Looking a Bit Like Hoover’s,”…
Study
Stealing You Blind
Remember when we used to call government employees “public servants”? They’re servants no more—now they’re bureaucratic masters of the universe, claiming inflated salaries and early…
Red State
Dodd-Frank Side Effect: Devastation of Congo.
Townhall
The War on Lemonade
America is a country founded on entrepreneurship and free enterprise. That’s why one of its most enduring childhood traditions is the lemonade stand. It teaches…
Blog
Obamacare Costs Additional $50 Billion a Year More Than Predicted, Based on Yet Another False Assumption in Calculating its Costs
“Federal payments required by President Barack Obama’s health care law are being understated by as much as $50 billion per year because official budget forecasts…
Townhall
The S&P Downgrade Last Friday Night vs. Katy Perry
[F]airly interpreted, “Say’s law of markets” survives as the most fundamental “economic law” in all economic theory. It enunciates the principle that “demands in general”…
Townhall
Down on the Downgrade?
The downgrade itself was fair. However, S&P’s timing and “partisan gridlock” rationale were questionable, as is its implicit advocacy of higher taxes. Nothing really…
Study
Michigan’s Insurance Industry: New Directions
Full Document Available in PDF With the coming of the administration of Republican Governor John Engler in 1991, Michigan’s…
Townhall
The Growth Agenda and Its Enemies
Even President Obama now seems to realize that rescuing America from its financial crisis requires getting Americans back to work. What he doesn’t seem to…
Townhall
S&P’s Regulatory Politics
Within 24 hours, the Obama administration went from attacking Standard & Poor’s first-ever downgrade of U.S. debt to almost embracing it. On the Friday night…
Townhall
Women in the Boardroom
SIR – From an American legal perspective, laws that mandate quotas for women on corporate boards in some European countries seem utterly bizarre (“The…
Wall Street Journal
Notable & Quotable
National Review
When Obama Hands You Lemons…
Washington Examiner
Morning Examiner: Democrats Shut Down FAA Over Morgantown Air Pork
Washington Examiner
Unlawful to Favor Women-Owned Businesses
“Men need not apply” (Commentary, Wednesday) was right to criticize the federal government’s award of contracts based on sex in the Women-Owned Small Business…
Letters
Letter to Assistant AG on Microsoft Settlement
The staff of the Antitrust Division has designated a limited set of comments on the proposed settlement as “major.” It plans to engage in special…
Washington Examiner
Bad Foundation
Most attempts at financial reform have been burdensome, created unintended consequences and have been harmful to economic growth. But compared to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street…
Citation
CEI Blasts CARE Act
National Center for Policy Analysis
Special Interest at Heart of CARE Act
Blog
More Confusion on Breast Cancer Screening
When the federal government's Preventive Services Task Force recommended in November 2009 that most women under age 50 should stop having regular…
National Center for Policy Analysis
Easter Egg in Dodd-Frank
News Release
Court Strikes Down Dodd-Frank Proxy Rule
The Competitive Enterprise Institute hails today’s decision of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals striking down the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) proxy…
National Center for Policy Analysis
Dodd-Frank’s Fannie Trap
One year ago today, President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Despite the “Wall Street” moniker, the tentacles of Dodd-Frank’s…
National Center for Policy Analysis
One Year Later: Frank-Dodd “Reform” Leaves Fannie and Freddie Intact
Daily Caller
Competitors: Stop That Merger!
AT&T and T-Mobile would like to merge. The $39 billion deal would make them the largest mobile phone service provider in the country. Not everyone…
Economic Times of India
Will Rivals Do to Google What Facebook Did to MySpace?
Economic Times of India
Let’s Not Repeat Mortgage Mistakes
You write that the Obama administration decided last year to let “the market sort things out” regarding America’s housing woes in lieu of government intervention.
Bellingham (WA) Herald
Government to Google: All Search Results Must Appear First
According to legend, when Winston Churchill and his lifelong foe Clement Attlee ran into each other at a row of urinals in the House of…
Bellingham (WA) Herald
Protestors Disapprove of Immelt’s Keynote Speech on Creating Jobs
Bellingham (WA) Herald
The Cost Of Government Regulation
“You, there: stop complaining and start hiring!” That is essentially the Obama administration’s message to businesses. This is an administration that seems to believe that…
Bellingham (WA) Herald
Is the Stimulus Creating Jobs, or Killing Them?
Washington Times
Employers Doubt Obama’s Vow of Less Red Tape
The Washington Times references Wayne Crews's study on the size of the federal regulatory burden. Mr. Kovacs noted that the Government Accountability Office…
Mercury News
Why Google probe should worry consumers
Is Google too big? Some government officials in Washington, D.C., certainly seem to think so. Last week, the Federal Trade Commission launched a formal…
Ecomerce Times
1plusV Lobs Another Antitrust Grenade at Google
PC Magazine
Google Confirms FTC Investigation; Will States Launch Inquiries, Too?
Daily Caller
Regulators Should Regulate Economy, Not Intervene In It
Just as surely as summer is followed by autumn, it seems that these days every proposed corporate merger is followed by antitrust complaints —…
Daily Caller
Obama Urges Use of Foreign Capital Boost
Daily Caller
Liberate ATMs and Credit Unions to Jumpstart Jobs
“ATMs don’t destroy jobs,” tweeted Davd Burge of the Iowahawk blog in response to Obama’s now-infamous “Today Show” explanation of unemployment. “Politicians who…
Daily Caller
Bachmann and the ‘20,000 Millionaires’ Myth
“Michele Bachmann would knock 20,000 millionaires off tax rolls.” So reads the glaring headline on a blog post by Howard Gleckman of the…
Daily Caller
Overdrawn at the Ideas ATM
President Obama recently blamed today’s high unemployment on… automation. Yes, you heard at right. He singled out automatic teller machines (ATMs), which he…
Knowledge Problem
Distortionary Effects of Three-Tier Liquor Regulation, Wisconsin Edition
Knowledge Problem
The Exceptional Children Of Skilled Immigrants
Much of the debate over increasing legal immigration and work visas, such as the H-1B visa for highly skilled workers, has centered on the…
Comment
CEI Submits Comments on the AT&T — T-Mobile Merger Before the Federal Communications Commission
Full Docmument Available in PDF The Competitive Enterprise Institute submits this reply comment regarding the…
Pittsburg Post-Gazette
Set free our risktakers
The Pittsburg Post-Gazette references Wayne Crews's article on the cost of federal regulations. Businesses must spend more than $1.75 trillion each year to…
Pittsburg Post-Gazette
Bailout a bust?
Pittsburg Post-Gazette
What the Boeing Company Teaches about Right to Work
Boeing celebrated the completion of its final assembly plant for the Dreamliner 787 aircraft in North Charleston, South Carolina, today. Boeing’s $1-billion investment…
Pittsburg Post-Gazette
GOP’s ‘Durbin Dozen’ Keeps Dodd-Frank Price Controls
Anywhere but the Senate, getting 54 votes out of 100 is a victory. And Wednesday, a bipartisan group of 54 Senators responded to concerns from…
