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
Buy Now, Pay Later doesn’t mean pay more, owe more, and panic more
Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) has become a familiar way to pay for everything from discretionary purchases to everyday expenses. BNPL lets consumers divide…
News Release
Report analyzes and offers reforms to the current US-proxy advisory system
Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute released a new report that analyzes and critiques the current US proxy-advisory system and offers strong reforms that…
Blog
Are stablecoins already delivering what CBDCs promise?
Many proposals for a central bank digital currency (CBDC), a digital form of the US dollar issued by the Federal Reserve, have circulated…
Search Posts
Op-Eds
What About Fannie Mae Millionaires?
‘They are . . . not interested in asking millionaires and billionaires to pay a half a penny on the dollar for the sake of…
Op-Eds
Long Live the Limited Liability Corporation
What does it mean when angry mobs take to the streets not to protest against the specific corporations and politicians that teamed up to loot…
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Bright Light of the Week: CEI’s ‘Durbin Dollar’
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A Plan to Chill Employment
What are the best two ways to maintain unemployment? First, forbid people from working. Then pay them not to work. Maryland may soon get a…
News Release
$5 “Durbin Dollars” Protest Price Controls That Killed Free Checking, Debit Cards
Washington, DC, October 14, 2011 – In response to the spate of new “Durbin Fees” hitting the debit cards and checking accounts of so many…
News Release
SEC-Sarbanes-Oxley Relief Bill Is Real American Jobs Act
Washington, D.C., October 13, 2011—Now that the U.S. Senate has voted down the expensive “American Jobs Act,” CEI scholars are praising a House subcommittee for…
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Hoover Never Practised Austerity
Re: Harper denies focusing on austerity, Sept. 28. Wherever did some Canadian economists get the strange idea that U.S. President Herbert Hoover “helped plunge…
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How To Create Shortages In An Abundant World
An old cold war joke asks a Russian, a Pole, an Israeli, and an American the following man-on-the-street question. “Excuse me, what is your opinion…
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Why Your Bank Is Charging More Fees
There are many observations that can be made about President Obama’s remark Monday to ABC News that businesses “don’t have some inherent right just…
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Hoover Spent Big
Wherever did some Canadian economists get the strange idea that U.S. president Herbert Hoover “helped plunge his country into the Great Depression through austerity measures”…
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…
Staff & Scholars
John Berlau
Senior Fellow and Director of Finance Policy
- Banking and Finance
- Deregulation
- Financial Regulation
Iain Murray
Vice President for Strategy and Senior Fellow
- Banking and Finance
- Trade and International
Steve Swedberg
Finance and Monetary Policy Analyst
- Banking and Finance
- Deregulation
- Financial Regulation