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
News Release
Inflation drops some in June, does not yet indicate inflation relief is here to stay: CEI analysis
The Consumer Price Index report for June fell 0.4 percent, mostly canceling out May’s 0.5 percent increase. While this may provide some immediate…
Blog
Lessons Kevin Warsh can learn from the late Alan Greenspan
Alan Greenspan’s recent passing provides an opportunity to reassess his legacy as Chairman of the Federal Reserve and consider the lessons Kevin Warsh can…
Blog
Before reform comes review: What Warsh’s task forces could mean for the Fed
Major institutional reforms rarely begin with sweeping policy changes. More often, they begin with a willingness to reexamine long-standing assumptions. That is what makes…
Search Posts
Blog
Fed Economist: Study Shows Danger of Government-Mandated Financial Misinformation
Study from Fed Economist Shows Danger of Government-Mandated Financial Misinformation The “Twitter Files” have made some shocking revelations about…
Wall Street Journal
Biden’s Regulatory Deluge
Regulatory costs to the economy are now reckoned to be at least $2 trillion, or roughly 8% of U.S. gross…
Blog
Study from Fed Economist Shows Danger of Government-Mandated Financial Misinformation
The “Twitter Files” have made some shocking revelations about government entities muscling social media companies to deplatform people in the name of preventing…
Blog
CFPB Court Defeat a Welcome Reminder of who Makes the Rules
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau suffered a stinging reverse in court last week when its action against Chicago-area mortgage company Townstone Financial was…
Blog
Regulatory Reform Bills in the 118th Congress: The Less Is More Resolution
Often, spending is regulation in disguise. The 185,000-page Code of Federal Regulations is not the only way Washington regulates the economy. The federal…
Politico
Three names Biden is circling for Fed Vice Chair
ON BLAST — Former FTC Chair Timothy Muris and Bruce Kobayashi, who served as director of the commission’s bureau of economics during the Trump administration,…
Blog
Hearing Shows Bipartisan Momentum for Focused Financial Deregulation
Last week, I had the honor and pleasure of testifying at the first hearing of the newly constituted Financial Institutions and Monetary Policy…
Blog
Free the Economy Episode 8: Crypto and ESG with Jennifer Schulp
Welcome back to the Free the Economy podcast. In this week’s episode we talk about the cultural impact of Super Bowl…
Forbes
A Case For The Article I Regulatory Budget Act
There is a case to be made for officially “budgeting” and capping costs of the thousands of rules and regulations that federal agencies set…
Blog
Mixed Inflation News for January
Today’s inflation news is mixed. We’re still almost certainly past the worst of the COVID inflation, but January’s numbers took a turn for…
Blog
Are Americans Investing for Retirement or Politics?
Being able to save enough during our working lives to fund a comfortable retirement is a top concern for most American households, especially…
Testimony
CEI’s John Berlau Testifies Before House Financial Services Committee: Hearing: “Revamping and Revitalizing Banking in the 21st Century”
Chairman Barr, Ranking Member Foster, and honorable members of this Subcommittee, thank you for this opportunity to present testimony on behalf of…
Washington Examiner
Republicans can use the debt ceiling fight to better prepare Americans for the next economic crisis
On the outside chance that House Republicans are able to wrangle President Joe Biden into cutting federal spending to set a new…
Real Clear Investigations
The Left’s Little Financial Engine That Could (Change the World Radically)
Richard Morrison, senior fellow at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, said Amalgamated can, at a minimum, “serve as an example for other managers and…
Blog
State of the Union and Inflation
Presidents, like quarterbacks, get too much blame when things go badly, and too much when things go well. Look for President Biden to take…
Crowd Fund Insider
House Subcommittee on Financial Institutions Schedules Hearing to Discuss Banking and Need to Update Regulations in Line with Emerging Technology
CEI’s John Berlau is cited on Crowd Fund Insider on banking regulations: The House Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Monetary Policy, part of…
News Release
CFPB Cap on Credit Card Late Fees = Price Controls that Raise Cost of Credit for Everyone
The Biden White House is touting a new proposed rule from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that would cap most credit card late…
News Release
Latest Fed Interest Rate Increase Brings Us Closer to a Soft Landing: CEI Analysis
The Federal Reserve today announced an interest rate increase of a quarter percentage point, as expected. CEI Senior Economist Ryan Young says the series…
Americans for Tax Reform
Q&A on Credit Card Regulation
Americans for Tax Reform has been consistently opposed to government regulation of debit and credit card transactions. Last year, ATR opposed the Credit…
Blog
Berlau Crypto Letter and Comments in Wall Street Journal and Washington Examiner
This week, I have had the honor of being quoted in a great article on cryptocurrency trends and regulation in the Washington Examiner and…
News Release
Good News on Economic Growth: CEI Analysis
The U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis released data today showing the economy grew 2.1 percent in 2022. CEI Senior Economist Ryan…
Blog
The Debt Ceiling and the Trillion-Dollar Coin
Another debt ceiling battle is brewing, and pundits are debating what to do about it. Over at National Review’ Capital Matters, I take a…
Forbes
Fed Economist’s Study Shows Harm Of Government-Spread Misinformation On Small Loans
The “Twitter Files” have made some shocking revelations about government entities muscling social media companies to de-platform people in the…
News Release
Inflation Ticks Down in December – Fed Should Stay on Course, CEI Economist Urges
Good news – the annual inflation rate fell from 7.1 percent in November to 6.5 percent in December, according to the latest consumer…
Blog
Federal Reserve Declines to Become Climate Regulator
Most agencies can either do one thing well or many things poorly. For example, the Federal Reserve would be perfectly capable of keeping inflation…
Blog
The Deregulatory Pony for Small Biz Buried in the Omnibus Pile
There’s not much good to say about an “omnibus” bill crammed in at the end-of-year lame duck session of Congress that contains a grab…
The American Spectator
What Do Americans Really Think of ‘ESG’ Investing?
Investing to promote environmental, social, and governance (ESG) outcomes — rather than to just maximize profit — became the hot topic in finance this…
Blog
Agenda for Congress: Inflation
CEI’s Agenda for Congress is out now. This post summarizes its recommendations for inflation. Since inflation is mostly a monetary phenomenon, it…
News Release
CEI Releases Pro-Growth Regulatory Reform Agenda for the 118th Congress
Today the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) offered a set of important policy reforms for the 118th Congress to consider when it convenes…
Products
Free to Prosper: Banking and Finance
Access to safe and reliable financial services is fundamental to Americans’ prosperity. However, since the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002, regulators have used…
News Release
Fed Raises Rates Again to Slow Inflation
The Federal Reserve has been trying to slow inflation by raising interest rates, today issuing its smallest rate increase since June – raising the…
Wall Street Journal
The Meaning of the Bankman-Fried Indictment
The Wall Street Journal cites Senior Fellow John Berlau on the Sarbanes-Oxley law: “Earlier this year John Berlau and Josh Rutzick wrote in the Journal…
Blog
FTX Hearings Should Probe Fraud Charges and the SEC’s Misplaced Priorities
In the wake of the arrest of and charges of fraud against Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder and former CEO of the…
News Release
November Inflation Less Bad Than Before, but the Fed Should Stay Focused on It
The latest consumer price index (CPI) released today by the Labor Department revealed that inflation, while still high, has been slowing as of November.
Blog
Gas Prices Are Lower than a Year Ago: What Does that Mean for Inflation?
Even with inflation near 40-year highs, gas prices are lower than a year ago, and not just in real, inflation-adjusted terms. They’re lower…
Blog
Retro Review: George Selgin, Less Than Zero: The Case for a Falling Price Level in a Growing Economy (Institute of Economic Affairs, 1997)
This year, inflation reached levels not seen in 40 years. The Federal Reserve spent most of 2022 trying to undo its runaway money creation…
News Release
Fed Should Do More to Fight Inflation with Interest Rate Increases
The Federal Reserve Chairman today confirmed that further interest rate increases are likely, maybe as soon as December. CEI economy expert Ryan Young…
Blog
Why Choke Point Should Bar Gruenberg from Being FDIC Chair
Tomorrow morning, the Senate Banking Committee will hold a hearing on President Biden’s nomination of Marty Gruenberg to once again serve as Chair of…
News Release
Biden CFPB Asks Supreme Court to Review Ruling on Its Unconstitutionality
The Biden administration has moved to appeal an October court ruling against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a ruling that invalidated controversial restrictions…
American Liberty
What the FTX Collapse Tells Us About Regulators and ESG
First, regulators often can’t stop investors from fraud. Second, companies that work closely with regulators often do so for their own benefit.
Blog
Gensler Fiddled with ESG and Power Grabs while FTX Burned
When asked on CNBC about the implosion of crypto exchange FTX, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler turned the focus away from…
News Release
FTX Crypto Problems Reveal SEC Shortcomings, As Well: CEI Analysis
The current collapse of cryptocurrency company FTX has exposed another festering problem with how the industry is being regulated, says CEI Senior Fellow John…
Inside Sources
Why the CFPB Is at Death’s Door
President Reagan once said, “Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see…
Blog
Not Your Grandfather’s Bank Branch
What should financial services do? And how should they look like going forward as they try to serve more people? Some presenters are…
Blog
October Inflation Slightly Improves: Time for Less Politics and More Policy
Thank goodness the election is over. One of the frustrating parts of midterm season was that many people were more interested in how inflation…
Blog
Federal Reserve Raises Interest Rate; Uncertainty Strengthens Case for a Policy Rule
As expected, the Federal Reserve raised the federal funds rate by 0.75 percentage points coming out of this week’s Federal Open Market Committee…
Blog
Reining in Biden CFPB’s “Junk” Policies with Fifth Circuit Ruling
When the federal Fifth Circuit Court Appeals ruled last week, in Community Financial Services v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, that the funding structure…
News Release
Biden Wrong About “Junk Fees” in Sweeping Government Mandate
Today the Biden administration announced a new whole-of-government initiative against “junk fees” from airlines, banking, and other industries. But what he is calling junk fees…
Issues & Insights
Voters who think that putting Republicans in control of the House and Senate will make a big difference for the economy are in for a rude awakening. President Joe Biden has unleashed the regulatory Leviathan. Lawmakers will be hard-pressed to stop the damage.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) just this morning released its hugely valuable report called “10,000 Commandments,” which is a compendium of the regulatory state. In…
News Release
Court Rules CFPB Funding Structure Unconstitutional: CEI Statements
A Fifth Circuit panel ruled Wednesday that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s unusual funding structure is unconstitutional, in a lawsuit brought by a small-dollar…
