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
Cato Institute
The Fate of ‘Never Needed’ Regulations
Parking lots and parking garages have served for decades as venues for clandestine meetings in the movies and often in reality. In the early 1970s,…
News Release
House poised to end Biden-era CFPB overdraft rule: CEI statement
The House is expected today to vote on a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution overturning a Biden era Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule to cap…
Issues & Insights
Reviving Community Banking By Lifting Barriers To New Banks
Americans have far fewer banks to choose from than they once did. The American banking industry has consolidated, with the number of U.S. banks falling…
Search Posts
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 the…
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 since…
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 my organization,…
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 debt…
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 CEOs…
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 advantage…
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 the Financial Services…
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 fees…
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 of…
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 Card Competition…
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 having…
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 Young…
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 look…
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 name…
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 price…
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 low…
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 bag…
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 year…
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 is…
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 in…
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 federal…
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 on the…
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 FTX…
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. That…
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 even…
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 in…
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 says…
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 the…
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 on…
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. Third, and perhaps…
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 the…
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 Berlau:…
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 on…
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 the recent…
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 would…
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 (FOMC)…
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 of…
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 aren’t…
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 it,…
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 (payday)…
Daily Caller
LASSMAN: Financial Giants Are Suddenly Realizing The Left’s ESG Movement Has Serious Downsides
Advocates for aggressive environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards have tried to achieve social and political objectives through anti-democratic and unrepresentative means. Whether it is…
Blog
CPI Rises 0.4 Percent in September, 8.2 Percent over Past Year
September’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation numbers came out this morning, and they aren’t pretty. The month-to-month increase was 0.4 percent, after rising just…
Blog
Excerpts from Austin Keynote: How CBDCs Could Be the New Operation Choke Point
This week, I attended the exciting INFiN MoneyTrends conference in Austin, where I gave the Regulatory Keynote address on Monday. The conference is a…
Letters
Coalition Letter in Opposition to Credit Card Regulation Amendments
Dear Member of Congress: We, the undersigned organizations, oppose the inaccurately named Credit Card Competition Act of 2022 (S. 4674) as filed as Senate amendment 6201 to the…
The Hayride
Prepare To Pay More For, And Get Less From, Your Credit Cards
Seven in 10 Americans have credit cards these days, and a third have three or more. Many of those cards are co-branded with an airline…
Blog
Troubling Inflation News: Core PCE Increases 0.6 Percent
The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation indicator, Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE), was updated this morning with August’s numbers. PCE measures inflation more accurately than the…
Citation
Podcast: Another Fed Interest Rate Hike: What It Means To You
Senior Fellow Ryan Young joined American Viewpoints to discuss how the Federal Researve’s decision to raise the interest rate again affects many Americans’ budgets.
Blog
SEC Gives Crowdfunders Inflation Relief, Must Do More
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adjusted for inflation some limits for companies (issuers) raising capital through Regulation Crowdfunding (Reg CF). The adjustment raises the…
Blog
Fed Raises Federal Funds Rate
As expected, the Federal Reserve raised the federal funds rate by 75 basis points as part of its inflation-fighting efforts. Its target range will…
