Dodd Plan for Bank Regulator May Spark Fight With Frank, Obama

By Alison Vekshin

Sept. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd’s plan for a single bank regulator may set up a fight with House colleague Barney Frank and the Obama administration and might slow the overhaul of financial rules.

Dodd, leading efforts to rewrite regulations, will suggest combining the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency into one agency, the senator’s office said yesterday.

“Establishing a single regulator is a very bad idea,” Camden Fine, president of the Independent Community Bankers of America, a Washington-based trade group with 5,000 members, said yesterday in an e-mail. “When you have a cyclopic regulatory system, it only takes one stick in the eye to blind it.”

Dodd’s proposal goes further than recommendations by President Barack Obama that are backed by Frank, chairman of House Financial Services Committee that resumes hearings on the issue this week. Dodd’s plan embraces ideas of Democratic Senators Charles Schumer of New York and Mark Warner of Virginia and has elements from measures introduced by House Republicans. Any differences must be resolved before the rules become law.

Obama in June recommended combining OCC, regulator of national banks including New York-based Citigroup Inc., and OTS, which regulates savings and loans including Paramus, New Jersey- based Hudson City Bancorp Inc.. His proposal leaves intact oversight powers of the Fed and FDIC.

The multiple-agency system has produced “some real costs ranging from inefficiencies and redundancies to the lack of accountability and regulatory laxity,” Dodd said at an Aug. 4 Senate Banking Committee hearing to consider the issue. “We are now paying a very high price for those shortcomings.”

No Panacea

FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair and Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan support Obama’s proposal.

Bair said merging the four agencies is “no panacea” for effective oversight, according to Banking committee testimony Aug. 4. “One of the advantages of multiple regulators is that it permits a diversity of viewpoints to be heard,” she said.

Fed officials including Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Governor Daniel Tarullo, who is leading efforts to overhaul the Fed’s bank supervision, have testified that the central bank should retain its authority over U.S. banks.

The administration recognizes “many ideas” will be offered and will “work with the leadership” in the House and Senate committees “to get a bill done” this year, White House spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said yesterday in a statement.

‘Big Mistake’

Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat leading his chamber’s efforts, supports Obama’s merger. Stripping the Fed and FDIC of their oversight powers would be “a big mistake,” Frank said.

Representative Spencer Bachus of Alabama, top Republican on the Financial Services panel, has proposed consolidation as a step to reduce duplication and avoid the separate Consumer Financial Protection Agency proposed by Obama.

“If structured like the House Republican plan, streamlining and consolidating the functions of the four bank regulatory agencies will address consumer protection without the need for a new and costly government bureaucracy,” Bachus said in a statement. “It will create smarter regulation, and will benefit both taxpayers and consumers.”

Schumer and Warner, along with Republicans on Frank’s committee, support a single regulator.

“It does not make sense for up to four different federal regulatory bodies to retain oversight over the safety and soundness of banks,” Schumer wrote in June to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. This system “preserves the regulatory arbitrage that allows institutions to pick the oversight scheme that benefits them the most.”

Warner told Bloomberg News July 1 that the Fed and FDIC should cede their bank oversight role to an “end-to-end” supervisor.

Jonathan Graffeo, a spokesman for Senator Richard Shelby, top Republican on Dodd’s committee, in an e-mail yesterday said “we continue to review” Dodd’s proposal.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alison Vekshin in Washington at avekshin@bloomberg.net