The Reform And The Consumer Protection Act Essay

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is based in the United States and is run by the government. The banking Act of 1933, als known as the Glass-Steagall Act, led to its establishment due to the Great Depression that had been experienced in United States. This act came into play due to the Great Depression. During this time, people were withdrawing their money from the banks and keeping it at home. People were not feeling very confident about the banking system. So, President Franklin Roosevelt had to step in and do something. The day after President Roosevelt’s inauguration, he declared a four-day banking holiday that shut down the banking system, which included the Federal Reserve. Several days later, the Emergency Banking

On July 21, 2010, President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which is commonly referred as the Dodd-Frank Act. This act was passed as a response to the Great Recession in order to prevent potential financial debacle in the future. This regulation has a significant impact on American financial services industry by placing major changes on the financial regulation and agencies since the Great Depression. This paper examines the history and impact of Dodd-Frank Act on American financial services industry.

The most efficient way for consumers to get what they want is through the ‘market’, not the government, but businesses have more power than their customers. Some businesses can and will use abuse this power and cheat and steal from consumers to make money. Because of this, the government regulates the behaviour of businesses to have a market economy that functions properly. These laws mainly protect consumers against; misleading/deceptive representations, unconscionable conduct, unfair contracts, and unsafe goods and/or services. To protect consumers, different legal and non-legal approaches have been taken.

We now know to keep financial regulations in place to prevent another economic catastrophe. After fall of 2008, the

The Dodd-Frank Act was enacted to deal with the various problems occurred in the financial crisis. The paramount reason I choose this law is it has brought the most significant changes in the federal financial regulation since the regulatory reform that followed the Great Depression. (Damian & Lucchetti, 2010)

Companies do not have the freedom to merge and acquire as they please do. All have to meet the requirements and essentially be approved by regulatory bodies. In the context of regulations, antitrust laws and security laws are commonly referred to by regulator to determine whether a merger or acquisition should be allowed or rejected. Antitrust laws prohibit mergers and acquisitions that impede competition. The point is very simple where antitrust is referred to as competition. The goal is to increase competition because more competition in economics means that consumers get more at a fairer or lower price. Anytime a regulator believes that a merger or acquisition will make an industry or market less competitive, the business transaction might

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created in 2010 as a response to the financial crisis of 2008. The government agency was established by the Dodd-Frank Act which President Barack Obama passed as a means of controlling and preventing excessive risk-taking ("Wall Street Reform: The Dodd-Frank Act"). The financial crisis occurred in part because of the limited regulation of financial institutions and the wave of irresponsible mortgage lending (The Economist). Subprime borrowers with poor credit histories and insufficient funds for repaying the loans were allowed to borrow money which they could not pay back, thus in turn initiating a nationwide housing market crash (The Economist). Many of these borrowers were granted these loans because of the poor judgement of banks and financial institutions, thus the government needed to create an institution which would protect consumers against unfair and deceptive practices. The mission of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is just that-to protect consumers in the financial marketplace by enforcing federal consumer financial laws (CFPB, 2016). In order to achieve this, the bureau monitors the financial market for potential risks to consumers and supervises companies in order to uncover institutions practicing abusive and fraudulent acts. Developing laws to create a fair market place is a top priority of the bureau, as it works to enforce these rules and regulations and make them more effective. The agency also conducts

These panics contributed to the failure of banks and businesses alike. In 1907 banks extended too much credit to consumers in order to keep up with the increase in spending activity. The currency available to the public was depleted soon after. Banks could no longer conduct loans or pay out money from existing accounts. This led to the loss of their security and their complete collapse. Financial crisis of this type had happened before but this time it led to the creation of the Federal Reserve Act. President Woodrow Wilson signed the act in December of 1913, and established the Federal Reserve board, but their purpose and oversight were not clearly defined. Originally the Federal Reserve banks role was to control the discounted rate at which other banks could lend each other money. Over the years the Federal Reserve’s powers have grown (Federal Reserve System

Before the advent of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in 1933 and the general conception of government safety nets, the United States banking industry was quite different than it is today. Depositors assumed substantial default risk and even the slightest changes in consumer confidence could result in complete turmoil within the banking world. In addition, bank managers had almost complete discretion over operations. However, today the financial system is among the most heavily government- regulated sectors of the U.S. economy. This drastic change in public policy resulted directly from the industry’s numerous pre-regulatory failures and major disruptions that produced severe economic and social

The bank investment programs helped stabilize the banking system by alleviating some of the liquidity pressure on large financial institutions whose failure would have had devastating impacts on the entire economy. The initial authorized TARP budget of $700 billion was later reduced to $475 billion as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, referred to as the Dodd-Frank Act and authority to make new financial commitments under TARP ended in 2010 (Department of Treasury, n.d.).

The banking industry as a whole after the stock market crashed was going bankrupt due to not being able to carry the “bad debt” that was created from using customer money to buy stock. Because the banks were out of money, they were unable to cover customer withdrawals from their bank, causing many bank customers to lose all of their savings. With the uncertainty of the future of the banking industry, many people withdrew all of their savings, which caused more than 9,000 banks to close their doors and go out of business (Kelly). Due to the effects of the Great Depression, and the collapse of the banking industry, the government created regulations to prevent similar failure in the future. For Example, the SEC, (or Securities Exchange Commission), which regulates the sell and trade of stocks, bonds and other investments was created as a result of The Great Depression. The FDIC (or Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation), was created to insure bank accounts so that that the consumer would be protected if the bank were to go out of business (Kelly). The Great Depression's effect on the banking industry led to many useful changes to the banking industry and helped restore confidence in banks in the American people.

One of the primary factors that can be attributed as to have led the recent financial crisis is the financial deregulation allowing financial institutions a lot of freedom in the way they operated. The manifestation of this was seen in the form of:

Competition in economics is rivalry in supplying or acquiring an economic service or good. Sellers compete with other sellers, and buyers with other buyers. In its perfect form, there is competition among many small buyers and sellers, none of whom is too large to affect the market as a whole; in practice, competition is often reduced by a great variety of limitations, including monopolies. The monopoly, a limit on competition, is an example of market failure. Competition among merchants in foreign trade was common in ancient times, and it has been a characteristic of mercantile and industrial expansion since the Middle Ages. By the 19th century, classical economic theorists had come to regard

a holiday say you are looking for a cheap holiday and you find one in

This chapter is about the background of 2007-2008 financial crisis. The 2007-2008 financial crisis has a huge impact on US banking system and how the banks operate and how they are regulated after the financial turmoil. This financial crisis started with difficulty of rolling over asset backed commercial papers in the summer of 2007 due to uncertainty on the liquidity of mortgage backed securities and questions about the soundness of banks and non-bank financial institutes when interest rate continued to go up at a faster pace since 2004. In March 2008 the second wave of liquidity loss occurred after US government decided to bailout Bear Stearns and some commercial banks, then other financial institutions took it as a warning of financial difficulty of their peers. In the meantime banks started hoarding cash and reserve instead of lending out to fellow banks and corporations. The third wave of credit crunch which eventually brought down US financial system and spread over the globe was Lehman Brother’s bankruptcy in August 2008. Many major commercial banks in US held structured products and commercial papers of Lehman Brother, as a result, they suffered a great loss as Lehman Brother went into insolvency. This panic of bank insolvency caused loss of liquidity in both commercial paper market and inter-bank market. Still banks were reluctant to turn to US government or Federal Reserve as this kind of action might indicate delicacy of