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ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF THE 

DODD–FRANK ACT FOUR YEARS LATER 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

JULY 23, 2014 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Financial Services 

Serial No. 113–94 

( 

(II) 

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES 

JEB HENSARLING, Texas, Chairman 

GARY G. MILLER, California, Vice Chairman 

SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama, Chairman 

Emeritus 

PETER T. KING, New York 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

SCOTT GARRETT, New Jersey 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina 

JOHN CAMPBELL, California 

MICHELE BACHMANN, Minnesota 

KEVIN McCARTHY, California 

STEVAN PEARCE, New Mexico 

BILL POSEY, Florida 

MICHAEL G. FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania 

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia 

BLAINE LUETKEMEYER, Missouri 

BILL HUIZENGA, Michigan 

SEAN P. DUFFY, Wisconsin 

ROBERT HURT, Virginia 

STEVE STIVERS, Ohio 

STEPHEN LEE FINCHER, Tennessee 

MARLIN A. STUTZMAN, Indiana 

MICK MULVANEY, South Carolina 

RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois 

DENNIS A. ROSS, Florida 

ROBERT PITTENGER, North Carolina 

ANN WAGNER, Missouri 

ANDY BARR, Kentucky 

TOM COTTON, Arkansas 

KEITH J. ROTHFUS, Pennsylvania 

LUKE MESSER, Indiana 

MAXINE WATERS, California, Ranking 

Member 

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York 

NYDIA M. VELA ́ ZQUEZ, New York 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

RUBE ́ N HINOJOSA, Texas 

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri 

CAROLYN MCCARTHY, New York 

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts 

DAVID SCOTT, Georgia 

AL GREEN, Texas 

EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri 

GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin 

KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota 

ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado 

JAMES A. HIMES, Connecticut 

GARY C. PETERS, Michigan 

JOHN C. CARNEY, JR., Delaware 

TERRI A. SEWELL, Alabama 

BILL FOSTER, Illinois 

DANIEL T. KILDEE, Michigan 

PATRICK MURPHY, Florida 

JOHN K. DELANEY, Maryland 

KYRSTEN SINEMA, Arizona 

JOYCE BEATTY, Ohio 

DENNY HECK, Washington 

STEVEN HORSFORD, Nevada 

SHANNON MCGAHN, Staff Director 

JAMES H. CLINGER, Chief Counsel 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on: 

July 23, 2014 ..................................................................................................... 1 

Appendix: 

July 23, 2014 ..................................................................................................... 79 

WITNESSES 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 23, 2014 

Carfang, Anthony J., Partner, Treasury Strategies, Inc. ..................................... 10 

Deas, Thomas C., Jr., Vice President and Treasurer, FMC Corporation, on 

behalf of the Coalition for Derivatives End-Users ............................................ 14 

Frank, Hon. Barney, former Member of Congress and former Chairman, 

House Committee on Financial Services ............................................................ 12 

Kupiec, Paul H., Resident Scholar, the American Enterprise Institute ............. 16 

Wilson, Dale, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, First State Bank, on 

behalf of the Texas Bankers Association ........................................................... 9 

APPENDIX 

Prepared statements: 

Carfang, Anthony J. ......................................................................................... 80 

Deas, Thomas C., Jr. ........................................................................................ 91 

Frank, Hon. Barney .......................................................................................... 97 

Kupiec, Paul H. ................................................................................................. 105 

Wilson, Dale ...................................................................................................... 141 

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

Hensarling, Hon. Jeb: 

Written statement of the National Association of REALTORS® ................. 148 

Capito, Hon. Shelley Moore: 

‘‘Impact of Federal Mortgage Rules on West Virginia’s Families’’ ............... 150 

Hurt, Hon. Robert: 

Written statement of Mosaic Collateral Asset Management ........................ 153 

Perlmutter, Hon. Ed: 

Wall Street Journal article entitled, ‘‘Wall Street Adapts to New Regulatory Regime,’’ dated July 21, 2014 ........................................................... 163 

(1) 

ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF THE 

DODD–FRANK ACT FOUR YEARS LATER 

Wednesday, July 23, 2014 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES, 

Washington, D.C. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room 2128, 

Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Jeb Hensarling [chairman of 

the committee] presiding. 

Members present: Representatives Hensarling, Royce, Lucas, 

Capito, Garrett, Neugebauer, McHenry, Bachmann, Pearce, Posey, 

Fitzpatrick, Westmoreland, Luetkemeyer, Huizenga, Duffy, Hurt, 

Stivers, Stutzman, Mulvaney, Hultgren, Ross, Pittenger, Wagner, 

Barr, Cotton, Rothfus, Messer; Waters, Maloney, Velazquez, Sherman, Meeks, Capuano, Hinojosa, Clay, McCarthy of New York, 

Lynch, Scott, Green, Cleaver, Moore, Ellison, Perlmutter, Himes, 

Carney, Sewell, Foster, Kildee, Delaney, Sinema, Beatty, and 

Horsford. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The committee will come to order. 

Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a recess of 

the committee at any time. 

This hearing occurs 2 days after the fourth anniversary of the 

Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. 

Today, we will examine its impact on our capital markets and 

the American economy and our citizens more generally. I now recognize myself for 41⁄2 minutes for an opening statement. 

Dodd-Frank has always been based upon a false premise that 

somehow deregulation or lack of regulation led us into the crisis. 

However, in the decade leading up to the crisis, studies have shown 

that the regulatory burden on the financial services industry actually increased. 

There were few industries that were more highly regulated: 

FDICIA, FIRREA, Sarbanes-Oxley, the list goes on. We hear a lot 

about Wall Street greed. I could not agree more. I am just curious 

at what point was there not greed on Wall Street. So I am wondering how that could necessarily be the determining factor. 

What I do know is that affordable housing goals of Fannie Mae 

and Freddie Mac on steroids and other policies helped incent, cajole, and mandate financial institutions into loaning money to people to buy homes who ultimately could not afford to keep them. 

My Democratic colleagues at the time said, ‘‘Let’s roll the dice on 

housing.’’ They did. And the economy imploded. It wasn’t deregulation. It was bad regulation that helped lead us into this crisis. 

2 

And so, if you get the wrong diagnosis, you get the wrong remedy. Dodd-Frank has been the wrong remedy, adding incomprehensible complexity to incomprehensible complexity. 

Now, frequently in Washington—I say frequently, but regrettably, it is the rule as opposed to the exception—laws are evaluated 

by their advertised benefits, not by their actual benefits or actual 

cost. 

So at the time Dodd-Frank was passed, we were told it would 

‘‘lift the economy,’’ ‘‘end too-big-to-fail,’’ ‘‘end bailouts,’’ ‘‘increase financial stability,’’ and, ‘‘increase investment and entrepreneurship.’’ 

And instead, what have we learned? We have learned that it is 

now official that we are in the slowest, weakest recovery in the history of the Nation: tens of millions of our countrymen are now unemployed or underemployed; there has been negative economic 

growth in the last quarter; business startups are at a 20-year low; 

and 1 out of 7 people are dependent upon food stamps. 

Again, increasing entrepreneurship, I don’t think so. Ending toobig-to-fail, we have had this debate before. We had it yesterday. We 

will have it today. We will have it tomorrow. Dodd-Frank codified 

too-big-to-fail into law, and it is now demonstrable 4 years later 

that the big banks have gotten bigger and the small banks have 

gotten fewer. 

Financial stability, I suppose that is a debatable proposition. Financial stability is now defined by the unelected and unaccountable 

bureaucrats. 

I don’t know if you increase concentration, though, in our larger 

financial institutions, whether one can say we have achieved financial stability. But what I do know is that it comes at an incredible 

cost. 

Thanks to Dodd-Frank, it is now harder for low- and moderateincome Americans to buy a home. Again, thanks to Dodd-Frank, 

there are fewer community banks serving the needs of small businesses and families. 

Thanks to Dodd-Frank, Main Street businesses and farmers 

faced higher costs in managing their risk and producing their products, which is impacting every single American at their kitchen 

table. 

Thanks to Dodd-Frank’s Volcker Rule, our capital markets are 

less liquid than before, making it more expensive for companies to 

raise working capital, which harms Americans who are saving for 

retirement, and for childrens’ education. 

Thanks to Dodd-Frank, services that bank customers once took 

for granted, like free checking, are being curtailed or eliminated. 

It is one of the reasons that the House Financial Services Committee has moved numerous regulatory relief bills, a number of 

which have actually passed with bipartisan support, and none of 

which I recall being taken up by the Democratic Senate. 

By the time this Congress is over, the House Financial Services 

Committee will have addressed Dodd-Frank’s greatest sin of omission, housing finance reform, and worked alongside our friends at 

the Judiciary Committee, who are developing a bankruptcy alternative to the Orderly Liquidation Authority. 

3 

Before the end of this Congress, we will also have addressed 

Dodd-Frank’s greatest sin of commission: codifying too-big-to-fail 

and a taxpayer-backed bailout fund. 

I now yield to the ranking member for an opening statement. 

Ms. WATERS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

I would like to welcome all of today’s witnesses. 

And I, too, want to acknowledge and welcome the former chairman and long-time veteran of this committee, Mr. Barney Frank, 

and I am so pleased that he has agreed to be the Democratic witness today. 

Barney, I have had your portrait hanging over me for just about 

a year now and during that time, I have concluded that just seeing 

Barney Frank without hearing him is no Barney Frank at all. 

I am pleased we all will be able to hear you today, and I hope 

to hear you remind my Republican colleagues about just how close 

to the brink we came in 2008 and about why Congress and the 

President responded forcefully with your namesake legislation, the 

Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. 

I am hoping you will recount the incalculable widespread human 

suffering that was inflicted upon millions of Americans, suffering 

that still continues to this day, and how years of deregulation, lax 

enforcement, and zero accountability for the Nation’s financial institutions destroyed more than $13 trillion in economic growth, $16 

trillion in household wealth, and led to millions of foreclosures and 

devastating unemployment. 

In the aftermath, Democrats and some Senate Republicans 

passed Dodd-Frank, which provided oversight to Wall Street, gave 

regulators the tools to end the era of too-big-to-fail entities and taxpayer bailouts, and eliminated loopholes that allowed risky and 

abusive practices to go unnoticed and unregulated. 

And, most importantly, it restored responsibility and accountability to our financial system, giving Americans confidence in a 

system that works for and protects them. 

Chairman Frank, I am proud to have worked so closely with you 

on this important legislation, and I am even more proud of the 

law’s remarkable progress in just 4 short years. 

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is up and running, 

already returning $4.6 billion to 15 million consumers who have 

been subjected to unfair and deceptive practices. 

The Volcker Rule has been finalized, which is forcing banks to 

limit the practice of trading to make money for themselves and refocusing them on making investments in the real economy. 

Shareholders of the U.S. corporations now have a say on pay and 

can better hold executives accountable by voting down excessive 

compensation or golden parachutes. 

And thanks to loaner authorities given to the Securities and Exchange Commission, one of Wall Street’s top cops, more than $9.3 

billion in civil penalties has been recovered from bad actors since 

2011. 

But before these accomplishments were evident, in fact before 

the ink on President Obama’s signature was dry, Republicans immersed themselves in an aggressive unrelenting campaign to repeal, weaken, and pressure regulators to return us to the time before the crisis. 

4 

They incorrectly blame the financial crisis on government efforts 

to house the poor and disadvantaged, despite the fact that private 

market securitizations built on predatory markets and loans started the crisis. 

Exotic over-the-counter derivatives exacerbated it, and poor corporate governance and risk management allowed it to flourish. And 

just as they may diagnose the causes, they misunderstand the cure. 

Republicans have pushed proposals to cut regulated funding and 

subject their rulemakings to constant implementation hurdles and 

core challenges. Democrats have tirelessly fought GOP efforts to 

render Dodd-Frank toothless or risk returning the financial services industry to the opacity, risk, and deregulation that caused the 

crisis. 

They make hyperbolic claims about the effects of regulation. 

These assertions are as old as time. Indeed, the same salvos can 

be heard from opponents of the 1933 Securities Act which was 

passed in response to the crisis of 1929. 

And though they are the loudest critics, Republicans have never 

offered an alternative, no alternative to protect consumers, no way 

to wind down large, complex banks, and no capacity to pass reforms of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. 

I continue waiting for my Republican colleagues to acknowledge, 

as Mr. Greenspan has, that they have found a flaw in free market 

ideology. 

Mr. Chairman, the 4-year anniversary of the Dodd-Frank Act is 

an important milestone. We should look back and assess how far 

we have come and where we need to go. 

And today, I, for one, look forward to correcting the record and 

getting some facts straight about this historic law and its contribution to the renewed vibrancy of our Nation. 

I welcome the witnesses’ testimony. And I yield back the balance 

of my time. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady 

from West Virginia, Mrs. Capito, chairwoman of our Financial Institutions Subcommittee, for a minute and a half. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And welcome back, former Chairman Frank. 

This past Monday marked the fourth-year anniversary of the 

passage of Dodd-Frank, with more than 2,300 pages, 400 new 

rules, of which 298 have been finalized, and still 24 percent are yet 

proposed. 

I think we see now that this legislation is having a detrimental 

impact on our Main Street businesses and community lenders and 

consumers. 

As many of you know, for the past 3 years I have had numerous 

hearings in the Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit Subcommittee, highlighting the challenges facing community lenders 

and small businesses. One of my fears during the drafting of DoddFrank was that it would limit the ability of community lenders to 

tailor their products to their clients’ needs. And, unfortunately, we 

are seeing this become a reality. 

Later this morning, I will share several accounts from a West 

Virginia lender of cases where they no longer are able to provide 

5 

West Virginians with tailored products to meet unique financial 

circumstances and challenges because of the new regulations. 

These cases bring to light one of the central flaws of Dodd-Frank, 

which is the premise that lending decisions are best determined by 

Washington bureaucrats rather than local lenders. Lenders need 

flexibility to tailor their products. Removing this critical flexibility 

is a detriment to rural communities like those that I represent in 

West Virginia. 

Unfortunately, the consequences of Dodd-Frank are not limited 

to access to credit. Life insurance policyholders could potentially 

see increases in premiums if life insurers are forced to capital levels designed for a lending institution. 

I will continue to work with both Chairman Hensarling and 

Chairman Neugebauer to resolve this unintended consequence. And 

I yield back. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The time of the gentlelady has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from New York, Mrs. 

Maloney, the ranking member of our Capital Markets Subcommittee, for a minute and a half. 

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you, Chairman Hensarling, and Ranking 

Member Waters. 

And welcome, Chairman Frank. We miss you. It is great to see 

you. This legislation bears your name and was the most sweeping 

overhaul of our financial regulation since the Great Depression. 

History shows that financial reform is a work in progress and 

will improve and solidify with time. When the Investment Company Act of 1940 was passed, it was called at the time, and I quote, 

‘‘the most intrusive financial legislation known to man or beast.’’ 

That same intrusive financial legislation is now the cornerstone 

of the large and thriving U.S. mutual fund industry. It is also important to remember that even the post-depression financial reforms took a very long time to implement. 

While the Securities Act of 1933 is a landmark reform of our securities markets, the SEC didn’t adopt the 1933 Act’s main antifraud rule, Rule 10b-5, until 1948, over 15 years after the 1933 Act 

was passed. 

In sum, financial reform, done properly, takes time. It requires 

flexibility on the part of regulators, the industry, and Congress. 

So I look forward to our witnesses today and will respond by saying that when President Obama entered office, we were losing 

700,000 jobs a month. We have had 52 months of private-sector job 

growth, last month over 288,000, resulting in the Dow being the 

highest ever, 17,000, with the stock market. We are moving in the 

right direction. Financial reform is a part of our financial growth 

and stability. 

Thank you. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The time of the gentlelady has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Neugebauer, chairman of our Housing and Insurance Subcommittee, for 

1 minute. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The Dodd-Frank Act was the most far-reaching financial reform 

legislation since the Great Depression. Put in perspective, if you 

took the Securities and Exchange Act of 1933, the Securities and 

6 

Exchange Act of 1934, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, Sarbanes-Oxley, and 

every amendment you tacked on since then, you would still need 

600 pages to have the same amount of pages as the Dodd-Frank 

Act: 398 rulemaking requirements compared to 16 for SarbanesOxley. Just in the first of 225 rules, 24 million man-hours per year 

are required to comply with it. 

What does this mean? It means that we have institutions now 

that are hiring more compliance officers than loan officers, and it 

is beginning to hurt small businesses all across the country. 

The SBA recently said that the microloans have declined every year since the passage of Dodd-Frank. It climbed over $170 billion 

to 2008, from $170 billion to $138 billion. Recently, we had a loan 

banker here saying he is hiring more compliance officers than loan 

officers. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from New York, Mr. 

Meeks, the ranking member of our Financial Institutions Subcommittee, for a minute and a half. 

Mr. MEEKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to thank all of the witnesses for your testimony today, but 

I want to especially say that it is with great pleasure that I welcome back Chairman Frank. 

Very few individuals who serve on this committee will experience 

the great honor of having their picture on the wall of this hearing 

room. This honor speaks volumes to the great influence and impact, Mr. Chairman, that your leadership had within these walls 

and, by extension, to our financial services industry and our great 

country. 

Many have forgotten how far we have come. You led when the 

country needed strong leadership, when our most prized financial 

institutions were collapsing and when average Americans were 

helplessly losing their jobs and retirement funds. 

Four years later, Mr. Chairman, we can proudly say that we 

have made great progress not only in restoring confidence in our 

financial markets, but also in safeguarding and preventing the excessive risky behaviors of the past. 

Four years later, Mr. Chairman, more Americans are returning 

to work, confidence and trust has returned to our financial institutions and markets, and our banks and credit unions are starting 

to lend again, but they are doing it more carefully this time. 

While there is no bill that is a perfect bill, Dodd-Frank has given 

us a foundation to build upon to make sure that there is strict 

transparency in our markets and that Americans can continue to 

live the American dream. 

I yield back the balance of my time. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The gentleman yields back the balance 

of his time. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. 

Duffy, the vice chairman of our Financial Institutions Subcommittee, for 1 minute. 

Mr. DUFFY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you, witnesses, for being here today. 

It is widely believed that the financial crisis resulted from a lack 

of regulation, but today the regulations that resulted from the 400 

7 

new mandates included in Dodd-Frank do not provide any more security to our financial markets. All they do is provide less choice 

for consumers and, in some cases, expose them to more dangers. 

In fact, the Dodd-Frank Act was supposedly created to end toobig-to-fail, but all it has done is make it harder for small community banks and credit unions to serve the American people. 

Take, for instance, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau 

(CFPB). Protecting consumers is a noble goal and a mission that 

I support, but you don’t protect consumers by taking away or limiting products like the CFPB does through the qualified mortgage 

rule, limiting credit options, or claiming disparate impact based on 

numbers that don’t exist. 

And the additional dangers that the CFPB is exposing consumers 

to through their data collection is absolutely unacceptable. The 

Dodd-Frank Act has not made the American consumer safer, and 

it has failed to end too-big-to-fail. As we celebrate the Dodd-Frank 

birthday, I think the American people realize there is not much to 

celebrate. 

I yield back. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Connecticut, Mr. 

Himes, for 2 minutes. 

Mr. HIMES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And I, too, welcome the panel, especially former chairman and 

my friend, Barney Frank. It is a real pleasure to have you back 

here. 

I want to make an observation about the 80-page reflection that 

the Majority produced on Dodd-Frank. I read it closely and carefully, and what is most interesting to me about that and this opportunity on the fourth-year anniversary of the passage of DoddFrank—what is most interesting to me about that 80-page report 

is the dog that didn’t bark. 

It has for 4 years, of course, been the practice of the other side 

to abide by the idea that if you don’t have something nasty to say, 

say nothing at all. And the 80 pages on this fourth anniversary are 

related exclusively to Title I and Title II, 2 titles of a 16-title bill. 

The reflection in the 80 pages makes no mention of the CFPB 

and the billions of dollars that have been returned to some pretty 

badly abused consumers, no mention of the fact that the CFPB is 

stopping the selling of its toxic mortgages to American families, no 

mention of the first meaningful regulation of the massive derivatives market, a market which was at the very center of the meltdown of 2008. 

And, of course, there is no mention in either that 80 pages or any 

of the opening statements from my friends on the other side about 

the fact that the financial markets today are thriving, in many 

cases, as they never have before. And, as we all know, the banks 

are remarkably profitable. These are facts that completely belie the 

predictions of chaos and catastrophe that we have heard for 4 years 

from the other side. 

Instead—and this is a compliment to my friends on the other 

side—they do focus on the fascinating question of too-big-to-fail, 

where, of course, the reality is none of us know whether we have 

8 

put in place the tools to address the failure of a systemically important institution. 

Sheila Bair thinks that perhaps we have. Tim Geithner thinks 

that perhaps we haven’t. This is a terribly important question and 

one that I think is worthy of good, strong bipartisan consideration 

and debate. 

And, with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my 

time. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The gentleman yields back. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Indiana, Mr. 

Stutzman, for 1 minute. 

Mr. STUTZMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for 

calling this hearing. 

And thank you, witnesses, for taking the time to speak with us 

today. 

As we will hear today, Dodd-Frank has failed in bailouts and 

failed to lift the economy, as the President promised. In practically 

every way, Dodd-Frank puts regulators ahead of taxpayers and 

consumers. Still, no one believes the economy has been made safe 

from future bubbles or bailouts. 

What the lenders in front of us do know is that 4 years of DoddFrank have left lending more expensive and loans harder to come 

by for consumers. For 4 years, Senate Democrats have blocked this 

committee’s push for even minor changes to the law. 

One perfect example is my bill, the Bureau Guidance Transparency Act, which this committee passed on a bipartisan basis. It 

only requires the CFPB to declare its new restrictions on lending 

in a slightly more transparent way. Yet, no one expects Senate 

Democrats to notice. 

Today, I am looking forward to real-world lenders, not regulators, 

to explain how this law is impacting the American people. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I yield back. 

Chairman HENSARLING. We will now turn to our witnesses, each 

of whom I will introduce briefly. 

First, we welcome Mr. Dale Wilson, chairman and CEO of the 

First State Bank of San Diego, Texas. 

Next, we welcome Mr. Anthony Carfang, a partner at Treasury 

Strategies, a firm that counsels businesses on Treasury management strategies. 

And now, with a lot of sincerity, I welcome back Chairman 

Frank. 

I haven’t had an opportunity to shake your hand and greet you 

personally. We will remedy that situation after the hearing. 

Selfishly, I welcome the chairman back for two reasons: one, I 

won a bet that the ranking member would call him as the Democrat witness to defend his law, and it is always good to win a bet; 

and two, I have a vested interest in ensuring that former chairmen 

are treated well by this committee because I intend to be one someday. But to the chagrin of my Democratic colleagues, I am not 

planning for that to be one day soon. 

Next, we welcome Mr. Thomas Deas, Jr., vice president and 

treasurer of the FMC Corporation in Philadelphia. His testimony 

today is on behalf of the Coalition for Derivatives End-Users. 

9 

Last, but not least, Mr. Paul Kupiec is a resident scholar at the 

American Enterprise Institute. He has previously held a variety of 

positions with the FDIC and other public-sector and private-sector 

institutions. 

Without objection, each of your written statements will be made 

a part of the record. 

For those who have not testified before—and I am somewhat uncertain whether Chairman Frank has ever testified from the table, 

but I know he knows the system—we have a green, yellow, and red 

lighting system. Green means go, yellow means wrap it up, and red 

means stop. 

And we have not improved the audio system since Chairman 

Frank’s day. So you will need to take the microphone and bring it 

very, very close to your mouth so that all can hear you. 

Mr. Wilson, you are now recognized for a summary of your testimony. 

STATEMENT OF DALE WILSON, CHAIRMAN AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, FIRST STATE BANK, ON BEHALF OF THE 

TEXAS BANKERS ASSOCIATION 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you, Chairman Hensarling, and Ranking 

Member Waters. 

My name is Dale Wilson. I am the CEO of First State Bank of 

San Diego, a rural community bank serving a small South Texas 

town. I appreciate the opportunity to be here to present the views 

of the Texas Bankers Association on the impact of the Dodd-Frank 

Act. 

Let me start by thanking my own Congressman, Ruben Hinojosa, 

who serves on this committee. We had the pleasure of hosting Congressman Hinojosa at my bank in South Texas, and we appreciate 

his service to our community. 

During the last decade, the regulatory burden for community 

banks has multiplied tenfold. Dodd-Frank alone has already added 

nearly 14,000 pages of proposed and final regulations. Managing 

this tsunami of regulation is a significant challenge for a bank of 

any size, but for a small bank with only 17 employees, it is overwhelming. 

Today it is not unusual to hear from bankers who are ready to 

sell to larger banks because the regulatory burden has become too 

much for them to manage. Since the passage of Dodd-Frank, there 

are 80 fewer Texas banks. These banks did not fail. Texas has one 

of the healthiest economies in the country. We call it the ‘‘Texas 

miracle.’’ 

These are community bankers—and I have talked to some of 

them personally—who could not maintain profitability with regulatory costs increasing between 50 and 200 percent. These are good 

banks that for decades have been contributing to the economic 

growth and vitality of their towns, but whose ability to serve their 

communities is being undermined by excessive regulation and government micromanagement. 

The real costs of the increased regulatory burden are being felt 

by small-town borrowers and businesses that no longer have access 

to credit. When a small town loses its only bank, it loses its lifeVerDate Nov 24 2008 18:50 Jun 05, 2015 Jkt 091158 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\91158.TXT TERRI
10 

blood. It is more difficult to improve schools, health care facilities, 

and other infrastructure projects. 

I know it was not the intent of Congress when it passed DoddFrank to harm community banks, but that is the awful reality. One 

issue in particular that has hindered the ability of community 

banks to serve their communities is the new qualified mortgage 

rules. 

As a result of the qualified mortgage rules, our bank no longer 

makes mortgage loans, as the cost and the risks are just too high. 

Make no mistake, the true cost is felt by my community. I used to 

make mortgage loans that averaged $50,000, and I made them to 

borrowers who would not otherwise qualify for secondary market 

loans. 

I am not the only bank in South Texas to exit the mortgage business. Other banks in my county have stopped, as well as community banks in adjacent counties. This is occurring in Texas and 

across the country. 

The real victims here are the working-class and middle-class prospective homeowners. Banks want to make safe, profitable mortgage loans. Denying mortgage loans to borrowers otherwise considered creditworthy goes against every sound business instinct a 

banker has. 

Accordingly, we support H.R. 2673 and H.R. 4521. These bills 

would exempt any mortgage held on a bank’s balance sheet from 

the ability-to-repay requirements and exempt loans held by small 

creditors with less than $10 billion in assets from the escrow requirements imposed by the Dodd-Frank Act. No bank is going to 

hold a loan it doesn’t believe the borrower has the ability to repay. 

In conclusion, I ask this committee to look at the unintended consequences of the Dodd-Frank Act and to make changes so that community banks can go back to what they have always been good at: 

meeting the credit needs of local individuals and small businesses. 

Unless major changes are made, compliance costs will continue 

to drive massive consolidation within our industry and limit the 

ability of our Nation’s community banks to drive Main Street 

growth across the country. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wilson can be found on page 141 

of the appendix.] 

Chairman HENSARLING. Mr. Carfang, you are now recognized for 

your testimony. 

STATEMENT OF ANTHONY J. CARFANG, PARTNER, TREASURY 

STRATEGIES, INC. 

Mr. CARFANG. Good morning, Chairman Hensarling, and Ranking Member Waters. I am pleased to be here today. 

My name is Tony Carfang, and I am a partner with Treasury 

Strategies. We are a consulting firm that consults for businesses 

and financial institutions, including health care organizations, 

higher education, and municipalities. We have been doing this for 

about 40 years. And we appreciate the opportunity to be here 

today. 

First of all, we would like to let the committee know we fully 

support any activity to improve the safety and soundness of the 

11 

U.S. financial system, and we support the objectives of the DoddFrank regulation. 

Unfortunately, as we sit here 4 years later, we are only beginning to see some of the impact of that regulation. The verdict is not 

good. The regulations created an atmosphere of fear, uncertainty, 

and doubt. 

The delayed implementation is creating a tremendous uncertainty on the part of America’s businesses and financial institutions. The ambiguities in the regulation, the inconsistencies, some 

of the vague language, things like ‘‘know your customer,’’ systemically important whatever—whatever, that lack definition, are creating a tremendous uncertainty that will drag on the economy. 

Let me just point out two things at a conceptual level. One is 

that institutions are mandated to fund themselves with longer liabilities, which, yes, they are more stable, yet, at the same time, 

investment managers are being mandated to invest in shorter-term 

instruments because they can be turned over more quickly and 

they’re less risky, but you can’t do both. 

There are similar inconsistencies in terms of too-big-to-fail. Yes, 

we think an organization should not be too-big-to-fail, but by designating them as systemically important, you are, in fact, telling depositors, ‘‘Put your money in there because you will be protected. 

They are too-big-to-fail.’’ 

So here we are 4 years later only beginning to see some of the 

impacts. What is the verdict? Let’s list through the items in the 

preamble of the Act and see how we have done. 

First is we want to improve the safety and soundness of the U.S. 

financial system. Well, U.S. capital markets are by far the most robust and the deepest markets in the world. 

Before Dodd-Frank, U.S. companies operated with cash on their 

balance sheets equal to about 9 percent of U.S. gross domestic 

product. That is an example of efficiency. The European number, 

by the way, is 21 percent. 

But now that we are beginning to see the beginning impacts 

emerge, that 9 percent is growing to 12 percent. We are clearly 

moving in the wrong direction. 

Hundreds of billions of dollars have been simply sidelined on 

U.S. balance sheets as a precaution against the uncertainty of the 

regulation. 

If you were to reach the 21 percent level of the European capital 

markets, that would sideline an extra $1 trillion. So on that objective of Dodd-Frank, we miss. 

Transparency. Yes, there are certain banking activities that are 

now more transparent and they come under the microscope, but 

the important thing and the real issue is risk. It is the risk of the 

banks that is key. 

Risk can only be created or destroyed. It can only be transformed 

and it can only be shifted. So by taking them off of the—away from 

the visibility of a bank’s balance sheet, we are, in fact, making the 

risk less transparent, and more difficult to manage. So on that 

point, we fail as well. 

Too-big-to-fail. I addressed this—or I alluded to this earlier. 

Since the passage of Dodd-Frank, U.S. GDP, even including inflaVerDate Nov 24 2008 18:50 Jun 05, 2015 Jkt 091158 PO 00000 Frm 00015 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\91158.TXT TERRI
12 

tion, is up 14 percent. Bank assets are up 25 percent. The banks 

are getting bigger. 

Eliminating bank bailouts—taxpayer bailouts—is one of the objectives. I point to the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve Bank, 

which has grown from $1 trillion to $4.3 trillion since the enactment of Dodd-Frank. 

This is a huge concentration of risk, which, by the way, is invested in longer-term assets, unlike—the rest of the balance of the 

bill includes, and is funded by overnight bank reserves. What we 

have here is the next taxpayer bailout in the making. 

Finally, Dodd-Frank wants to eliminate abusive practices. We 

are eliminating a lot of practices, as Dale alluded to, in terms of 

mortgages. 

Inconsistencies in the law are causing banks to close accounts of 

diplomats because of anti-money laundering concerns. They are no 

longer dealing—big banks are no longer dealing with community 

banks because of normal customer concerns. 

We would recommend that, to remedy the situation: first, we 

eliminate FSOC, which is a regulator comprised of regulators, so 

you have redundancy of double jeopardy in the system; second, we 

encourage you to eliminate ambiguities in the regulation and in the 

terminology; and finally, we encourage you to carve out some protections for the 99.999 percent of all American businesses and financial institutions that have nothing to do with this regulation. 

To wrap up in just a second, 2 years ago I testified before this 

committee, and I asked the question, ‘‘When a business calls its 

bank for financial services, will anybody be there to answer the 

phone?’’ 

Now I know the answer to that, and the answer is ‘‘yes.’’ The 

compliance officer will be there, not the loan officer. Ladies and 

gentlemen of the committee, that is no way to run the best economy in the world. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Carfang can be found on page 80 

of the appendix.] 

Chairman HENSARLING. Again, Chairman Frank, welcome back 

home. You are now recognized for your testimony. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE BARNEY FRANK, FORMER 

MEMBER OF CONGRESS AND FORMER CHAIRMAN, HOUSE 

COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES 

Mr. FRANK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I apologize that my written statement was not in the form for the 

chairman. It was a last-minute thing. And then I—on the other 

hand, I think any problem with the element of surprise is probably 

not a problem here. I don’t think any of the members of the committee will be surprised by what I say. 

I want to begin with the too-big-to-fail question. And the issue, 

I think, is an interesting one because, first of all, as I said in what 

I did write, I was surprised myself by how bipartisan the committee’s report was, for instance, in saying that this whole problem 

started with Ronald Reagan in 1984 with Continental Illinois. 

The committee report said that this began with Ronald Reagan 

and Continental Illinois and then it was continued by Bill Clinton 

13 

with Alan Greenspan taking the lead in long-term capital management, but the report clearly puts most of the blame on George W. 

Bush and his aides, Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke, because it said 

this really became a problem with Bear Stearns. 

And while I recognize that is a very bipartisan thing for a Republican committee to do, to put major blame on those two Presidents, 

I think you are being a little unfair to them. And I think the need 

to respond there shows that was a problem which had to be dealt 

with. 

On the other hand, I was struck by your bipartisan effort to embrace Tim Geithner, but I think you got it wrong. You misunderstand Mr. Geithner in that report. Mr. Geithner does say we still 

have a too-big-to-fail problem, but the problem he sees is exactly 

the opposite of what I think most Republicans think. 

There is this argument that we are going to have bailouts. Tim 

Geithner’s explicit point is that we did too good a job in preventing 

bailouts. I urge people to read his book when he has this conversation with Larry Summers. He objects that we shut down too many 

of these ways to do it. 

So Mr. Geithner is one who believes—look, everybody understands that there are going to be institutions that are too-big-tofail. Everybody else understands that when I move my hands, you 

hear the shutters. 

What Mr. Geithner has said is that given the size of banks—yes. 

And everybody understands that from Ronald Reagan in Continental Illinois—The question is how do you deal with that as long 

as they are that size. 

And what Mr. Geithner says is he believes inevitably there is 

going to be the need at some point for Federal taxpayer intervention and we did too good a job in shutting that down. So, when you 

cite Mr. Geithner, you will understand that is what you are citing. 

The other argument that I think is more reasonably—why did we 

not do too-big-to-fail? There are two arguments, one, that we have 

made being designated a systemically important financial institution very attractive. 

That is interesting because every institution which has been 

threatened with being named has reacted very violently and very 

negatively. For people who tell me you are supposed to listen to the 

businesses, how come you haven’t heard that the businesses hate 

the idea of being designated, that instead of it being an advantage, 

they think it is a curse. 

When you talk about, oh, this is a great advantage and you ignore what the businesses themselves say about this, those who 

could be designated, I think that is a very Marxist analysis. 

But the Marx in question is Chico, when he said in one of his 

movies, ‘‘Who are you going to believe? Me or your own eyes?’’ Who 

are you going to believe? Your own viewpoint or what the financial 

institutions tell you? 

The other argument on too-big-to-fail is that, oh, well, even 

though the law says the Fed should not give money to insolvent institutions and the Secretary of the Treasury should not do what 

was done in the past, give them the money and keep them alive 

to pay their debts, they will violate the law. 

14 

I have heard the most astonishing argument that political pressure in this country will force the Secretary of the Treasury, the 

President, and maybe the head of the Fed, to violate Federal law 

by advancing money to keep these people in business. 

What the law says is you may have to pay some of their debts, 

as Ronald Reagan recognized in 1984 with Continental Illinois, but, 

first of all, you put them out of business, you put them in receivership, and, secondly, you get the money back. 

Finally, I was very struck by the, frankly, schizophrenic approach that the Majority seems to be taking on subprime loans or 

loans to poor people. 

I was astonished again—I get astonished a lot these days; I am 

out of the business—that there is a criticism that under the bill, 

fewer loans are being made to low-income people. Yes. That was 

part of what I thought everybody wanted to do. I thought there was 

a consensus that too many loans were being made to those people. 

And then, when you blame the Community Reinvestment Act, I 

would just like to cite the testimony of our banker from Texas who 

says community banks didn’t make bad loans. I agree. And guess 

what? They are all subject to the Community Reinvestment Act. So 

if the Community Reinvestment Act was so distorting, that is a 

problem. 

Finally, I would say I look forward to congratulating you, Mr. 

Chairman, on a fourth anniversary coming up. I know that this 

committee passed a bill on Fannie and Freddie, but it hasn’t even 

passed the House. 

So I think we are about to see the fourth anniversary of your 

party being in control of the House and not doing anything about 

this problem that you say is such a serious one. 

[The prepared statement of former Chairman Frank can be found 

on page 97 of the appendix.] 

Chairman HENSARLING. Mr. Deas, you are now recognized for 

your testimony. 

STATEMENT OF THOMAS C. DEAS, JR., VICE PRESIDENT AND 

TREASURER, FMC CORPORATION, ON BEHALF OF THE COALITION FOR DERIVATIVES END-USERS 

Mr. DEAS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And good morning to you, Ranking Member Waters, and the 

members of this committee. 

I am Tom Deas, vice president and treasurer of FMC Corporation 

and, also, immediate past chairman of the National Association of 

Corporate Treasurers (NACT). 

FMC and NACT are members of the Coalition for Derivatives 

End-Users representing thousands of companies across the country 

that employ derivatives to manage day-to-day business risks. 

First, let me sincerely thank both the chairman and the ranking 

member along with the distinguished members of this committee 

for doing so much to protect end users from the burdens of unnecessary regulation. 

The press often portrays Capitol Hill as paralyzed by gridlock 

while, when it comes to the needs of Main Street businesses, the 

members of the committee have worked together to get things 

done. 

15 

You have supported the end-user margin bill, H.R. 634, championed by Representatives Graham and Peters, and the centralized 

Treasury unit bill, H.R. 677, which Representatives Moore and 

Stivers have done so much to move forward. We are hopeful that 

a version of that bill modified through discussions with the chairman’s and the ranking member’s staffs will soon come to the House 

Floor. 

As you oversee implementation of the Dodd-Frank Act, I want to 

assure you that, in my experience, end users comprising less than 

10 percent of the derivatives markets were not and are not engaging in the kind of risky speculative derivatives trading activity that 

became evident in 2008. 

We use derivatives to hedge risks in our day-to-day business activity. We are offsetting risks, not creating new ones. We support 

the transparency and the derivatives market that the Dodd-Frank 

Act attempts to achieve. 

We also believe it is sound policy and consistent with the law to 

exempt end users from provisions intended to reduce the inherent 

riskiness of swap dealers’ activities. 

However, at this point, 4 years after passage of the Act, there are 

several areas where the regulatory uncertainty remaining compels 

end users to continue to appeal for legislative relief. 

Among areas of concern, I would like to invite your attention to 

two. First, margining of derivatives. FMC Corporation, an innovator in the chemical industry, was founded almost 130 years ago. 

This is our 83rd year of being listed on the New York Stock Exchange. When we went to that market in 1931, the NYSE was the 

largest pool of capital to grow our business. 

Today, using derivatives, we have an additional and even larger 

market that is the cheapest and most flexible way for us to hedge 

everyday business risks of foreign exchange rate movements, 

changes in interest rates, and global energy and commodity prices. 

Our banks do not require FMC to post cash margin to secure 

mark-to-market fluctuations in the value of derivatives. To do so 

would divert cash from funds we would otherwise invest in our 

business. 

The proposals by the banking regulators—mandating collection 

of margin from end users—are not only out of sync with the CFTC, 

but also with the European regulators as well. 

Further, an imposition of margin requirements on end users 

would effectively negate the benefits of the end-user clearing exception, which Congress included in the text of the Dodd-Frank Act. 

We believe end users and their swap dealers should remain free 

to negotiate mutually acceptable margin arrangements instead of 

having regulators impose mandatory daily margining with its uncertain liquidity requirements. 

The Coalition also recognizes the efforts of the CFTC to provide 

relief on centralized Treasury units. But as a recent Coalition survey shows, it doesn’t work for most end users. 

End-user treasurers have long used widely accepted risk induction techniques to net exposures within their corporate groups so 

they can reduce derivatives outstanding with banks. 

However, the internal centralized Treasury units they use are set 

to be designated as financial entities subject to mandatory clearing 

16 

and margining even though they are acting on behalf of nonfinancial end-user companies otherwise eligible for relief from these 

burdens. 

Although I have focused here on two main issues, end users are 

concerned about the web of, at times, conflicting rules from U.S. as 

well as foreign regulators that will determine whether we can continue to manage business risk through derivatives. 

Our fear is that cross-border regulatory uncertainty and conflict 

could put FMC and other American companies at an economic disadvantage. 

The end-user exemptions for margining and clearing we thought 

would apply are still uncertain, confronting us with the risk of foreign regulatory arbitrage and potential competitive burdens that 

could limit growth and ultimately our ability to sustain and even 

grow jobs. 

Thank you again for your attention to the needs of end-user companies. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Deas can be found on page 91 

of the appendix.] 

Chairman HENSARLING. Mr. Kupiec, you are now recognized for 

your testimony. 

STATEMENT OF PAUL H. KUPIEC, RESIDENT SCHOLAR, THE 

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE 

Mr. KUPIEC. Chairman Hensarling, Ranking Member Waters, 

and distinguished members of the committee, thank you for convening today’s hearing and for inviting me to testify. I am a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, but this testimony represents my personal views. 

The primary goal of the Dodd-Frank Act was to end the perception that the largest financial firms are too-big-to-fail and remove 

the risk that a large institutional failure could create financial instability unless the government protects investors from loss. 

After 4 years of implementation, Dodd-Frank has imposed a host 

of new regulations that are depressing economic growth, but it has 

failed to meet its primary objectives. 

Regulatory data on bank funding costs showed that in the years 

prior to the financial crisis—2005, 2006, and 2007—the largest 

banks, banks with assets greater than $100 billion, did not enjoy 

a subsidy on their funding cost. Instead, their average cost of funding was higher than the cost incurred by smaller banks, but the 

difference was not statically significant in any year. 

In post-crisis, post-Dodd-Frank data—2012, 2013, and 2014—the 

largest banks have lower average funding costs compared to smaller banks. In each year after the passage of Dodd-Frank, large 

banks have enjoyed a funding cost subsidy of more than 22 basis 

points, and in each year this subsidy estimate is highly statically 

significant. 

The passage of Dodd-Frank has not eliminated too-big-to-fail, 

but, instead, it coincides with the emergence of a sustained large 

bank funding cost subsidy that did not exist before the financial 

crisis. 

It is not hard to understand why investors might still believe in 

too-big-to-fail. In the financial crisis, the government demonstrated 

17 

that it would not let the largest financial institutions fail, and 

Dodd-Frank has not diffused these expectations. 

After Dodd-Frank, the large institutions are subject to enhanced 

prudential supervision and regulation by the Federal Reserve 

Board of Governors. They must meet risk-based capital and leverage requirements, file detailed annual orderly resolution plans, and 

pass the Board of Governors’ annual micro-economic stress test examination. 

These new prudential standards are so intrusive that it is not a 

stretch to say that the largest institutions are now being run, at 

least in part, by the Federal Reserve Board. 

The Federal Reserve Board closely monitors the largest institutions and, after Dodd-Frank, it has the power to acquire a wide 

range of changes in these institutions’ operations if, in the Fed’s 

judgment, changes are needed to prevent failure or financial instability. When one of these institutions experiences a serious hiccup, 

the Fed will at least be partially responsible. 

So given these changes, why wouldn’t a rational investor conclude that these institutions are too-big-to-fail? Dodd-Frank is supposed to eliminate the government’s ability to use taxpayer guarantees and bailouts to prevent financial instability when a large institution fails. 

Designated institutions must file orderly resolution plans or blueprints for a speedy reorganization using Chapter 11 bankruptcy, 

and these plans must not cause financial instability. 

The Board of Governors and the FDIC must approve these plans, 

and they have the power to require operational changes or even 

divestitures if, in their judgment, the plans do not facilitate an orderly bankruptcy. 

Advertised as prepackaged bankruptcies, these plans are nothing 

of the sort. The key to a prepackaged bankruptcy is creditor acceptance of the debt restructuring plan before entering bankruptcy, but 

creditors did not approve Dodd-Frank or the resolution plans and, 

indeed, firms are not even obligated to follow these plans should 

they enter bankruptcy. 

If Title I doesn’t do the job, Dodd-Frank has Title II, a backup 

mechanism for resolving large failing financial institutions. It is 

supposed to remove the risk that the failure of a large institution 

will cause financial instability without using government guarantees or bailouts. 

Only Title II really doesn’t do this. Using the FDIC single-pointof-entry strategy, a Title II resolution will maintain financial tranquility by ensuring all of the liabilities of the failing institutions’ 

subsidiaries. In most cases, one of these subsidiaries will be a large 

failing bank. 

Here, Title II extends a full government bailout to all of the 

bank’s uninsured liabilities. In other words, Title II will fully protect investors who otherwise would have lost almost everything in 

an FDIC bank resolution and a bank holding company bankruptcy. 

Title II reduces bankruptcy systemic risk by extending a larger 

government guarantee and bailing out investors who would not 

have taken a loss in bankruptcy. 

In the midst of a crisis, the FDIC will have to use its unseasoned 

judgment to decide how large the government bailout must be to 

18 

maintain financial stability. If receivership proceeds in a Title II 

resolution do not fully cover the government’s bailout costs, the 

largest financial institutions would be assessed to recover expenses, 

but the Dodd-Frank requirement to repay Title II bailout costs 

without the use of taxpayer funds is less binding than it seems. 

For example, what if Title II had been used in the past crisis? 

In the last crisis, the Federal Reserve began paying banks’ interest 

on their excess reserves, and they earned quite a lot on that. These 

payments channel taxpayer funds directly into banks. 

There is nothing in Dodd-Frank that precludes the government 

from using this channel to provide the largest institutions with the 

funds they need to reimburse the Orderly Liquidation Fund, surely 

less than a transparent taxpayer bailout, but a taxpayer bailout 

nonetheless. 

Thank you. And I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kupiec can be found on page 105 

of the appendix.] 

Chairman HENSARLING. I thank all of our panelists. 

The Chair now yields himself 5 minutes for questions. 

Mr. Wilson, I am especially happy that you are here because I 

care deeply about the future of community banking. In my district 

in Texas, half the district is rural. 

So your voice is an important one, but I have to tell you that 

yours is not a solitary voice, because rarely does a week go by that 

I don’t hear about the plight of community banking from some 

banker. 

We heard from a banker in El Paso, Texas, who said, with respect to the regulatory burden of Dodd-Frank, ‘‘We will see community banks continue to decline. We simply cannot afford the high 

cost of Federal regulation. 

‘‘And as one banker, I will tell you my major risk is not credit 

risk, risk of theft, risk of some robber coming in with a gun in my 

office. My number one risk is Federal regulatory risk.’’ 

I heard from a banker in Gothenburg, Nebraska, about the DoddFrank Act: ‘‘These pressures are slowly, but surely, straining the 

traditional community banks, and handicapping their ability to 

meet the credit needs of their community.’’ 

Another banker from Linn, Missouri: ‘‘The more expense for the 

bank, the less that is available to loan to our primary customer 

base, which is small businesses, farmers, and folks who are just 

trying to get by in these difficult times.’’ 

I heard from a banker in Temple, Texas: ‘‘Reluctantly, we are 

working to downsize our consumer lending program, especially in 

the small loan area. Over the years we have provided thousands 

of small loans to our customers in what was a simple, straightforward process. Certainly, this is no longer the case. 

‘‘And many customers are now going to other sources with their 

credit needs where they can get a loan without the hassle that 

comes with bank compliance. 

‘‘There is no question these rules will reduce the availability of 

credit to many creditworthy borrowers and markets of all size.’’ 

And I could go on and on and on. 

So one banker used the word ‘‘strangle.’’ Mr. Wilson, is DoddFrank, in your opinion, strangling community banks? 

19 

Mr. WILSON. Yes, sir. There are lots of challenges for us. And we 

have 17 employees. And so the—just when you have the changes 

to regulation, it is retraining staff, it is retraining systems. And so 

anytime there is significant regulatory change, it is difficult on 

small organizations. 

Chairman HENSARLING. I also understand—the data that I have 

seen is that there are roughly 800 fewer community banks postDodd-Frank than pre-Dodd-Frank and now they have a smaller 

market share. 

Have you seen this study or similar studies, Mr. Wilson? 

Mr. WILSON. I have heard those numbers. Yes, sir. 

Chairman HENSARLING. Again, it’s a sad situation as far as the 

plight of community banking goes. And, also, although it wasn’t advertised that Dodd-Frank would somehow lift the plight of low- and 

moderate-income people, I believe that quite the opposite has happened. Although not advertised, it has hurt low- and moderate-income people. 

What I have seen is that an analysis of credit cost for those people pre- and post-Dodd-Frank—credit cards are now, on average, 

224 basis points. That is over 2 percentage points greater. On residential mortgages, jumbo, 45 basis points greater; conforming, 14 

points greater; small unrated corporate debt, 41 basis points. 

Here is an interesting one. Auto financing, 17 basis points less. 

Isn’t that interesting, since auto dealers were exempt from DoddFrank’s CFPB. 

We also know that the Fed has shown in their study on QM, once 

fully implemented, without exempting the 95 percent of mortgages 

handled by the GSEs, that one-third of Blacks and Hispanics will 

not be able to obtain a mortgage due to DTI. I am still waiting to 

see the outrage on the other side of the aisle. CoreLogic is again 

imported and fully implemented. Only half of today’s mortgage 

originations will meet QM. 

Before Dodd-Frank, 76 percent of banks offered free checking. 

Now, only 39 percent do. And it continues to drop. There has also 

been a 21 percent surge in checking fees post-Dodd-Frank. The list 

could go on. 

Mr. Wilson, I am going to go back to you. You obviously bank a 

lot of low- and moderate-income people. Is Dodd-Frank hurting lowand moderate-income people? 

Mr. WILSON. Yes, sir. In our market, that was probably the main 

niche we had on the housing side. Our census tracks are low to 

moderate income for our community. And so, those who do not 

have access to that credit from us, it is hurting them. 

Chairman HENSARLING. I now yield to the ranking member. 

Ms. WATERS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

To Barney Frank, who worked so very, very hard to bring about 

protection for consumers and who spent a considerable amount of 

time paying attention to community banks—I kind of resent Mr. 

Wilson’s testimony here today that talks about QM without him 

even understanding that his bank, under QM, a bank under $2 billion—you can keep all of your loans and portfolio as long as they 

are not predatory loans, no-documentation loans, those kinds of 

loans, and you have some protection under safe harbor. 

20 

So I am going to go to Barney Frank. Just talk about what we 

have done and what you have done to be of assistance to small 

banks and community banks. 

Mr. FRANK. A couple of things. First, on the point you raise, I 

am again very surprised to hear my Republican friends now say 

our problem is that we have toughened up the standards for banks 

loaning to people. I thought there was pretty general agreement 

that was part of the problem. Although this does—there is this 

myth that somehow the Democrats were pushing for these loans. 

In fact, during the period from really the mid-1990s, it was people on our side who were trying to restrict these abusive subprime 

loans and were restricted. We passed the Homeowner Equity Protection Act. Mr. Greenspan wouldn’t use it. A number of States, including the State of Georgia, passed laws to restrict subprime lending abuses, and the Bush Administration preempted it and said, 

no, no such laws. 

And then I was working with Spencer Bachus, and Mel Watt and 

Brad Miller from the Democratic side. As Sheila Bair notes in her 

book, we were trying to put legislation through to regulate 

subprime loans, and the Republican leadership said, shut it down. 

And on the day that this committee, once the Democrats were in 

control, began to regulate subprime loans, it was over the objection 

of several of the Members here who said subprime loans were good, 

and Wall Street Journal objected and said, look, these are good 

loans; 80 percent of them are paying on time, which didn’t seem 

to me to be a great statistic. 

And, in fact, what happened was this: People on the conservative 

side were generally pushing these loans until the crisis hit, and 

then they needed an alternative victim—a villain to blame for the 

crisis. So they retroactively became opposed to these kind of loans. 

And now they have reverted. So there was a period where they 

were blaming us. 

Again, I think there is this great inconsistency between saying 

the Community Reinvestment Act caused the problem by forcing 

these people to make these loans to poor minority people and now 

complaining that we have regulated and somewhat restricted those 

loans. 

As to the community banks, let me say this: I would be in favor 

of saying that people who kept loan portfolio should not have these 

problems. I, on the other hand, think what is important, and this 

is the one criticism I have of the regulators, I believe risk retention 

is the best way to go about this, because risk retention leaves the 

decision in the hands of the market. And I agree, and I think Mr. 

Carfang says, you can’t get away from the responsibility—you can’t 

get away from this; you can shift it. 

And this goes also, I would say, to the question about regulation. 

Yes, there was some regulation before the crisis started, but it 

wasn’t regulating—there wasn’t regulation for two very important 

things: financial derivatives. Mr. Deas—and I agree with much of 

what he says about the end user, and I also appreciated him acknowledging—not acknowledging, noting that there was irresponsible, speculative activity in derivatives, which the CFTC was legislatively prevented from dealing with. But the biggest problem was 

the model for a lot of loans in the mortgage area shifted from the 

21 

kind that Mr. Wilson makes and keeps in portfolio to those that 

are made and then securitized. And securitization, I think, is a 

great example of what Mr. Carfang said, not getting rid of risk, but 

passing the risk off. 

So one of the things I wanted to do in the bill was to require that 

if people were going to securitize loans, the securitizer has to have 

a 5 percent risk retention. That was weakened somewhat in the 

Senate, and I would prefer a situation in which there was risk retention if securitization took place, and then you could be much 

easier if people kept things in portfolio. 

But, again, I emphasize, Mr. Wilson’s bank and the community 

banks have always been covered by the Community Reinvestment 

Act, and it is inconsistent, again, to talk about what a good job 

they did and blame the Community Reinvestment Act for messing 

things up. 

As for small banks, yes, we did, as he acknowledges, reduce the 

premiums, and we did exempt them from being examined by the 

CFPB, and there were some other areas. People raise with me the 

question of showing compliance with the Volcker Rule or with their 

forms of compensation. Dan Tarullo made a suggestion that they 

be specifically exempted from those since they don’t apply. 

I think that would be a good way to not weaken the regulation 

and ease their compliance, because apparently some banks feel 

they have to spend money to show they are not violating the 

Volcker Rule or having this kind of stock-based compensation. I 

think for banks below a certain level to simply be exempted from 

those rules since they never use them anyway would ease the problem. And bills need further correction. Those are two small ones 

that I would be for. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady 

from West Virginia, Mrs. Capito, chairwoman of our Financial Institutions Subcommittee. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank the 

witnesses for their testimony. 

I would like to ask, Mr. Chairman, for unanimous consent to 

enter into the record a very detailed description from a community 

banker in my district with 10 very specific examples on how the 

new ATR/QM rules have had a negative impact on West Virginia 

consumers. 

Chairman HENSARLING. Without objection, it is so ordered. 

Mr. FRANK. I almost said yes, Mr. Chairman. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. Wilson, we are kind of singing from the same 

hymn book here in terms of the value of community bankers. Obviously, I live in a rural State, West Virginia, which is principally 

served by community banks. But I think it is also important to distinguish that by a community bank, which is similar to FDIC’s description, reports that community banks loaned—48 percent of 

small business loans are issued by U.S. banks; 15 percent of residential mortgage lending; 43.8 percent of farmland lending; and 34 

percent of commercial real estate. So that is very significant particularly in the areas where you do your business and where I live. 

And so when you say that you have gotten out of the mortgage 

business, is the reason for that, even if you can hold them on portfolio, are the rules too constrictive? Is it that you are finding that 

22 

the QM box is something you can’t lend in? Are you worried about 

examiner oversight in this area? Specifically, why would you get 

out of that business in terms of the Dodd-Frank regulations? 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you. 

The mortgages we originate were all balloon-type mortgages, and 

so that was really discouraged. We—in my 35 years of banking, I 

have never sold a mortgage. And so we originate those for our customers, and we keep them in the bank. So the qualified mortgage, 

if you look at those, like the debt to income— 

Mrs. CAPITO. Right. 

Mr. WILSON. —we use 50 percent debt to income. So the bulk of 

those people we served in our market would not have met the, I 

believe it is 43 percent, debt-to-income limitations in the QM rules. 

Mrs. CAPITO. And I guess in your prior practice of issuing mortgages under those parameters, would you say that the customers 

that you have been serving would be in a low, moderate—you said 

$50,000 was your average mortgage. Obviously, that is on the 

lower end of the scale. How else would these folks ever be able to 

purchase a home that they could call their own? 

Mr. WILSON. Many of them I would encourage to go try to get 

a permanent fixed-rate mortgage for the life of their mortgage, no 

balloons, would be in their best interest. But those who, because 

their credit scores weren’t high enough— 

Mrs. CAPITO. Right. 

Mr. WILSON. —or for some other reason, we were able to help 

them—and I will just confess that we do not have any problems in 

our real estate mortgages, the ones that we underwrite and keep, 

but they just didn’t fit for some reason. They may have been small 

business owners who had Schedule C tax returns instead of a W2. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Okay. 

Let me ask another question on another line that you—when you 

talk about community banks and the constriction on the numbers 

and the different mergers and acquisitions, what kind of effect do 

you think that will have in rural America? Obviously, your business model’s relationship banking in the bigger and larger institutions as they grow moves away from that model, for obvious reasons. How would you express that concern? 

Mr. WILSON. So in our particular instance, we have no branches. 

We are in San Diego. We have a board of directors who live in that 

area. We have a president of the bank. We have senior vice presidents. In the branching environment, if we were to sell to a 

megabank, you would have tellers and maybe someone to open a 

new account. All of those positions would be eliminated. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Right. 

Mr. Kupiec, let me ask you this. You didn’t really address this 

in your statement, but something I mentioned in my opening statement is that there are still many, many rules and regulations that 

are yet to be written concerning Dodd-Frank. What kind of impact 

do you think that has, moving forward? 

Mr. KUPIEC. The regulatory burden of Dodd-Frank has been significant. I think just a week or two ago, it was reported that 

JPMorgan was laying off thousands of people, but hiring thousands 

23 

of compliance staff, so something like 7,000. So compliance staff, 

that is to meet the regulatory burdens of Dodd-Frank. 

In terms of community banks, there is a lot of evidence. There 

is a Mercatus study that came out that I cited in some testimony 

in March that showed that the study has— 

Mrs. CAPITO. I think I have run out of time here. Thank you. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The time of the gentlelady has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from New York, Mrs. 

Maloney, ranking member of our Capital Markets Subcommittee. 

Mrs. MALONEY. Chairman Frank, we seem to hear a lot from the 

other side of the aisle on this committee about how Dodd-Frank’s 

resolution authority for large financial institutions somehow ‘‘enshrines bailouts,’’ because the FDIC would use money borrowed 

from Treasury to facilitate a wind-down if you needed it. 

But I remember that when the financial reform bill was in this 

committee, it was the Democrats on the committee who wanted to 

avoid the need for the FDIC to borrow from Treasury by creating 

an upfront resolution fund paid through assessments on financial 

institutions rather than taxpayers. But I also remember that it was 

the other side of the aisle who demanded that the upfront resolution fund be removed because they claimed it was—you guessed 

it—a bailout fund. 

Now, I would like you to go back to the financial bailouts of 2008 

and 2009 and tell us if there was any such action that we did back 

then that we could do now under the new rules of Dodd-Frank. 

Dodd-Frank actually said that there is no legal authority to use 

public money to keep a failing entity in business. The law actually 

forbids it, and it repeals the power that the Federal Reserve had 

to extend funds to any financial institution, as what has happened 

with the bailouts with AIG. 

So would you go back to this point, because this is a point we 

hear over and over again, how Dodd-Frank resolution authority 

protects taxpayers’ dollars. 

Mr. FRANK. Thank you. 

I would like just to say preliminarily, to comment on something 

Mr. Kupiec said, to the extent that we were responsible for 

JPMorgan Chase beefing up its compliance staff, I am not embarrassed. Frankly, if they had done that earlier, they would have 

saved themselves I don’t know how many—in the tens of billions 

of dollars for noncompliance. And I admire Jamie Dimon, I think 

he has done a good job, but they were not overcomplying by any 

means beforehand in a number of areas. 

The gentlewoman from New York is absolutely right. We did 

have a fund, and there has been a fundamental difference between 

the two parties on whether or not we should assess large financial 

institutions, not community banks, $50 billion or more. In fact, 

when we were in conference on this bill in 2010, and our position 

was, with the Senate, that when the CBO said it was going to cost 

$20 billion over a 10-year period, that we should get that from the 

large financial institutions, those of $50 billion and over, and that 

would have included everybody, whether or not they were SIFIs, et 

cetera, the Republicans objected in the Senate. There weren’t that 

many Republicans voting for it, but the Senate Republicans who 

were going to vote for the bill objected, Senators Brown, Snowe and 

24 

Collins, and made us take that out because they wouldn’t have 

given the Senate the 60 votes they needed and instead put it on 

the taxpayers. So, in fact, we had this history where the Republicans objected to an assessment on the large financial institutions 

and instead do it for the taxpayers. 

Similarly here, the Federal Reserve could not do AIG under this 

law. Now, it is true, people say, they can set up a broadly applicable facility, but under this law, and I think Mr. Sherman had a role 

in this, they have to guarantee that it is a solvent institution with 

a very high percentage of probability. So we have specifically prevented the Fed from doing what they did with AIG. 

Now, the argument, as I understand it, is that even though the 

law says—and the other difference is no money can—we do all recognize, as I said, going back to Ronald Reagan and Continental Illinois, that some institutions are so large that you can’t just let them 

not pay their debts without having reverberations. So the question 

is, what do you do about it? 

Under the law now in place, that effort to deal with their debts 

can’t happen until they have been put into receivership. The boards 

have done away with it. Shareholders are wiped out. So as I said, 

it is death panels but for the large institutions. And then any 

money that is spent beyond what was available from the owners 

has to come back from an assessment, and the Secretary of the 

Treasury is mandated—not authorized, mandated—to recover it. 

So the argument is that—and I have heard this from people—oh, 

in a political crisis, a financial crisis like that, there would be overwhelming political pressure on the Secretary of the Treasury to ignore Federal law and use public money indefinitely to keep an institution in business. I don’t know in what universe people have 

been living if they think—I think there would be enormous political 

pressure not to do anything at all. 

So, yes, I cannot think of any of these past efforts that would 

now be legal under our bill. 

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The time of the gentlelady has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. 

Garrett, chairman of our Capital Markets Subcommittee. 

Mr. GARRETT. I thank the chairman for a very timely hearing. 

And I think only former Chairman Frank could reference Secretary 

Geithner’s book and Chico Marx all in one breath. It reminded me 

of Groucho Marx’s statement: ‘‘From the moment I picked up the 

book until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday 

I am going to read the book.’’ 

So let me go first to Mr. Kupiec. 

No, maybe I will go first to the Congressman. Was it your intention that FSOC designates a nonbank—when they do designate a 

nonbank SIFI, that it would be regulated as a nonbank SIFI into 

perpetuity? 

Mr. FRANK. No. As a matter of fact, I— 

Mr. GARRETT. Thanks, because I didn’t think it was. 

Mr. Kupiec, is there a problem with the way that the Fed is handling that right now? Because I look and see— 

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Garrett, may I state—you are cutting me off. 

Mr. GARRETT. No, thanks. I appreciate— 

25 

Mr. FRANK. There was a premise in your question to which I did 

not agree, and you imputed me agreeing to it. In fact, I am very 

skeptical of designating nonbank institutions as SIFIs. It seems to 

me that the question assumed that I agreed that they should do 

that. I have been very skeptical of them doing that. 

Mr. GARRETT. Oh, great. I appreciate that. 

Mr. FRANK. I sent a comment to the FSOC to that effect. 

Mr. GARRETT. I appreciate that. 

And so, Mr. Kupiec, then, in your testimony, you pointed out that 

FSOC makes it nearly impossible for companies to know what 

steps they can take to avoid the designation as a SIFI. That makes 

no sense; for them not to be able to make that fact clear makes no 

sense to me. So I agree with you. Can you just jump off of what 

the Congressman just stated, and I guess you would agree with 

him that they should not be making these designations as well, and 

as long as they are, that they are inadequately telling us how they 

will not be in perpetuity? 

Mr. KUPIEC. I completely agree. And I thought there was some 

intention that the designation should be reviewed annually anyway. But since the designations themselves don’t explain why the 

institution—what the specific characteristics that make it a SIFI 

are, and what they would have to do to become undesignated, the 

process is really broken. 

Mr. GARRETT. Right. So I guess we have an agreement on that 

point. 

Also, I did catch your one comment, Congressman, earlier. You 

said you mentioned some areas that needed to be changed in DoddFrank, and I think you said there were other areas that also need 

further correction. The Senate recently unanimously passed one, 

which is call the Collins fix, to ensure the Fed can appropriately— 

those are my words, not theirs—regulate nonbank SIFIs. I assume, 

then, that you agree with that unanimous change to— 

Mr. FRANK. I am not familiar with the bill. I don’t have to read 

them all these days. 

Mr. GARRETT. Okay. 

Mr. FRANK. But can I say, Mr. Garrett, if I might, this whole conversation that the three of us have had starts from the standpoint 

that being designated a SIFI is an unpleasant thing, and that institutions should be empowered to resist it, which I think undercuts 

the point that being named a SIFI is such a great benefit, and 

being in that category is something that helps you. If it did, why 

would they all fight it so hard? 

Mr. GARRETT. We only have limited time. 

Mr. Kupiec, do you want to go to that point? 

Mr. KUPIEC. The problem with that reasoning is if you truly are 

a systemically important firm, and you are going to get the bailout, 

then you have a very big benefit by not having any of the regulations because you are going to be bailed out in the end anyway. So 

you would fight. You would fight even—so that it is—if you are systemically important, you are systemically important, in the end the 

government has to bail you out. And your best bet is to diffuse any 

regulation anyway. So they would fight like crazy even if the toobig-to-fail is a benefit. 

26 

Mr. GARRETT. And I think that is an important point. So let’s 

just give a hypothetical. Someday in the future, when a megabank, 

a SIFI, does go down, and that will happen again, part of the cost 

of that whole process, the resolution process, will be borne by 

whom? By the rest of the SIFIs, right? 

Mr. KUPIEC. If it goes through a Title II. 

Mr. FRANK. Not just SIFIs; any institution of $50 billion or more. 

Mr. GARRETT. Okay. So, then, the question is now we have designated these nonbank SIFIs, FSOC has recently done, including 

potentially for asset managers, right? So these asset managers will 

now be one that could be—or would be bearing some of the brunt 

of the bailout. Now, asset managers do not have a lot of capital. 

So where will the bailout actually be paid for? Won’t it be paid for 

by the retired widow who has funds in the asset manager? The retired widow will be paying for the reckless conduct of these SIFIs. 

Is that correct, Mr. Kupiec? 

Mr. KUPIEC. Yes. The asset management companies will have to 

get the money from somewhere, so the fees would have to go up. 

It would have to recoup it somewhere. 

Mr. GARRETT. Was that your intention, Congressman, that—let 

me restate the question. Is it your intention that retired widows 

and designated entities would be the ones who would bear the 

brunt if they were part of the resolution? 

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Garrett, if it was a serious question, you 

wouldn’t ask it with no time left. So I will wait for someone else 

to ask me that question so I can answer it in a reasonable way. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

Mr. GARRETT. It is a very serious question and a very serious 

problem. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady 

from New York, Ms. Velazquez. 

Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman Frank, as you have seen here today and you hear, we 

continue to hear that the Dodd-Frank Act is having a negative impact on the economy. Yet the stock market is reaching all-time 

highs, job creation is on the rebound, and access to capital for 

small businesses is the best it has been in 4 years. 

Now that you are in the real world out there, do you think that 

Main Street is buying this rhetoric that is not in line with the reality? 

Mr. FRANK. I think Main Street is not, and, as you know as 

Chair of the Small Business Committee while we were writing the 

bill and as a member of this committee, you added very significant 

input, and I think we tried very hard to deal with that. 

By the way, the argument the Republicans gave at the time, remember, there was a bill that we worked on that Treasury had 

asked us to do to encourage lending to— 

Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Small business. 

Mr. FRANK. —from community banks to small business, and the 

Republicans opposed it, and they said, the problem is not that 

banks won’t lend, it is that the small businesses don’t want to borrow because the economy is so bad. So they consistently argued 

that the problem was on the borrower and not the lender. 

27 

And if I could briefly just use your time to respond to the lastminute question or last-second question that I got before, the fact 

is that when we wrote the law talking about who would have to 

assess, we took into account the different levels of financial activity, and, in fact, asset managers are not exempt from contributing 

at all, but by formula they would contribute a much smaller share 

of what they have. And, in fact, I don’t think they should be included as SIFIs. That doesn’t determine they don’t contribute. 

But there is a formula that would minimize their contribution, 

and I would say, and I was proud to represent Fidelity and Putnam 

and other institutions, but if they had to make a contribution along 

with all the others, they would not have to go after old widows or 

even young widows. There are ways that they could do that out of 

the very considerable profits that they made. 

But to go back on—even on community banks, we also increased the deposit limit to $250,000, which the community banks wanted, 

and in our bill in the House, we indefinitely extended transaction 

account guarantees. So, again, many small banks said to us, we 

want to do business with small businesses, but they need to keep 

more than $250,000 around for their transactions. We said yes to 

it. Unfortunately, it was later terminated in the new Congress. 

I do agree that—and I think, frankly, sometimes it is the lawyers’ fault. I have talked to some people, because I did not recall 

many provisions in the bill other than the mortgage one, and I understand that, that affected smaller banks. And one of the things 

I found was some lawyers were persuading community banks that 

they had to go to great efforts to show that they were compliant 

with the Volcker Rule or with the compensation pieces. 

That is why I agreed with Mr. Tarullo, Governor Tarullo, and we 

were just making clear that if you don’t do those things, you are 

exempt from them. And I think in some cases people have 

overlawyered to try to prove that. But, yes, we tried very hard to 

be respectful of the community banks, and I was pleased when the 

independent community bankers said they thought the bill was 

okay. 

Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Thank you. 

Mr. Carfang, you mentioned the uncertainty facing the financial 

sector due to the delays in rulemaking. Would you agree that the 

Federal regulators should expedite Dodd-Frank implementations to 

bring certainty to the industry? 

Mr. CARFANG. Ma’am, I am absolutely in favor of certainty. And 

if there can be an expedited process to all of this, or a date certain 

in which this ends, and we have a period where we know what the 

rules are and can operate, that would be a very good thing, yes. 

Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Okay. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The gentlelady yields back. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Neugebauer, chairman of our Housing and Insurance Subcommittee. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Kupiec, in your testimony you said that 4 years after the 

passage of Dodd-Frank, there is no evidence that it really ended 

too-big-to-fail, and indeed, Dodd-Frank has probably reinforced investors’ expectations that the largest financial institutions actually 

28 

benefit from government safety net protections that are not available to smaller institutions. 

Can you kind of quickly tell me what advantages did you see 

that those institutions have over smaller institutions like Mr. Wilson’s? 

Mr. KUPIEC. I think that the perception that the government is 

so closely watching them, and they are subject to much, much 

tighter regulation and supervision gives investors the impression 

that they will be protected by the government; that the Federal Reserve, who is intrusively involved in their operations, is responsible 

for not letting them fail. 

And I think there is the system set up where the intrusive regulation has replaced the market discipline that you usually see in 

banking markets, and so the cost of funding for these institutions, 

the largest institutions, is now much less than the cost of funding. 

It is more than 20—on average, about 25 basis points; 22 is the 

smallest year, 32 is the biggest in the years I looked at. So there 

is a definite cost of funding advantage to being a large bank. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Mr. Frank mentioned several times that he 

felt that the larger financial institutions actually didn’t benefit 

from Dodd-Frank, that it was more onerous on them. And I wanted 

to quote some things that some people who run some of these financial institutions say. Lloyd Blankfein, for example, said that 

Goldman Sachs would be one of the biggest beneficiaries of this reform. Jamie Dimon even pointed out that while margins may come 

down, the market share may increase due to a bigger moat. And 

so several CEOs have said that Dodd-Frank solved—for example, 

Wells Fargo said that I don’t think Dodd-Frank got it right or 

solved the issue. 

So the question is, we have gone through all these gymnastics of 

doing this, but, in fact, the bigger financial institutions have gotten 

bigger, and we have seen— 

Mr. FRANK. First— 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. I didn’t ask you a question. 

Mr. FRANK. Oh, sorry. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. So the question is the bigger financial institutions have gotten larger, and we have seen a lot of consolidation 

in the smaller institutions, community banks. We have seen a 

number of consolidations. If we continue without making some 

changes to Dodd-Frank, do you think that is the direction that we 

continue to go, that the larger financial institutions with that advantage get larger at the expense, in many cases, of the smaller institutions? 

Mr. KUPIEC. Yes. I think very definitely that the changes in 

Dodd-Frank will change the—will increase the consolidation in the 

industry and tend to make assets and deposits be concentrated in 

the largest institutions. 

There is a number of features, and it is not just the regulation 

of the largest institutions. Dodd-Frank had a big impact on Subchapter S banks, which most small banks are. It doesn’t allow you 

to pay dividends if you get below a capital threshold. And this is 

the means by which you get money out of a Subchapter S so they 

can’t pay their owner’s dividends. It stopped the trust preferred seVerDate Nov 24 2008 18:50 Jun 05, 2015 Jkt 091158 PO 00000 Frm 00032 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\91158.TXT TERRI
29 

curities (TRuPs), it eliminated TRuPs, which was a major source 

of funding for the smallest banks. 

So I think it has shut down—and the large deposits, if you are 

a large corporate or municipal, you are going to go to the largest 

banks where you think things will be protected here in a Title II 

resolution. And so I think there is a lot that tilts the whole system 

over the long run towards the larger banks. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Mr. Wilson, sometimes when you are competing for deposits in your marketplace, particularly if it is a large 

deposit, do you find it difficult to compete with some of the larger 

financial on, say, your CD rates or money market rates? 

Mr. WILSON. We have challenges in that, but we are in a market 

that is pretty much awash in deposits right now, part of the oil 

field activity in our area. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. But with your cost—you said you had 17 employees. With your cost, and you add additional compliance costs, 

it is putting some pressure on your margins in what you could pay 

on deposits based on what your loan rates are? 

Mr. WILSON. Yes, sir, our margins have squeezed considerably 

over the last 4 years. 

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. With that, Mr. Chairman, I will yield back. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The gentleman yields back his 10 seconds. 

The Chair will now recognize the gentleman from California, Mr. 

Sherman. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To set the record straight, this $50 billion we are talking about was originally $10 billion in the bill, and some of us had to fight 

very hard to raise that. The original approach was that the SIFIs 

get the bailout, and the medium-sized institutions are among those 

paying for it, even though the medium-sized institutions never 

could have gotten the bailout. 

The problem we have is twofold, and these problems continue: 

first, the existence of entities that are too-big-to-fail; and second, 

the credit rating agencies. As to the existence of entities that are 

too-big-to-fail, we are told that the current law prohibits using taxpayer money to bail them out. I was here in 2008; law prohibited 

using taxpayer money to bail them out. We passed a new law. And 

one would suspect, in fact, the markets are convinced that is exactly what will happen again. 

And that is why Mr. Kupiec testifies that these giant institutions 

enjoy a 22 basis points benefit. I have submitted to the record of 

previous hearings that it is closer to 80 basis points of benefit. And 

as Mr. Kupiec points out, the sweet spot is to be a SIFI, but not 

to be classified as a SIFI. So if the markets believe that you are 

so big that you will take down the whole economy, they will loan 

you money at a lower rate knowing that Congress acted in 2008 

and would probably act the same way again. The solution to toobig-to-fail is not to have institutions that can take down the entire 

economy. 

Mr. Chairman, and I mean the current chairman who has just 

left the room, the Republican report that we are here having a 

hearing on identifies that there are only two legislative answers 

that have been put forward to deal with this. One is Mr. Capuano’s 

30 

bill that would require additional capital to be held by those that 

are enjoying this subsidy; and then there is my bill and Bernie 

Sanders’ bill to say too-big-to-fail is too-big-to-exist. 

Since the purpose of this hearing is to focus on solving problems 

that haven’t been solved, the biggest problem is we may be asked 

to bail out institutions again, and there are only two legislative 

proposals to deal with the problem identified in the Republican report. I don’t know if the current chairman can speak for the permanent chairman of the committee, but I would look forward to asking him why we can’t mark up the only two legislative proposals 

identified in the Republican report to deal with the problem that 

we are talking about here. 

I have a question for Mr. Wilson, and that is, as you already 

know, the regulators are crafting—the regulators are currently 

crafting the QRM rule. Do you agree that this rule needs to be 

issued promptly and closely track the language of the QM rule to 

ensure a transparent secondary mortgage market? 

Mr. WILSON. I am an advocate for if the bank keeps the mortgage in his portfolio, those rules should not apply to the bank. That 

is 100 percent risk retention. 

Mr. SHERMAN. That is, I think, a different issue. 

Mr. Carfang, do you have a different— 

Mr. CARFANG. Risk retention is very important. That is how capital gets allocated appropriately. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Okay. 

Mr. Chairman, I was addressing you while you weren’t here, so 

I will repeat myself. 

Chairman HENSARLING. Then I didn’t hear you. 

Mr. SHERMAN. What? 

Chairman HENSARLING. Then I didn’t hear you. 

Mr. SHERMAN. And that is why I will use my last half a minute 

to ask you a question, which is since the Republican report says 

we have a huge problem, the too-big-to-fail institutions might be 

bailed out, since your report indicates there are only two legislative 

proposals to deal with that problem, Mr. Capuano’s bill and mine, 

is there any chance that instead of just talking about how bad 

some prior bill is, that we would actually consider the only two legislative proposals identified in your report and mark them up? 

Chairman HENSARLING. Perhaps the gentleman missed the 

Chair’s opening comments when he said we will mark up too-bigto-fail before this Congress is over. 

The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. 

Lucas, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee. 

Mr. LUCAS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I would like to move 

over to the subject of Title VII and the derivatives markets. 

And, Mr. Deas, your testimony is more than a little familiar to 

me. As chairman of the Agriculture Committee, my committee and 

I have held 17 oversight hearings on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the derivatives market, and the implementation of 

Dodd-Frank over the last 4 years. Your testimony asking for greater oversight to the implementation process and concern that end 

users are being treated like large Wall Street banks is something 

31 

that this committee and the Agriculture Committee have heard 

dozens of times from dozens of witnesses. 

Now, that is why just about every issue you raised in your testimony, we addressed in my legislation to reauthorize the CFTC, 

H.R. 4413, the Consumer Protection and End User Relief Act, 

which passed the House last month with a large bipartisan majority. And you are correct, Mr. Deas, that end users did not create 

the financial crisis in 2008 and should not be regulated like they 

did. End users are the job creators and should be putting resources 

into research and development of the projects to grow their businesses and should not be required to put valuable resources in 

margin accounts. 

As you mentioned, the House has twice passed the Business Risk 

Mitigation and Price Stabilization Act with large bipartisan majorities, 141 votes last year. Unfortunately, the Senate, that other 

body, has not acted on this bill, so I included the prohibition on 

charging end user margin in the CFTC Reauthorization Act. 

Tell us, Mr. Deas, can you quantify the cost that FMC would 

incur in possible job losses if this protection is not enacted into law 

and FMC has to post marginal in its derivatives transactions? 

Could you expand on that for a moment, please? 

Mr. DEAS. Yes, sir. Thank you for that question. FMC is also a 

member of the Business Roundtable, which is itself a member, 

along with FMC, of the Coalition for Derivatives End-Users, and 

we surveyed the other nonfinancial members of the Business 

Roundtable and found that on average, for FMC and those other 

nonbusiness members, it would be $269 million that would need to 

be set aside for meeting these margin accounts, and that was only 

assuming a 3 percent initial margin without allowing for any variation margin. 

And so that would be a direct subtraction of funds that we would 

otherwise use to invest in capital equipment, to expand our business, in inventory to support higher sales, in research and development to innovate new products, and ultimately, we hope, to grow 

our employment. 

Mr. LUCAS. It seems that Senate action on H.R. 4413 therefore 

would be an important thing to help the economy. 

Mr. Chairman, if I could note for just a moment that on this 

fourth anniversary of Dodd-Frank, like a number of Members in 

this room, having been a part of the legislative action in the committee and across the Floor and the conference committee, time 

tends to modify our memories about how things are done. But as 

I remember it, the derivative section of what would ultimately be 

the Dodd-Frank Act started as a very bipartisan piece of legislation 

in the House Agriculture Committee, with support from both sides 

of the aisle. 

As I remember it, when we got to this committee, there was 

input from the Minority, this side of the aisle presently, but at that 

time the political minority. As I remember, the bill went across the 

Floor with a number of supportive votes from all sides of the room. 

When we got to conference, the decision was made by the conference committee chairman to set the House work product aside 

and take up Senator Dodd’s product. And from that point on, as my 

memory goes, it was not too much of a bipartisan process. 

32 

I just note to all my colleagues that serving on several committees, some with a very strong tradition of bipartisanship, that we 

began Dodd-Frank, whatever the end result was, I think, in a fashion that was appropriate for what we were trying to accomplish, 

but by the end I don’t remember the Minority having that much 

input, Mr. Chairman. Maybe you remember things differently. 

With that, I yield to the chairman, and I yield back to his conclusion. 

Chairman HENSARLING. I think that the gentleman’s memory is 

quite vivid, notwithstanding the fact I recall being there for about 

24 hours. But, yes, the gentleman’s memory is correct. 

Does the gentleman yield back? 

Mr. LUCAS. A bill only reflects how it is put together. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The gentleman yields back the balance 

of his time. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from New York, Mr. 

Meeks, ranking member of our Financial Institutions Subcommittee. 

Mr. MEEKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I appreciate the gentleman’s last line of questioning. But I also—because listening to 

the testimony of the witnesses thus far, I do want to see whether 

or not there is anything that we can agree upon. So I will ask, I 

guess, Mr. Wilson first: Do you agree that it was bad behavior by 

some financial institutions that created the problem that we had 

with reference to the financial crisis? 

Mr. WILSON. There was no bad behavior on my part. 

Mr. MEEKS. No, not your bank. I said some financial institutions, 

the larger ones in particular. 

Mr. WILSON. Some of those guys did something—financial institutions and nonfinancial institutions did something that got us in 

that— 

Mr. MEEKS. Somebody did something. 

Mr. WILSON. Yes, sir. 

Mr. MEEKS. Something went astray, and things went bad; is that 

correct? 

Mr. WILSON. Yes, sir. 

Mr. MEEKS. And I ask the same question to Mr. Carfang. 

Mr. CARFANG. Sure. There were a number of contributors, and 

large financial institutions were— 

Mr. MEEKS. So somebody did something wrong. On their own, we 

didn’t have anything covering it, but somebody did something 

wrong. A lot of people did something wrong to cause the crash. Is 

that correct? 

Mr. CARFANG. Absolutely. Sure. 

Mr. MEEKS. Okay. 

Mr. Deas? 

Mr. DEAS. Sure, yes, there were financial institutions which engaged in risky activities, and those risks blew up in 2008. 

Mr. MEEKS. And Mr. Kupiec? 

Mr. KUPIEC. Yes, there were lots of guilty parties. Regulation 

was very subpar. The regulators missed all kinds of warning signs. 

There were consumers all over the country who took out loans trying to profit by low rates and flipping houses, and they were taken 

33 

advantage of, or they were facilitated by the financial institutions, 

but it was not just financial institutions that caused the problem. 

It was widespread. Blame is widespread. 

Mr. MEEKS. Let me go back. So then, now, from what I am hearing, and I have heard from a lot of my colleagues especially on the 

other side of the aisle, is basically what they want to do is get rid 

of Dodd-Frank. If I listen to what they are saying, they are basically saying the cause of the problem and the problems we are having now is Dodd-Frank. Dodd-Frank didn’t exist when the problem 

was caused. Dodd-Frank is as a result of the problem. 

So now, I don’t know whether individuals have tried to get rid 

of Dodd-Frank altogether. So the next question is, is there anything in Dodd-Frank that you agree with? Mr. Wilson? 

Mr. WILSON. Yes, sir. 

Mr. MEEKS. Mr. Carfang? 

Mr. CARFANG. Sure. 

Mr. MEEKS. Mr. Deas? 

Mr. DEAS. Yes, sir. 

Mr. MEEKS. Mr. Kupiec? 

Mr. KUPIEC. I think the goals of Dodd-Frank to eliminate too-bigto-fail and the problems that arise from that are admirable goals, 

and I support those goals. I just don’t think Dodd-Frank does it 

very well or does it at all. 

Mr. MEEKS. Mr. Frank, would you tell us the problems and how 

you arrived at the fact, going to the last question, that Dodd-Frank 

came into existence, and what it did do to help save the economy 

and put us where we are today? 

Mr. FRANK. There are two areas—and the chairman mentioned 

that there had been a lot of regulation including some increased 

regulation. Mike Oxley did Sarbanes-Oxley in a bipartisan way. 

President Bush signed it. There were other things. But there were 

two innovations, and I think the problem was not so much that we 

deregulated as a society, but that we did not have new regulations 

to keep up with new activity. 

And there were two. One was the financial derivative business, 

and I noted what Mr. Deas said, and I agree with him essentially 

on the end users, and I said that. But there was risky speculative 

activity that became evident in 2008 basically from people who 

were using that as an end in and of itself. It wasn’t connected to 

helping the productive economy. 

Secondly, and most troubling, was securitization of loans. And 

what happened was people thought they had found a way to get 

rid of risk. I think Mr. Carfang correctly said you don’t get rid of 

risk, you shuffle it off. 

And so one of—in those two areas, these new financial derivatives—remember, Congress actually in 2000 enacted legislation 

that says to the CFTC, stay away from derivatives. And we did 

have, we thought, in the Homeowners Equity Protection Act to 

mandate to the Fed to regulate subprime, they said they wouldn’t 

do it. Many of my conservative colleagues said we should stay away 

from regulating subprime, that was a good thing. 

The problem was with securitization, people were making loans, 

and essentially the incentive became to make a quantity of loans 

and not quality. And that is why two important parts of the bill— 

34 

too-big-to-fail, if we get to too-big-to-fail, then things have failed. 

We don’t want the institutions to fail. By stopping these irresponsible loans and making people stand behind the financial derivatives, you hope very much to make it unlikely that people will fail. 

If there hadn’t been bad loans, and AIG hadn’t sold credit default 

swaps to people who had bought securities from these bad loans 

with no idea of how much they owed, we wouldn’t have that kind 

of a problem. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. 

Luetkemeyer, vice chairman of our Housing and Insurance Subcommittee. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I appreciate the opportunity for all the good folks to be here 

today and listen to their concerns. And it is interesting, as somebody who is involved in the community banking industry, and has 

been on both sides of the table as an examiner and as a banker 

before, and then seen the regulatory onslaught that has come as 

a result of the Dodd-Frank bill, it is mind-boggling to see the effect 

of what has happened. When I go talk to community bankers, the 

first thing they talk about is the amount of regulation that is coming out of Washington. 

Mr. Carfang, you talked about the fear and uncertainty and ambiguity. And, man, I hear that every time I talk to a bankers group. 

I just got done with one a minute ago. Another group of them were 

here. It is this uncertainty that causes them to not want to go out 

and invest. And the local community, the business people themselves, have this same fear and ambiguity and uncertainty from 

the standpoint of not being able or not wanting to risk their hardearned blood, sweat, and tears business by expanding. 

And I have had a banker tell me before that—I asked him, ‘‘How 

are things going?’’ He said, ‘‘Last week, I had three people come in 

for whom I had approved the loans for their businesses over the 

past 2 weeks, and all three came in and sort of pushed themselves 

away from the table and said, no, we are going to wait. We are concerned about the economy. We are concerned about this regulatory 

environment coming out here. And obviously, the President’s 

health care law is a big problem, but also, it comes down to DoddFrank and the accessibility of funds, the cost of those funds and of 

the uncertainty that it causes within our economy.’’ 

So, Mr. Wilson, you talked about—basically, I think, my view is 

that community banks were not the problem, yet they have been 

roped in as part of the solution. As a result, you talked a while ago 

about less flexibility and less ability to serve the unique needs of 

the communities that you sit in. I would like you to expound on 

that just a little bit from the standpoint of what goes on with a 

community bank and how you fulfill those unique needs. 

Mr. WILSON. We were in a market that is 85 percent Hispanic, 

and the mortgage loans that we would originate were somewhat 

creative, you might say, but they were 5-year balloons. They were 

not high-risk mortgages. We have very little losses in those portfolios, but we were able to uniquely tailor that loan to meet that 

customer’s needs. And I might say during the lifetime of that loan, 

35 

we were very flexible if a crisis happened in those families in working with those customers. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. One of the things that I think has happened, 

and as somebody who comes from a rural part of the country, I go 

back home every weekend, and you see that there is another bank 

that is sold out to a competitor, a neighbor or a larger institution, 

and you guys have alluded to it this morning about the cost of compliance. And it is not that it is a bad economy, the economy is stagnated, but at some point, there is not a particular law or particular 

rule that caused it to happen, but it is an accumulation effect that 

at some point it is kind of like the straw that breaks the camel’s 

back, that says, we can’t take any more. We can’t continue to 

spread these costs out over our entire business. 

And you see this consolidation going on. I know that yesterday 

in The Wall Street Journal there was an article about some of the 

banks getting close to the $50 billion mark with regards to being 

designated as a SIFI. And, I have a bill to try and say, hey, look, 

it is not the size; it is the size, complexity, interconnectivity, and 

the risk that the bank is taking. That should be what determines 

a SIFI, not necessarily just the size, wherein all these rules and 

regulations kick in. 

So I was kind of curious, Mr. Carfang, you have a lot of expertise 

in this area. What do you think about the situation that we need 

to do something about this SIFI designation to be able to protect 

some of the midsize banks as well? 

Mr. CARFANG. One of the fears of the whole SIFI is that brings 

you under the jurisdiction of FSOC. And FSOC is an organization 

that essentially creates double jeopardy for everyone in the sense 

that FSOC steps in when it believes another regulator has failed 

and therefore creates another level of uncertainty, another bite at 

the apple, if you will. 

And that creates a lot of concerns on the part of financial institutions, but to the customers, the business borrowers, they are concerned about whether their banks will be fully compliant or fully 

able to make loans when the businesses need them. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. It was interesting yesterday, the article talked about two banks in particular. One of them, as it hit the $50 

billion mark, its stock went down 15 percent. There is another 

bank that is approaching the $50 billion mark. Its stock is down 

7.4 percent this year, not because of anything they have done, but 

because of their size. That is an unintended consequence of this situation that can’t be allowed to continue. 

Mr. Chairman, I will yield back. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Massachusetts, 

Mr. Capuano, ranking member of our Housing and Insurance Subcommittee. 

Mr. CAPUANO. Barney, do you miss us? 

Mr. FRANK. No. 

Mr. CAPUANO. I don’t blame you. 

Mr. FRANK. And I am not under oath. I could have said—I could 

have fudged. 

Mr. CAPUANO. I think the gentlemen of the panel and body has 

seen this again. This is another one of these show-and-tell hearings 

36 

with apparently no purpose to it. And for me, I am actually kind 

of tired of them. If it wasn’t for Barney, though I love you all, I 

would have left, because this seems to be going nowhere. And it is 

going nowhere. 

Mr. Wilson, you already made a proposal. I would sign on to this 

tomorrow. For a small community bank holding their own mortgages at 100 percent, you shouldn’t be subject to QM. Sign me up. 

That is easy. But we don’t want to talk about that. We want to talk 

about how bad Dodd-Frank is. We don’t want to talk about the 

things we can come to an agreement on to fix some of the things. 

We all think we can fix them, not a problem. Instead we need to 

light candles at the alters of outside ideologue think tanks. That 

is what we have to do. 

We can’t talk about too-big-to-fail. Many of us think that we did 

a pretty good job with too-big-to-fail. But I for one think, fine, if 

we can do more, let’s do it. What is the problem? So I put a bill 

in, others have a bill in, H.R. 2266, I can’t get the ideologues to 

support it or even to look at it unless we repeal Dodd-Frank. 

How are we going to get to an end? How are we ever going to 

get any of these things addressed if we simply sit here and say, oh, 

we hate this, we love that, here are my speaking points for my 

campaign. Fannie and Freddie, does everybody here realize that 

the U.S. Government has made money on Fannie and Freddie? Mr. 

Wilson, do you know that? 

Mr. WILSON. Yes, sir. 

Mr. CAPUANO. Mr. Carfang, do you know that? 

Barney, I know that you know it. 

Mr. Deas, do you know it? 

Mr. DEAS. No, sir. It is all I can do to keep up with derivatives 

and how they affect end users. 

Mr. CAPUANO. Fair answer. But a lot of those derivatives are tied 

to Fannie and Freddie, so you should know who you are paying, because those derivatives are actually costing you money so that we 

can take money out of Fannie and Freddie. 

Mr. Kupiec, did you know we are making money on Fannie and 

Freddie? 

Mr. KUPIEC. I knew. 

Mr. CAPUANO. Here we are, we are making money, we are actually costing homeowners more than they should be charged so that 

we can use it as a piggy bank, yet we can’t have an honest discussion on how to fix it. Instead we have an ideologically based bill 

that gets out of this committee, sits on the Floor—I have never 

seen a major bill sit on the Floor for as long as that proposal has— 

because they can’t get it passed. 

And that is just one of them. We are having trouble with TRIA. 

We can’t do it with the Highway Trust Fund. We can’t do it with 

immigration, because we are lighting candles at the ideologue 

altar. 

Help me find a way to get to these points. 

Mr. Wilson, can you talk to some of your friends over there to 

let us do what we can do? Because I love them all, but they won’t 

listen to me because I am from Massachusetts, I guess, and we are 

too liberal to be listened to. Could you get them to listen to us on 

some of these things? 

37 

Mr. WILSON. I am excited that we have consensus on addressing 

the needs of community bankers. 

Mr. CAPUANO. The independent community bankers actually supported H.R. 2266. The American Banker wrote that it was a brilliant idea. And by the way, it wasn’t my idea; it was a professor 

at BU, Con Hurley’s, idea that I simply put into legislation. 

I guess I don’t really have any questions because the truth is I 

already know some of the things that need to be done, and I am 

happy to work with any of you or anybody else who actually wants 

to address some of the problems in a bipartisan way. But I have 

to be honest, I am getting tired of the regular hearings that we 

have simply stating political points over and over and over. 

Dodd-Frank has done a very good job at containing the crisis 

that we had, putting us back on the footing. Can it be improved? 

Of course, it can. Barney will be the first one to tell you he didn’t 

get everything he wanted. The 5 percent retention, I think it 

should be higher. There are others who would like to change some 

of these things. Those are changes to a bill that already works. It 

is not just throwing it out and pretending that we did something 

terrible. 

Gentlemen, I am sorry I had no questions for you, but the truth 

is, I can only suffer this so much. 

Thank you, and I yield back the remainder of my time. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The gentleman yields back. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from South Carolina, 

Mr. Mulvaney. 

Mr. MULVANEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And I suppose in part in response to Mr. Capuano, let’s see if we 

can’t find something that we can actually accomplish. I was struck 

by the chairman’s opening comments, the stories he heard from his 

bankers in Texas, the story that Mr. Wilson told about his compliance costs going up as a result of Dodd-Frank. 

And I am reminded of a story that I heard when I was in 

Charleston, South Carolina, with a small community bank, and 

they had been through their first or second examination after 

Dodd-Frank. And the examiner—they told the story, the examiner 

had asked them at the end, how you are finding the new regs? How 

are you finding the new environment? And the banker, it is a small 

community bank, said, it is killing us. We have 18 employees, and 

we had to hire 3 people last year just to fill out paperwork, and 

it is just killing us. And he said that the response of the examiner 

was outrageous, that the response from the examiner was this 

blank look of nonrecognition when the examiner said, I don’t understand; then it is working because you have created three jobs. 

And if you have a complete misunderstanding of how you create 

wealth and how you create jobs, then maybe that part of DoddFrank is a success for you. 

And I think Mr. Kupiec mentioned that the stories coming out 

that JPMorgan Chase said, I think, earlier this year they are going 

to hire 3,000 more compliance officers this year on top of 7,000 

compliance officers last year, yet total employment at JPMorgan 

will go down by 5,000 people. 

So we are moving away from this concept of a productive financial sector into a compliant financial sector, and I am fearful that 

38 

may be part of the long-term legacy of this particular piece of legislation. 

But if we go to Mr. Capuano’s point about focusing on things that 

maybe we can agree on, I am encouraged by his comment, by Mr. 

Frank’s comments that perhaps community banks, especially those 

that are holding loans, should be exempt from QM. I think maybe 

that is a move in the right direction. Let’s see if we can build on 

that and maybe agree that this $50 billion arbitrary threshold is 

a bad idea; and that maybe picking a number—I was surprised to 

hear Mr. Sherman say, because I wasn’t here at the time, that 

number was originally $10 billion, which means that we are actually contemplating a regime where a bank, a financial institution 

with $11 billion would be treated essentially the same as one with 

$1 trillion, which is just absurd. 

So I will start with you, Mr. Kupiec, and I will go down the line. 

Mr. FRANK. Could I just add one point? 

Mr. MULVANEY. I will give you a chance, Mr. Frank. I promise. 

You know that I will. 

But I want to start with Mr. Kupiec as to whether or not he 

thinks it would be better to replace the $50 billion threshold with, 

say, something that actually looks at the complexity of the business, not just the raw size, but the actual business model and what 

the financial institutions are engaging in. 

Mr. Frank, I will ask you the same question afterwards. 

Mr. KUPIEC. It is an excellent question, and there are two aspects to it. On a positive note on what you can do to fix too-bigto-fail in Dodd-Frank, Title I should have been used to direct the 

FDIC in their regular bank resolution process to be required to 

split up large banks that fail rather than to sell them to another 

large bank in a whole bank resolution. That is how we got the biggest too-big-to-fail banks, and Dodd-Frank didn’t do that. 

So it would have to modify the FDIC Act so that the FDIC did 

not have to do a least cost resolution, so that the whole notion that 

the FDIC handles bank failures well under the existing rule is nonsense. That is how we got the big banks we got. But if you fix that, 

then many of the regional banks, the banks between, say, $50 billion and $250 billion, don’t really pose a systemic risk to the economy. The systemic risk they pose is if they fail and they go through 

an FDIC resolution. 

The FDIC is just going to sell them whole to another bank, and 

pretty soon you have a $100 billion bank and then another $300 

billion bank. So the resolution process built up a too-big-to-fail industry structure. That is what Dodd-Frank should have fixed. It 

should have addressed that flaw, and it didn’t even touch it. Ordered resolution plans don’t speak to that at all. It is all about a 

bankruptcy proceeding and everything else. It never recognized the 

resolution process that was in place. A regular FDIC resolution 

process is broken when it comes to a large bank, and it doesn’t 

have to be. 

Mr. MULVANEY. We will come back to my point, Mr. Kupiec, which is this $50 billion arbitrary number, it just sells, doesn’t it? 

Mr. KUPIEC. It doesn’t come from anywhere. There is no science that came up with $50 billion. The problem with having this potpourri of things and turning it over to the FSOC is there is nothing 

39 

that constrains the FSOC. So if you turned it over to the FSOC and 

said, okay, $50 billion is out, but the FSOC has to consider complexity, interconnectedness, size, I don’t know, whatever else you 

want to care about, the FSOC could sit there, and it is full of bank 

regulators, and they could look at it real hard and say, oh, yes, we 

looked at these; $50 billion is where it stays. There is nothing that 

fixes the problem if you kick it to the FSOC. 

Mr. MULVANEY. And I apologize, Mr. Frank. I did intend to ask 

you the same question. Maybe someone else will give you their 

time to— 

Mr. FRANK. If I could just clarify. I think you may have misunderstood Mr. Sherman because you weren’t here. The notion that 

it was once $10 billion, it was never—nobody ever thought about 

$10 billion as maybe it was SIFI. The $10 billion was the number 

at which you would have to contribute if there had been a bailout. 

So some people proposed it— 

Mr. MULVANEY. I wasn’t suggesting it was a SIFI. It is just a 

heightened level of scrutiny whether or not— 

Mr. FRANK. That was not about regulation. That was about contributions. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. 

Clay, ranking member of our Monetary Policy Subcommittee. 

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I welcome back Mr. 

Frank. 

Just going along with that line of questioning, Senator Warren 

of Massachusetts has advocated reinstating Glass-Steagall in order 

to address the issue of too-big-to-fail. What are your thoughts on 

that, Mr. Frank? Should we go back and address— 

Mr. FRANK. No. I voted against the repeal of Glass-Steagall at 

the time because I thought it did not help benefit the new regulation. Glass-Steagall is a 70-year-old bill. I think the thing that I 

talked about as having caused the problem, the invention of the financial derivatives without backing, credit to false swaps, insurance not regulated in the way insurance should be regulated, 

securitization of mortgages, Glass-Steagall wouldn’t have stopped 

any of that. You could have still made all of those bad mortgage 

loans. 

Then the question is, do you break up the banks? And I did agree 

with Mr. Luetkemeyer that complexity is part of the issue. I agree 

with that, and that is one of the things that we asked them to look 

at with regard to those where there is a discretion about being a 

SIFI. That, by the way, is why I think the Volcker Rule is very important and why I changed my own position on the question of the 

push-outs. I originally didn’t agree with Senator Lincoln’s proposal 

about pushing out the derivatives. But there are ways of reducing 

the complexity, and I think it is not just size, it is complexity, and 

having them do less of the derivative area is a very good way to 

diminish the complexity. 

The other problem is people said, the banks are too big. My question is, what is the level at which you have to get them down? Remember, the precipitating event to the questions in 2008 was the 

failure of Lehman Brothers, so presumably, if you think the answer 

is no bank should be too big so that its disappearance would cause 

40 

a tremor, then the big issue to be is Lehman Brothers was at the 

time. And then the question is, how do you get there? How does 

the Federal Government order this dismantlement? 

I do think that the complexity issue of the Volcker Rule and the 

push-outs help. There was also a bill—an amendment to our bill 

that was adopted, authored by Paul Kanjorski when he was here, 

which does give the Fed the power to order the divestiture of any 

particular segment of any particular institution if it believes that 

it has gotten out of hand and isn’t showing—doesn’t have appropriate control. 

So I do think there is room for subtlety in that, but I don’t think 

Glass-Steagall does it. As I said, if Glass-Steagall had been in effect, it wouldn’t have affected AIG. Nothing in Glass-Steagall 

would have kept AIG from coming to the Fed and saying, we owe 

$170 billion in credit to false swaps, and we have no—we didn’t 

know how much we owed, and we know how to pay it off, and it 

wouldn’t have stopped people from 100 percent securitization and 

making bad mortgage loans. These were new things that needed to 

be regulated in a new way, which I think is what we tried to do 

in the bill. 

Mr. CLAY. Thank you for that response. 

The housing market has seen some signs of recovery with foreclosure rates declining, home sales rising, and equity creeping upward. Do you think the Dodd-Frank Act had an effect on the housing market, and just over time the housing market has corrected 

itself? 

Mr. FRANK. We have had an effect, and, as I said, I am surprised 

some people lament it. There are fewer loans available for very 

poor people. And I wish there weren’t poor people, but lending the 

money when they cannot afford to pay it back isn’t doing anybody 

any good. Then the lending institution—unless they managed to 

securitize and pass it off on some other entity. 

I think, to the extent that we have seen the stabilization of the 

economy in general, that has helped the housing market. I think 

that the accommodation of things that have helped turn around 

this very serious recession have been helpful. 

Let me just comment on one thing, and I appreciate that people 

have talked about the uncertainty, et cetera. Some of that is inevitable. It has taken longer than it should have, probably because I 

think we have had a problem with funding for the CFTC, but transitions are painful. We were in a situation until 2009 where a lack 

of regulation of some things, a whole set of practices that had 

grown up that had outstripped regulation, were causing problems, 

and I think it was necessary to go to a new set of rules. And it is 

painful to go through the transition. So I accept the fact that there 

is some uncertainty now, but I do believe that 3 or 4 years from 

now, that part of the problem will be over. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. 

Duffy, vice chairman of our Financial Institutions Subcommittee. 

Mr. DUFFY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Listen, to Mr. Frank’s recent comment, I agree that we should 

not be making loans to borrowers who can’t pay them back. That 

is a good thing. But I would argue that the pendulum has swung 

41 

too far over, that traditionally there is a group of people who could 

get loans and could pay them back who now can’t get loans because 

of Dodd-Frank. And so it is where that pendulum has swung that 

concerns me where people who are not of the highest income, but 

now can’t get loans because of Dodd-Frank. 

I know when this bill passed, I was not in Congress. I had the 

privilege of viewing this from my home couch in Wisconsin, but the 

claim was made that this ended too-big-to-fail, and I think the jury 

has come back: Dodd-Frank has not ended too-big-to-fail. We have 

larger institutions which partook in the crisis, new rules and regulations have now come out, and those rules and regulations, that 

the intent was to stay with the larger banks, have now come down 

to our community banks and our credit unions, making it more difficult for community banks and credit unions to make loans across 

Main Street America. 

And if you are a large institution, and you look at the new regulatory regime, you would applaud it. You would think this is fantastic because you have economies of scale. You can deal with the 

rules and regulations far better than your smaller competitors. 

These rules, you might say they are bad, but really, they benefit 

you because now you have a competitive advantage. 

It helps the large institutions and crushes the small institutions, 

and this is what I hear from my smaller banks, my community 

banks all across Wisconsin. It is making it harder for them to compete, harder for them to do their job, which means it is harder for 

families to access capital. It is harder for businesses to expand or 

for that young entrepreneur who has an idea, to access a loan and 

get a bank to take a risk on him in rural America. 

But I want to pivot to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. We have a very powerful agency that I would argue, and I 

think many would agree, is unaccountable. I don’t know if that was 

the—and this was all due to Mr. Frank—intent of Dodd-Frank. I 

don’t think it was, but I think that is the reality on the regulatory 

side. 

But in regard to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, you 

now have an agency that is collecting anywhere from 600 million 

to 850 million credit cards and the data off those credit cards. They 

are partnering with FHFA on a mortgage database, collecting information on race, religion, GPS coordinates to your home, credit 

scores, the number of children that you have, and the ages of your 

children, and the agency is out of control. 

You have an agency that has been involved in racism, in sexism, 

and in spending $250 million on a renovation. I know Mr. Chairman has asked this question. It is not taxpayer money, but if it is 

not taxpayer money, I don’t know where they get it. I haven’t figured that one out yet. But it is an agency that is out of control, 

and I know that some of my friends across the aisle think that is 

a good thing that only an agency that doesn’t have any input and 

insight from Congress can protect consumers. But, listen, all— 

whether they are individuals or organizations, through the history 

of humanity, they claim to do really good things for people and for 

society, but it is under the auspices of those claims that they have 

sometimes nefarious purposes, and to think that this Congress 

doesn’t have oversight, whether it is with the purse strings or 

42 

through a commission of some sort that is bipartisan to help direct 

this agency, is of great concern for us. 

I know there has been a debate that goes on right now with regard to what happens with the President, who now believes he has 

the authority to waive and suspend laws that were rightfully 

passed by the Congress. It is concerning. I think there is going to 

be a push on the other side of the aisle that says there is no need 

for Congress. We just have to have an all-powerful executive and 

all-powerful agencies. 

But we will get to a question here. Mr. Wilson, do you believe 

that the CFPB rules, though they are intended for larger institutions, have had an impact on community banks? 

Mr. WILSON. Absolutely. I am appreciative that we are not examined by them, but we are not exempt from their regulatory reach. 

Mr. DUFFY. And how is that? 

Mr. WILSON. When they pass regulations, we have to comply 

with those. The FDIC will continue to examine us, but we have to 

comply with those rules. 

Mr. DUFFY. So you are not exempt. You get a little bit on examining, but you still follow the rules that are put out by the CFPB. 

So there is no firewall between you and the rules that come from 

the CFPB; is that right? 

Mr. WILSON. Yes, sir. 

Mr. DUFFY. All right. My time has expired, and I yield back to 

the chairman. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The gentleman yields back. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from New York, Mrs. 

McCarthy. 

Mrs. MCCARTHY OF NEW YORK. Thank you. 

I would like to remind my colleagues that with the poll numbers 

that are out there, we are not liked by anybody, so maybe we 

should all retire. 

Barney, welcome back. It is good to see you. I think a lot of people here, especially some of the new Members, don’t remember that 

we were having meetings almost every day. It took us over a year 

to come up with the—I call it the Frank bill. I still don’t like putting ‘‘Dodd’’ on there, mainly because all of the headaches or an 

awful lot of the headaches that we have have come about because 

of the ‘‘Dodd’’ part of it. 

With that being said, there are many things in the Dodd-Frank 

Act that we had wanted, we couldn’t get it in, then things have 

changed. Certainly, I am one who was fighting for the community 

bankers. Barney knows that. Many of us here were trying to do 

that. We also felt with the business model of the insurance companies, that really had nothing to do with a very large extent of the 

collapse. But I think that one of the things that we have to keep 

reminding people, not only with the financial industry, but some 

that had nothing absolutely to do with the collapse killed—my 

small businesses in town all collapsed. A lot of people are still hurting even from then; unemployment. And yes, it was the fault of an 

awful lot of corporations. 

Now, someone has to start taking responsibility for that, because 

here we are, and things are coming back, but it took a long time, 

and a lot of people did lose their homes. And I believe with BarVerDate Nov 24 2008 18:50 Jun 05, 2015 Jkt 091158 PO 00000 Frm 00046 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\91158.TXT TERRI
43 

ney—when I got my first mortgage, you had to go through some 

kind of background check, and you had to make sure how much 

you had. And remember, gentlemen, when I went for a mortgage, 

they weren’t giving them out to women. It just was the case. 

With that, Barney, I am giving you the time because I keep seeing you writing down things, and I have been blessed to have you 

as my chairman when I first got onto the committee, you taught 

me a lot, but I also know when you are writing things down, you 

have a lot of answers that you want to give. And to me, you have 

been a wonderful teacher to all of us, and so if you have something 

that you want to answer back on the questions, please take that 

time. 

Mr. FRANK. Thanks very much. I have to say Chris Dodd is not 

the whole Senate, so there were things that I don’t like that he 

didn’t like. Somebody mentioned the TruPS. That was Senator Collins from Maine, and she was the 60th vote, and she insisted on 

the—certainly any TruPS stuff. 

I did want to get back to this question of whether or not it is 

some boon to be designated a SIFI, and I have to say, I think Mr. 

Kupiec has been a little inconsistent on this. He can respond. 

I cite the fact that any institution over which there is discretion 

has vigorously resisted being named a SIFI as a sign that it carries 

more negative than positive by far. I accept their own judgment. 

His response was, they don’t want to be designated, but they get 

the benefit of being a SIFI without the supervision. But he also 

said at one point, the fact that they are closely supervised by the 

Fed is one of the signals to the community. So the fact that they 

don’t want to be closely supervised by the Fed, if it is simply their 

size alone that does it, then there is nothing you can do about it 

unless you want to break up Fidelity or break up— 

Mr. KUPIEC. Thanks for asking. So banks bigger than $50 billion don’t have a choice, so they are 

not—they are— 

Mr. FRANK. That is not— 

Mr. KUPIEC. —not in the fight. 

Mr. FRANK. I am sorry, this is my time. If you want to talk— 

Mr. KUPIEC. I thought you asked me. 

Mr. FRANK. No, I didn’t ask you about banks over $50 billion. We 

know that. 

Mr. KUPIEC. Okay. But is it— 

Chairman HENSARLING. Believe it or not, the time belongs to the 

gentlelady from New York, and she can allocate it. 

Mr. FRANK. The question I had to ask you is this: Why do they 

not want to be designated? You said the fact of designation and cosupervision is what leads people to think that they won’t be allowed to fail, so why would they then not want to be designated? 

That is the question. 

Mr. KUPIEC. Do I get time? 

Chairman HENSARLING. Again, the time belongs to the gentlelady 

from New York. She can referee or swap. 

Mrs. MCCARTHY OF NEW YORK. I would rather hear the discussion between the two of them, and the majority of people here on 

both sides are all taking too long to explain the question. 

Chairman HENSARLING. So, Mr. Kupiec, you are recognized. 

44 

Mr. KUPIEC. So I am allowed? 

Mrs. MCCARTHY OF NEW YORK. Yes. 

Mr. KUPIEC. Banks are off the table. I agree with that. So here 

you have designation. You have AIG, which was a ward of the government and had no choice, so they were silent. The other insurance companies are going to be subject to heightened designation 

that is not mentioned anywhere. They are going to be treated like 

a bank. That can’t—they are going to be treated—they are going 

to have to do stress tests just like they are a bank. They are gong 

to have capital just like a bank. Neither the FSOC nor the Board 

of Governors has specified what rules are going to— 

Mr. FRANK. We agree, you shouldn’t be designated, and they 

don’t want to be designated, which you make that as a bad thing. 

Mr. KUPIEC. Because they have no clue what will happen to 

them. They have no clue, so they wouldn’t want to be designated. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The time of the gentlelady has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr. 

Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. 

Mr. ROYCE. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The derivatives market is global, and trying to get an efficient 

global derivatives market should be a priority, I think, of this committee. In order to meet that goal, our regulators have to fully understand how Europe and Asia are going to implement derivatives 

reform and sort of do things in concert here and not end up with 

incompatible guidance and rules that could harm our competitive 

position of our companies and liquidity of our markets. 

So here is my point. As Mr. Deas outlined in his testimony, while 

the SEC adopted a formal rule, the CFTC adopted guidance that 

has been subject to changes of interpretation and a resulting lawsuit also. In late May, then-CFTC Chairman Mark Wetjen stated: 

‘‘I don’t think it was the right decision to change the guidance, and 

equally comparable comprehensive regulations in Europe should 

allow for substituted compliance in this situation.’’ 

So my question to Mr. Deas and Mr. Carfang is, the businesses 

that use derivatives to manage their risk need certainty, they need 

that liquidity, they need those willing counterparties with which to 

trade, whether located here or in Europe or Asia. Do you believe 

that the failure to have one joint rule to govern how Title VII of 

Dodd-Frank will be applied outside of the United States is harming 

the ability of end users to manage their risk? 

Mr. CARFANG. Sure. The jurisdictional issues, the conflict, and 

the inconsistencies among the various derivative regulations 

around the world is harming the ability of U.S. companies to basically get a handle and appropriately hedge their risk, time their 

risk, and get—frankly, get visibility of those risks. 

You create imperfect markets, corporate CFOs were allowing the 

market to give signals, to give economic signals, and to the extent 

that those signals are muted or quieted, the corporate treasurers 

are more reluctant to make investments simply because they don’t 

have the economic clarity that they need to move forward. 

Mr. ROYCE. Commissioner Deas? 

Mr. DEAS. Yes, sir. Thank you. 

There is uncertainty in several areas or potential bad outcomes 

from the lack of harmonization. The lack of the harmonization beVerDate Nov 24 2008 18:50 Jun 05, 2015 Jkt 091158 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\91158.TXT TERRI
45 

tween the CFTC and the banking regulators has created this uncertainty that we thought was clear in the bill that end users 

should be exempted from having to post margin, and I indicated 

earlier that for the average nonfinancial member of the Business 

Roundtable in a coalition study we did, that was $269 million that 

represents a diversion of funds that would otherwise be used for 

business investment. 

The other element—and the European regulators have been 

much more clear that they view the derivatives activity by end-user 

companies that is actually risk reducing, and so they have—they 

appear not only to be exempting end users from having to post 

margin, but from exempting the bank counterparties to a derivative end user from having to retain a higher capital level against 

that derivative exposure because of the risk-reducing nature. 

We fear that this— 

Mr. ROYCE. If I could— 

Mr. DEAS. —aspect could put American companies at a disadvantage if— 

Mr. ROYCE. If I could—I understand your point. If I could quote 

Michel Barnier on this, the EU Commissioner, he says, ‘‘If the 

CFTC also gives effective equivalence to third-country clearinghouses, deferring to strong and rigorous rules and jurisdiction such 

as the EU, we will be able to adopt equivalence decisions very soon. 

In other words, we will treat you as you treat us.’’ 

I did want to ask Chairman Frank a question. It is good to see 

you, Mr. Chairman. It was mentioned to me that you had discussed 

exempting smaller banks from Volcker, and as memory serves, you 

are not of the opinion that asset managers should be designated as 

SIFIs. I was going to ask you, give you the floor here, on other 

issues that regulators are pursuing, do you find some there that 

were not intended, in your view, by Dodd-Frank? 

Mr. FRANK. With regard to asset managers, to clarify, I don’t 

think as a general rule they should be. AIG could have, should 

have been. I don’t think insurance companies should be, but AIG 

is the kind that likes to complain. So it is not 100 percent, but the 

assumption would be no. 

My biggest problem with the regulators, frankly, is they are 

equating the two kinds of mortgages. I think there should be risk 

retention. I agree with Mr. Wilson. You keep it in the portfolio, 

fine, but the flipside of that has to be strong risk retention, and I 

am not happy with what the regulators are doing there. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Massachusetts, 

Mr. Lynch. 

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank the members 

of the panel, especially Mr. Frank. It is good to see you again. Welcome back. 

I did see a good article yesterday in The Wall Street Journal by 

Victoria McGrane and Julie Steinberg, and a few of the takeaways 

from their article, the address is really how Wall Street is adapting 

to the new regulatory regime and Dodd-Frank. And they talk about 

the fact that profits are up, number one; that banks are cutting ties 

with subsidiaries that are more risky. They are also shoring up 

46 

their capital reserves in case of an upset in the economy, and they 

are deleveraging and becoming less complex institutions. 

They go on to say that Goldman Sachs last week announced it trimmed $56 billion from its balance sheet during the second quarter. That is the sharpest quarter, a quarter reduction in a very long 

time, and they are proactively trying to comply with Dodd-Frank. 

It talked about Morgan Stanley. They have cut assets by onethird since the 2008 crisis and downsized their fixed-income trading operation, and they are focusing on less risky operations. Citigroup has shed nearly $700 billion in noncore assets, including the sale of more than 60 businesses that they viewed as more 

risky. And Bank of America Corporation has shed more than $70 

billion worth of businesses and other assets since 2010, including 

those that are more risky, and require the bank to hold a lot of capital against them. It has also eliminated 746 legal entities, a 36 

percent reduction. 

So Dodd-Frank, in part, is doing its job. It is working to reduce 

the risk and also the likelihood that these banks will fail in the 

first place. 

Now, Mr. Frank, I want to ask you about—you talked a little bit 

about this earlier with Mr. Garrett. I want to go to the issue of 

asset managers. Now, they had a—as you know, the Dodd-Frank 

Act recognizes each financial institution and company differently, 

and it should be reviewed with its unique characteristics in mind. 

The fact as outlined, as we know in Dodd-Frank, include the 

amount of leverage that the institution has, the off-sheet balance— 

the off-sheet balance sheet exposure of the company, and the degree to which the company is already regulated by the primary regulator. 

Now, that seems to suggest that these asset managers are not 

the folks that we intended to go after on the risk side, and I am 

just wondering, do you believe that designation as a SIFI is the appropriate way to address that industry? 

Mr. FRANK. No, absolutely not. I agree with them that it would 

be a mistake. Again, I reiterate if being designated—there has been 

an argument on the Republican side that being designated a SIFI 

gives you this advantage, that those that are recognized as SIFIs 

have a funding advantage, yet every institution over which there 

is discretion has vigorously resisted, and the fact is that being a 

SIFI could mean more regulation, and the notion that it is a benefit is belied by their response. 

There was one other factor that I think was in there, Steve, I 

don’t know if you read it, about the breadth of ownership which 

was relevant. The more widely owned it is, the less likely it is to 

need to be in there. 

Mr. LYNCH. And I think that was a good example of that. 

Mr. FRANK. And I don’t think that—if that is your major—if that 

is all you do is asset management or sell life insurance, I don’t 

think you should be a SIFI. For one thing, I think they have 

enough other things to do, and there is no sign of their causing 

problems. 

Now, you did have an issue with money market funds, and there, 

by the way, I think the FSOC has shown its value, because we are 

going to get some regulation to money market funds now because 

47 

of the FSOC, which intervened when the SEC wouldn’t do anything. People will disagree about the specifics, but I think it is a 

good thing that they move forward. But I do not believe that the 

asset managers, absent some other form of activity, pose a systemic 

threat. 

Mr. LYNCH. Okay. Thank you very much, and I yield back. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The gentleman yields back. 

The Chair now yields to the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. 

Rothfus. Would the gentleman yield to the Chair for a brief moment? 

Mr. ROTHFUS. Yes, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman HENSARLING. I just want to point it out, because I 

have heard Chairman Frank make the point a couple of different 

times, I don’t frankly know if the SIFI designation is a net benefit 

or a net cost, but, again, Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs says 

it ‘‘would be among the biggest beneficiaries of reform.’’ Jamie Diamond said, ‘‘While margins may come down, market share may increase due to the bigger note.’’ AIG called the SIFI designation ‘‘a 

Good Housekeeping seal of approval.’’ 

So I think some of the biggest banks might respectfully disagree 

with our former chairman. 

I thank you, and I yield back to the gentleman from Pennsylvania. 

Mr. ROTHFUS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Western Pennsylvanians are frustrated by the one-size-fits-all 

decisions coming out of this town. These rules and regulations are 

not helping businesses in the communities I represent grow and 

create jobs. They are not helping an out-of-work person get a job. 

Banks in western Pennsylvania are telling me the same thing. 

They are telling me that the regulations coming out of this town 

are stifling their ability to lend and offer products to businesses 

and families in our communities. 

Mr. Wilson, has your institution or are there institutions you 

know of who have stopped offering a product because of the regulatory cost associated with it? If so, what does this mean for customers? 

Mr. WILSON. As I have mentioned, I am very sad that we no 

longer serve that segment of our community who did not have access to credit because of the requirements of Dodd-Frank. 

Mr. ROTHFUS. But that was with mortgages. Are there other 

areas also? 

Mr. WILSON. No, sir. 

Mr. ROTHFUS. A recent study from the Mercatus Center found 

that small banks are spending more in compliance in the wake of 

Dodd-Frank, and that more than 80 percent of respondents had 

their compliance costs rise by more than 5 percent since 2010. Statistics like this are why I am of the belief that any regulation 

should have to undergo a rigorous cost-benefit analysis, including 

a review of whether it would actually cost jobs and harm wages. 

Mr. Wilson, can you quantify for us the cost that your institution 

has incurred to comply with Dodd-Frank regulations in terms of 

dollars? 

Mr. WILSON. My estimation is we spend about three full-time 

equivalents dealing with regulatory requirements in our— 

48 

Mr. ROTHFUS. And that is on an annual basis? 

Mr. WILSON. Yes, sir. 

Mr. ROTHFUS. And about how much would that be? 

Mr. WILSON. The bulk of that is—a big piece of that is my time 

trying to read the regulations, trying to interpret them, getting 

training on what they are. Some of those are not clear, and they 

conflict with other regulations. 

Mr. ROTHFUS. This is time that you would not be spending with 

a customer trying to help that customer— 

Mr. WILSON. That is correct. 

Mr. ROTHFUS. —access a credit product that could help him or 

her grow a business, get into a mortgage. 

Mr. WILSON. I would much prefer to be calling on customers and 

offering them credit solutions. 

Mr. ROTHFUS. I have also been concerned about the consolidation 

that we are seeing and Dodd-Frank’s effect on consolidation of the 

banking industry. I spoke to a group of bankers in Pennsylvania, 

small community banks, about 20 of them, and I asked a question 

of whether or not in 10 years they thought they would be independent still, or might they have to merge or be acquired, and 

every hand went up, because there is a lot of concern, and we are 

seeing that certainly with the numbers. That is one statistic that 

in the 4 years prior to Dodd-Frank, 510 new bank charters were 

granted, and after Dodd-Frank, only 15 new charters have been 

granted. 

Mr. Wilson, what does this suggest to you? Are you concerned 

that we will see further consolidation of the banking industry once 

regulators get around to implementing the rest of Dodd-Frank? 

Mr. WILSON. I think it would be a tragedy; however, I see that 

happening, and I feel that pressure myself trying to keep up with 

the pace of change and the complexity of these changes, and if they 

are not issues that we have caused or been a part of, I hope that 

the Congress will exempt us from those sorts of regulations. 

Mr. ROTHFUS. Thank you. 

Chairman Frank, on December 11, 2009, your bill, the Wall 

Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009, was brought 

to the Floor. That bill provided for the creation of a consumer finance protection agency. It also provided for the conversion of that 

agency to a commission. Section 4103, subsection A, said on the 

agency conversion date, ‘‘There shall be established a commission 

that shall, by operation of law, succeed to all the authorities of the 

director of the agency.’’ And further in subsection B, it said, ‘‘The 

commission shall be composed of five members who shall be appointed by the President by and with the advice and consent of the 

Senate.’’ 

You sponsored that legislation, and then you voted for that, correct? 

Mr. FRANK. Oh, yes, I voted for that bill on the Floor. 

Mr. ROTHFUS. Thank you. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The gentleman yields back. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. 

Scott. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

49 

First let me say, Chairman Frank, that we really miss your intellect, your intelligence, your wit, and your charm. Never did we 

need it more. Never did we need it more than at that moment of 

crisis, and throughout history, moments of greatness shine at their 

most brilliant at moments of crisis. 

This Nation was on the brink of a depression, unemployment was 

ratcheting up at 12 and 13 percent, we had AIG failing, we had 

Lehman Brothers, even General Motors, the worst economic conditions since the Depression, and you were, sir, the right person at 

the right time doing the right job, and we are grateful for that, and 

America is grateful for that. 

And I do want to say that the folks in Atlanta, Georgia, are still 

talking about that wonderful time we had when you came down 

and were there at the Ritz Carlton. I think you remember that. I 

am hoping that is one of the highlights of your career. It certainly 

was of mine. 

Let me ask you, I want to go back to a couple of things. I think 

the genesis of the Dodd-Frank bill is the essence of the too-big-tofail, and in there has been pointed out the threshold of $50 billion 

being that point and above where we designate the systemically 

important financial institutions, which brings upon additional Federal regulation. 

But let me ask you, should a bank’s systemic importance be 

based strictly and solely on their asset size? 

Mr. FRANK. At some point, yes. That is, if you get to half a tril- lion dollars, I suppose, but I do think $50 billion is—look, any number is arbitrary, obviously, in the nature of the case. I agree, Governor Tarullo always talked about moving that, and I think that 

is a reasonable thing to do. And basically I think what you ought 

to do is to set a fairly high number as the automatic cut-off and 

then allow for inclusion if there are further kind of complications. 

And then on that question, and I want to—I was frankly pleased 

that the chairman felt sufficiently stung by the notion that nobody 

wants to be a SIFI to read those other comments, but they are really not relevant. 

Mr. SCOTT. Right. 

Mr. FRANK. Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein never had the option. It was obvious that Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase 

were going to be there, and AIG, as the poster child for irresponsibility, didn’t. 

The fact remains, and it is not controversial, that every single 

entity over which there would be discretion—it is not JPMorgan 

Chase or Goldman Sachs—has vigorously resisted being included. 

They hire lobbyists to fight it. They appeal the decision. We had 

a panel of regulators on that subject when I was still here, and we 

asked them, has any institution told you they would like to be a 

SIFI, or has any institution failed to object if there was discretion, 

and every single one of them said the institutions fight it because 

it is much more of a burden than not. 

But yes, I do think that it is reasonable to look at this. I also 

believe on the point is that complexity is obviously—could be an 

additional risk factor, and I would reiterate, I think, as I look at 

it now, the Volcker Rule and the push-out, even though I had skepticism about it originally, accomplished that. 

50 

If I could just comment on the question of the gentleman from 

Pennsylvania. He seemed to think he had scored some great victory 

by getting me to admit that I actually voted for this bill. I didn’t 

think that was that much of a secret, but, in fact, I preferred it to 

be a single director of the CFPB. We had the votes, we had to give 

in, and— 

Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Frank, I only have 40 seconds. I have to ask you 

this last point because it would be clearer. 

Mr. FRANK. I apologize. 

Mr. SCOTT. No problem. But I remember distinctly—a lot of people are watching this. C-SPAN’s ratings are probably up because 

you are here. So I want to make sure that the Nation knows that 

it was you. It was you who insisted that no taxpayer money be 

used for a bailout. It was you who provided that. That is important. 

And I want to go back, and Mr. Garrett raised this point. I want 

to make it clear. Then who, under your bill, in your estimation, 

pays for that bailout? 

Mr. FRANK. Institutions with more than $50 billion in assets, but 

there is a formula so that asset managers, et cetera, widely held 

will pay much less than a Goldman Sachs or a JPMorgan Chase. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. 

Hurt, vice chairman of our Capital Markets Subcommittee. 

Mr. HURT. Thank you, everyone here. And thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to thank the witnesses for being here. It is kind of interesting that there seems to have developed among some of the Members here that the costs of some of these regulations and the red 

tape that has resulted from these regulations, a lot of which has 

been testified to by Mr. Wilson, is either not real, or if it is real, 

it is really not having an impact, it is not significant. 

In fact, it seems that we are heralding that this is a good bill 

because Wall Street has hit all-time highs, and I would suggest 

that may be true, but it really does not properly reflect the overall 

economy, and it certainly doesn’t reflect the reality that the folks 

that I represent are feeling. And I represent Virginia’s Fifth District. It is a rural district. We have 23 counties and cities. It is 

mostly Main Street America. We have had, in the last 6 years, unemployment in parts of our district as high as 20 percent, north of 

20 percent. There are still localities in our district where we have 

unemployment almost as high as 10 percent. 

Our economy is struggling, and we need jobs, and we need the 

capital, we need access to capital that creates those jobs. And, we 

talk about the recovery, and we talk about the full-time jobs that 

were created. There weren’t any full-time jobs created. There were 

part-time jobs created in June, and I think that is important. 

So working families are paying more for gas, groceries, electricity, and health care, and it is costing them more to access credit, and they have fewer choices. So while this bill may be good for 

Wall Street, I would suggest to you that it is having a much harder 

impact on folks in the rural communities. Basically our community 

banks are a major part of providing that capital. 

And so I guess my question is—I have two questions. The first 

would be for Mr. Kupiec, Mr. Carfang, and Mr. Wilson, and that 

51 

is dealing with the issue of too-big-to-fail, which, of course, is the 

Wall Street reform part of the Dodd-Frank Act. It strikes me that 

since 1984, there are 18,000 community banks. Now there are 

fewer than 7,000. The chairman indicated that since 2008, we have 

lost 800 community banks. These are important banks to our communities, and with that kind of consolidation, it seems to me that 

not only hurts access to capital in rural areas, but it also poses 

itself a systemic risk. And I guess, just with Mr. Kupiec, I would 

ask you, are community banks important to providing access to 

capital in our small, rural Main Street communities, and are 

they—and by this consolidation, are we, by its very nature, promoting systemic risk, two things—something that this Act purportedly tried to prevent? 

Mr. KUPIEC. Absolutely. There was an FDIC study a year or two 

ago when I was still there where they looked into the community 

bank issue, and community banks are especially important in rural 

areas, in small towns, and in places where large banks don’t want 

to branch. You need a big enough customer base before a large 

bank is willing to go there, and in many cases community banks 

are the banks that service places where large banks don’t feel it 

is competitive to expand. So when we lose community banks in 

those places, and we are, it is very bad for the economy. 

The consolidation is ongoing, and certainly the regulatory burden—and I provided testimony to a subcommittee in March on 

that—of the estimates of the cost to the regulatory burden associated with compliance under the Dodd-Frank Act, and I used some 

estimates by a Federal Reserve Board Governor about how many 

people it would take for the size bank, and then I multiplied it by 

the average earnings per bank, and it was significant. It puts a lot 

of banks in a negative earnings position, the extra compliance 

costs. So this is huge, and I think it does force—the compliance 

costs force banks to have to be of a bigger size or they are just not 

going to survive the costs. 

Mr. HURT. Thank you. 

Mr. Carfang, do you want to comment on that, then Mr. Wilson? 

Mr. CARFANG. Three premises of sound banking are to make 

loans to those who have the capacity, who have the collateral, and 

who have the character. Community banks are best able to judge 

the character of the borrowers in their local community. 

In addition, though, the problem is actually larger than that because we have moved away from relationship banking to compliance banking today, and that takes character out of the equation. 

So we are now coloring by the numbers here, and we are losing a 

lot of the judgment and a lot of the flexibility that really needs to 

happen to fund innovation and risk-taking at the most elementary 

levels. 

Mr. HURT. Thank you. 

Mr. Wilson, I suspect I know what your answer would be. Thank 

you. My time has expired. 

Chairman HENSARLING. Indeed. The time of the gentleman has 

expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Green, 

ranking member of our Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. 

52 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I would like to welcome you back again, Chairman Frank. It was an honor to serve 

in Congress under your leadership when I was a neophyte, and I 

must tell you that it is also an honor to serve under the leadership 

of the Honorable Maxine Waters. You left the committee in capable, competent, and qualified hands, and I believe she is following 

in the tradition and doing an outstanding job. 

With reference to several things, we talk about community banks 

quite a bit, Mr. Frank, and when we talk about community banks 

in terms of the aid, and assistance, and the changes necessary to 

make them effective, we use small banks, but when we start to 

generate legislation, the size becomes very large. In fact, we have 

had testimony from at least one or two bankers who indicated that 

$30 million, $40 million, $50 million is a community bank. 

Mr. Wilson, we all support what you want in trying to help you, 

but when we try to get a definition of a community bank, it becomes very difficult when we reach the size of $30 billion, $40 billion, $50 billion; not ‘‘million’’ dollars, ‘‘billion’’ dollars. So therein, 

lies a small problem. But for today, let’s deal with some other 

issues. 

Mr. Frank, I would like for you, if you would, to come back to 

the question of a single director as opposed to a commission, because I don’t think you had an opportunity to finish your answer, 

and this is something that we have litigated here at the committee 

level quite a bit. 

Mr. FRANK. Thank you. 

Let me just say with regard to the community bank problem, obviously it is a problem, if I could just interject, to have them diminish. I don’t think that adds to systemic risk. There is a loss of social 

function of economic activity. A lot of the losses of community 

banks have been going more to the regional banks, of the midsized 

banks, so I don’t think that is a systemic risk problem; it is a social 

problem that I would like to work on and a local service problem. 

As far as the single director, yes, the Member from Pennsylvania 

plainly made the point. I originally wanted it to be a single director. The intraparty votes in the House, the Energy and Commerce 

people wanted it to be a commission, so we compromised. We went 

to the Senate, and the Senate also wanted a single director, and 

I didn’t put up that tough a fight for the House position. That was 

in the conference. 

People have alluded to other things, and there has been this notion that there is something unique about the CFPB because it 

doesn’t go through Congress. Neither does the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Neither does the Federal Reserve System. 

Neither does the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. In fact, 

none of the bank regulators are subject to the appropriations process, and I believe that what you have is an anti-consumer activism 

issue here, not a process issue, because when I was here, and an 

amendment was offered to subject the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to the appropriations process, I offered an amendment 

to do the same for the Federal Reserve. I would think people worried about accountability would think it was a greater problem that 

the Federal Reserve wasn’t subject to the appropriations process, 

and, after all, the CFPB gets its money from the Federal Reserve. 

53 

Now, I will tell you that caused great palpitations at the Federal 

Reserve, but, in fact, they were able to count on the fact that the 

Republicans didn’t want to have a consumer bureau running amok 

without any congressional appropriations to draw, but with a much 

more powerful Federal Reserve, that was fine. So the committee 

voted down my amendment when the Republicans were in the Majority. So I think that underlines that we are talking about these 

limitations. 

Mr. GREEN. Accountability, would you address it for just a moment, please, because there seems to be the notion afoot that the 

CFPB is totally unaccountable, that it can make rules that cannot 

be overturned, that they simply have this inordinate amount of 

power with no restrictions. Would you kindly— 

Mr. FRANK. Yes. In the first place, it is one of the most popular 

things Congress has done. And I know the chairman said that the 

financial reform bill is as damaging as the health care bill. My 

recollection is that this Republican Congress votes on a fairly regular basis to repeal the health care bill. Where is your bill to repeal 

the financial reform bill? If you have the courage of your convictions, let’s bring it on. I think the problem is that the public is, in 

fact, much more supportive of it, and particularly of the CFPB. 

And as to accountability, I don’t know how many hearings I was 

summoned to when we were in the Minority, oversight hearings by 

this committee, in which the topic was the lack of oversight of the 

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I never spent so much time 

in oversight hearings complaining about an absence of oversight, 

and I think the public—and here is the final point. They don’t like 

it, and they complain that it is not subject to appropriations, but 

nobody has pointed to any abuse of practice that I can see. No one 

has pointed to any unfair intrusion into the business models. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Ross. 

Mr. ROSS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And I thank the panelists for being here. I think that the testimony today, and especially that of Congressman Frank, has illustrated that there are some lingering problems with the implementation of the Dodd-Frank Act. Even the rules that have yet to be 

promulgated create an even greater uncertainty in the environment. And while we talk about a recovery, I can only wonder what 

the recovery would have been like had there been more certainty 

in the markets for financial institutions. 

It seems that the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, 

and Dodd-Frank put together have been too behemoths of legislation that have created some serious problems and may not have 

been totally thought out. 

In my district, of course, we have community banks, Mr. Wilson, 

that I empathize with you that no longer do residential mortgages. 

Credit unions are in the same arena. Businesses feel that there is 

a regulatory environment, and when you couple that with Operation Choke Point that is now saying that you have a reputational 

risk, and DOJ says you will or will not do business with certain 

people, it creates a very unhealthy environment for the flow of commerce. 

54 

And I am reminded that I think the fastest-growing occupation 

in this country right now is compliance officer, which does nothing 

to the bottom line of our financial institutions, and even does more 

egregious harm to the bottom line of our consumers and our citizens back home. 

Just as if a patient will never get better if not taken off bed rest, 

we have to give some sense of certainty to an overregulatory environment, and I understand that there are some flaws in the SIFI, 

and I think even Chairman Frank testified to that earlier in questioning from Mr. Garrett. 

Mr. Kupiec, you speak at length in your testimony about the fact 

that you have concerns regarding overregulation. In fact, you think 

that Dodd-Frank was a trade-off between economic growth and the 

probability of periodic recessions. Why do you say that? 

Mr. KUPIEC. Financial intermediation is important. It is one of 

the most important things that causes economic growth. If you 

think about it, if you have an economy that has a single bank, and 

the bank gets into trouble, there is no way for savings to be translated into investment any longer if the bank fails. Financial intermediation is the way the economy collects savings, and it puts it 

into investment. 

So what Dodd-Frank does is it tells the regulators to—it gives 

them and empowers them and it says there are certain kinds of 

bad financial intermediation that could cause systemic risk. We are 

not sure exactly what those are. It is up to you. You go figure out 

what financial intermediation you think is bad, and go out and regulate it. 

The problem is the goal is to create financial stability, but financial stability is the absence of a crisis. A crisis—you can have a 

very stagnant economy with very little growth, and there is financial stability. There nothing in the Dodd-Frank Act that tells regulators that they have to take a trade-off between the growth effects 

of stopping financial intermediation and this weeding out bad financial intermediation, and many times they don’t get what is bad 

intermediation right. 

From 2005, all the way up to 2008, the Federal Reserve ran a 

study for the Financial Stability Board where they looked over and 

over and over again at securitization and credit risk transfers, and 

the same people who are regulating banks now, that same group 

of individuals—the ones who haven’t retired—looked at intermediation securitization of subprime mortgages, credit derivatives, and 

they said, these are a great thing for the banking system. This is 

good financial intermediation. And now we are coming back and 

saying really what we need to do is give those guys more powers 

with no constraints and let them pick out the bad financial intermediation. 

It didn’t work last time; I just can’t see how it is going to work 

next time. 

Mr. ROSS. I appreciate that. 

Mr. Wilson, I know you are not a health care expert, but you are 

an employer, and you also have to not only comply with the regulatory environment in administering your bank, but you also have 

to comply with health care requirements now under the Affordable 

Care Act as an employer. Would you say that the combination of 

55 

these two regulatory behemoths has created a greater burden on 

your institution, and if so, has it been to the benefit of your employees or your customers? 

Mr. WILSON. No, sir. We have always provided health care to our 

employees. The benefit of the health care act is since we are small, 

if we provide insurance, we get a tax credit. 

Mr. ROSS. Right. 

Mr. WILSON. This year I am struggling because the IRS is telling 

me one thing, and my accountant is telling me another thing about 

buying on the exchanges, and so I have spent considerable time on 

that issue. And the financial institution regulations involve not 

only complying with what is past, but just think of 14,000 pages— 

Mr. ROSS. Do you think the recovery could be better without that 

regulatory burden? 

Mr. WILSON. It would free me up to do other things and— 

Mr. ROSS. Make you available to those who you think— 

Mr. WILSON. Yes, sir. 

Mr. ROSS. —would be qualified to use it to encourage an even 

stronger and thriving economy? 

Mr. WILSON. Yes, sir. 

Mr. ROSS. I yield back. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from Wisconsin, Ms. 

Moore. 

Ms. MOORE. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. 

I am so very glad to see you, Chairman Frank. Just let me say 

that you have left the position of ranking member in the hands of 

Ms. Waters, and she has taught us, set up meetings with us in the 

Library of Congress. We have had speakers, heads of agencies, 

journalists, and she has not yelled at us either. 

I read every single word of your testimony. This is such a boring 

subject to so many people who may be watching, but you certainly 

make it exciting. I read every single word, and I noticed that you 

didn’t wax on and on about too-big-to-fail and how big the banks 

are, and, oh, there are more of them than there ever were before, 

and they have merged. 

Instead, the nugget—and I want you to clarify this for me—that 

you have given me as a cautionary note is that instead of being distracted by just the size of the banks, we ought to be looking more 

closely into what is happening in the D.C. court rulings where this 

cost-benefit analysis is hampering the ability of the CFTC and the 

SEC to operate, the appropriations process is starving the CFTC 

and the SEC, regulating risk retention out of statutes, no skin in 

the game, and we need to learn lessons from history or be doomed 

to repeat it. I would just like you to sort of elaborate on your testimony with regard to that. 

Mr. FRANK. I will try to speak softer. 

Chairman HENSARLING. Chairman Frank, I don’t think your 

microphone is on. 

Mr. FRANK. I said I was speaking softly, too softly. I was promising not to yell. 

Chairman HENSARLING. You are certainly free to turn it off, Mr. 

Chairman. 

56 

Mr. FRANK. If all I turn off today is a microphone, I will feel it 

was a pretty good day. 

Which issue did you want me to address? Let me— 

Ms. MOORE. The cost-benefit analysis and the district court. 

Mr. FRANK. Yes. Let me—and I sympathize very much with the 

uncertainty. I do think, look, if you are in a situation where you 

think things are wrong, and you want to correct them, there is an 

inevitable period of uncertainty. So the only way to avoid uncertainty, it is like with—on the stability argument, is to perpetuate 

it. I am disappointed that things have taken too long. In particular, 

I think we have had a problem in the derivative area, and I, again, 

agree with Mr. Deas. He acknowledges there have been some problems in the expansion area; it hasn’t done well enough to the end 

users. 

If I had one magic wand I could wave, I would have merged the 

SEC and the CFTC. It makes sense that if you start a new country, 

you would have one. But they represent deeply enriched—deeply 

rooted economic and social and cultural divisions, and it would be 

very difficult to do that. 

Sometimes people forget America is a more complex country. One 

of the reasons we have a multiplicity of bank regulators is we have 

the dual banking system. We have State-chartered banks and national-chartered banks. There was a proposal by Senator Dodd to 

give all the regulation of the banks to the OCC, and the State-chartered banks, many of the community banks, said, no, we don’t want 

to be in there with the big banks. We want to stay with the Fed 

because we want a regulator that pays attention to us and isn’t 

overly influenced. 

The problem is this—and one of the best things that happened, 

from my standpoint, for regulation going forward was Senator 

Reid’s getting the Senate to say we are not going to allow judges 

to be filibustered, because you had a very conservative, imbalanced 

court in the circuit in D.C.; you had a lack of funding—and I think 

the single biggest problem has been the incredible underfunding of 

the CFTC. The CFTC was given the biggest grant of real authority, 

derivatives, very complicated. They are wildly underfunded, and I 

guess that is why people regret that we didn’t let the CFPB be in 

that situation. What many of my friends here would like to do is 

to throttle the CFPB with underfunding the way they have done 

with the CFTC. And then you have the financial industry loading 

all these comments on the agency, which they have the right to do, 

and then you have the court requiring a very specific analysis and 

then saying, oh, no, that is not good enough. 

We had an example. The CFTC put out a rule in accordance with 

the bill’s clear language regulating speculation that basically said 

if you don’t use oil except in your salad and your car, please don’t 

go out and buy a whole amount of it, which could have an impact 

on the price. The court threw that out and said Congress didn’t 

mean it. We did. 

Ms. MOORE. So, Barney, because of my time, are we—is this the 

sneaker risk thing that is happening to us? 

Mr. FRANK. The what? 

Ms. MOORE. With your indulgence, please. He didn’t hear the 

question before— 

57 

Mr. FRANK. If I could have one—it is an indirect attack from people who don’t want to bring it to the Floor and are trying to repeal 

it because it is too popular. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The time of the gentlelady has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. 

Hultgren. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I would like to thank all of you for being here today in this week 

of—this grim anniversary of Dodd-Frank, especially Mr. Carfang. It 

is good to have you here from Chicago, Illinois, my home area. I’m 

glad you made it all the way out here. 

It is increasingly clear that Dodd-Frank is doing real damage to 

our economy and stalling the economic recovery that we all want. 

Dodd-Frank spans 2,300 pages, imposes 400 government mandates, 

and creates vast new bureaucracies, but despite this, it has not corrected the problems arising out of the financial crisis. This includes 

the problem of too-big-to-fail and the need for a regulatory system 

that decreases systemic financial risk instead of increasing risk. 

Now, some on the other side of the aisle, including the Obama 

Administration and most Senate Democrats, view Dodd-Frank like 

I view the Ten Commandments: inerrant; unchanging; and demanding our complete devotion. With all due respect to Chairman 

Frank, I suspect even he would agree that Dodd-Frank did not 

come down from on high, nor was it written in stone. 

Thankfully, many on both sides of the aisle in this committee 

recognize that some parts of Dodd-Frank can be fixed, especially 

those relating to the community banks, credit unions, and the 

mortgage industry. After all, Dodd-Frank has had a disproportionately negative impact upon those institutions. These smaller financial institutions help people access the American dream by extending credit necessary to own homes, start a business, or to preserve 

a family farm. They provide at least 48 percent of small business 

loans and serve 1,200 rural counties with otherwise limited options, and they lend based upon personal relationships and local 

knowledge of the community, not just statistical equations. 

Unfortunately Dodd-Frank too often forces these vital institutions into regulatory straightjackets that are designed for big 

banks, causing them to reduce lending, merge with competitors, or 

shut down. My constituents in the 14th District of Illinois demand 

answers to this problem, which is why I am really grateful for this 

panel here today. 

With that in mind, I want to address my first question to Mr. 

Wilson and ask about how Dodd-Frank is impacting your community bank’s bottom line. I heard from many financial institutions 

about how high costs imposed by a growing mountain of additional 

rules, regulations, and compliance burdens are being faced by the 

industry. Are you concerned that these regulations could force your 

bank to limit its offering of certain financial products to consumers 

generally, and low-income consumers specifically, and what about 

the impact that these regulations as well as their subsequent enforcement have on the availability and affordability of credit for 

small businesses and consumers? 

Mr. WILSON. Congressman, our market is low- to moderate-income people. The community we serve is 65 percent Hispanic. The 

58 

withdrawal of us offering home mortgages is not good. There are 

products that we have looked at and chosen not to offer at this 

time until we figure out the risk. We are a little behind the curve 

on some of the new technologies. So that is the impact of the risks 

that we try to face each day. 

Mr. HULTGREN. I want to get back to a few more questions with 

you, but I do want to just remind this committee where this all 

started from. I want to go back to September 25, 2003. 

At a Financial Services Committee hearing here, Chairman 

Frank, you had said on the record, ‘‘I do not want Fannie and 

Freddie to be just another bank. If they were not going to do more 

than another bank, would because they have so many advantages, 

then we do not need them. 

‘‘And so, therefore, I do not think—I do not want the same kind 

of focus on safety and soundness that we have at the OCC and the 

OTS. I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing.’’ 

In the GSE Act, Congress initially specified affordable housing 

goals of 30 percent of mortgage purchases by the GSEs. That goal 

is continually raised over the years to 42 percent, 50 percent, finally, 56 percent. More than 70 percent of subprime and all-day 

mortgages that led to the crisis were backed by Freddie and 

Fannie, FHA, and other taxpayer-backed programs. If you have to 

point to a root cause of the financial crisis, that is it. Absolutely, 

that is it. 

Mr. Wilson, I want to get back to you. In September 2012, an 

ICBA survey found that 55 percent of bankers decreased their 

mortgage business or completely stopped providing higher-priced 

mortgage loans due to the expense of complying with escrow requirements for higher-priced mortgages that took effect in 2010. 

I wondered if your bank still does offer and issue mortgages. 

And, if so, have you decreased the number of mortgages you issue 

because of regulatory uncertainty? 

Mr. WILSON. Yes, sir, most all of our mortgages would have fallen into the higher-price mortgage, and we do not have the staff capabilities to escrow insurance and taxes. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Again, last few seconds. Thank you so much all 

of you for being here. We do want to figure this out. We need to 

clean this up. And, ultimately, I want to see community banks that 

are vibrant in our communities again. 

With that, I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Colorado, Mr. 

Perlmutter. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Somebody mentioned the incredible cost of Dodd-Frank to the 

system, but I just want to start with, before Dodd-Frank, summer 

of 2008 to January, February 2009, the stock market lost 6,000 

points at $1.3 billion per point, $7.8 trillion. Home values dropped 

by 25 percent across the country, trillions and trillions of dollars. 

Millions of jobs lost. 

Since Dodd-Frank, the stock market has increased 10,500 points, 

10 million jobs have been gained, and housing prices have rebounded. Now, whether there is a direct cause and effect, I don’t 

59 

know, but certainly the economy has improved dramatically since 

before its passage. 

Mr. Kupiec, I am just going to mention a few things because I 

disagree with your basic premise that the primary goal of DoddFrank was too-big-to-fail. 

And having sat on the front lines of this thing, I know we were 

dealing with credit rating agencies, derivatives, mortgage lenders 

with their no-docs, no-down mortgage servicing, appraisals, foreclosures, leverage generally across the system, disclosures, Ponzi 

schemes—Madoff and Stanford—hedge funds, swaps, say-on-pay 

executives basing—pumping up their stock prices when it wasn’t 

deserved, credit cards, transparency, money markets, the Securities 

Investor Protection Corporation, whistleblowers, securitization, accounting standards, and the CFPB. 

Each of those was an important goal and is found in Dodd-Frank. 

So you describe it as the primary goal. I disagree with you. That 

wasn’t. We had a whole range of things we had to address. 

I want to enter into the record the article that Mr. Lynch was 

describing from the Wall Street Journal dated July 21st. And a 

Bank of America executive said, ‘‘Dodd-Frank certainly catalyzed 

substantial amounts of simplification, and we are moving well beyond that through our own initiatives.’’ That was what we did. And 

if I could add it into the record. 

Chairman HENSARLING. Without objection, it is so ordered. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Thank you, sir. 

So, Mr. Frank, I would like to now see if any of these things triggered thoughts on your behalf and— 

Mr. FRANK. Yes. Let me say this is a discussion I have had with 

the chairman. 

I am pleased that Mr. Dimon, Mr. Blankfein and Mr. Moynihan 

at Bank of America recognize the value of the bank. It wasn’t because they were glad to be designated SIFIs. That was never in 

question with them. 

I recognize they believe that we brought some stability—I don’t 

think every piece of it, but that we brought some stability. And, 

among other things, it gave them some protection. 

We had a situation where—this was articulated by Chuck Prince 

at Citi. I asked him once why they hadn’t put structured investment vehicles on his balance sheet. He said, ‘‘Because if I do, I will 

be at a disadvantage vis-a-vis Goldman.’’ 

We had some common rules. And there is no question. And as 

to being the main purpose, the main purpose of the bill was to not 

get to the point where institutions failed by not having the bad 

loans and not having these irresponsible derivative practices that 

caused it. 

But I also am sorry that the Representative from Pennsylvania 

had so little time to spend with us because his distortions of the 

history with Fannie and Freddie were pretty egregious. It is true 

that in 2003, I did say that we should roll the dice with regard to 

subsidized housing, by which I meant very specifically, the phrase 

we used, multifamily housing built with Federal subsidies. In fact, 

that has done well with Fannie and Freddie. But it is also the case 

that was 2003. 

60 

And he referred to me as ‘‘Chairman Frank.’’ Mr. Cheney in his 

book said, ‘‘Chairman Frank stopped it.’’ Well, I wasn’t chairman 

in 2003, because Mr. Cheney always had problems with things happening in 2003, like weapons of mass destruction. 

But the fact is that we were in the Minority. The Republican 

Party controlled the House from 1995 through 2006. It was entirely 

their decision not to pass any legislation regulating Fannie and 

Freddie. I was against it in 2003. By 2005, I switched my position. 

The gentleman from Pennsylvania alluded to an increase in the 

affordable housing goals. Yes. When George Bush pushed it up over 

50 in 2004, I objected. 

And, in fact, as you can read in Hank Paulson’s book—President 

Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury—it wasn’t until 2006, when we 

were on the verge of taking over, that he talked to me and we got 

Fannie and Freddie legislation. 

So the Republican Party has been very consistent. From 1995 

through 2006, they did nothing legislatively about Fannie and 

Freddie. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. And I would remind the chairman that Mr. 

Oxley, the chairman, said that the White House gave him a— 

Mr. FRANK. George Bush gave the— 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. —one-finger salute— 

Mr. FRANK. —one-finger salute. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. —on dealing with Fannie Mae and Freddie 

Mac. 

Mr. FRANK. But we then in our 4 years, we did put them into 

conservatorship. And, since then, the Republican Party has once 

again, in their control of the House, done nothing about Fannie and 

Freddie. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. I yield back for the Chair. 

Chairman HENSARLING. It is not a one-finger salute, but the time 

of the gentleman has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. 

Barr. 

Mr. BARR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to examine the impact of the Dodd-Frank Act on its fourth 

anniversary. 

Chairman Frank, I appreciated your earlier testimony that your 

intention in crafting the mortgage reform provisions of the law 

were directed to encourage more risk retention. 

I have a bill, H.R. 2673, and that bill is a portfolio lending bill 

that would encourage more risk retention on the part of mortgage 

lenders, small banks, like Mr. Wilson’s bank. 

And, in fact, not only was that bill marked up out of this committee, several of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, including Mr. Perlmutter, voted in favor of it. 

And my question to you is, would you support such a proposal 

to give a QM safe harbor status to portfolio loans in which the 

mortgage originator retains the risk? 

Mr. FRANK. I would have to look at the specifics. I am generally 

in favor of that, although, I would write—and you said you would 

encourage this. I think we ought to give in to the Senate and loosen the risk retention. 

61 

I would like to have portfolio allowed to be whatever—not below 

some certain objectionable level, but then also have stronger risk 

retention. 

Mr. BARR. I appreciate your general inclination toward risk retention and your general favorability towards that. 

Mr. Wilson, I want to direct your attention, as a small community banker, to the slide here. The ranking member earlier alluded 

to the fact that you should have no problem originating mortgages 

now because you are $2 billion or below in assets. 

This is a slide from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 

This slide shows what it required—the chart—in order to qualify 

for the safe harbor protection. 

It is not just that you have to be $2 billion or below. It is loan 

features. It is balloon payment features. It is underwriting. It is 

points and fees. Then, there is the portfolio provision. 

Does this slide explain why you and other community banks 

have exited the mortgage loan business? 

Mr. WILSON. The fact that it is so complex on its summary page 

here is part of the problem. We did balloon mortgages. And so— 

I don’t know. I would have to go through this complex— 

Mr. BARR. Let me just cut to the chase. If we had a bill like the 

one that I was referring to earlier where, if you could portfolio your 

mortgage and hold it and retain the risk, hold it in portfolio, would 

you reenter the mortgage lending business? 

Mr. WILSON. Yes, sir. I would love to be able to serve that sector. 

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Barr, could I ask you one question about that 

bill? 

Mr. BARR. I have limited time. I would love to talk to you after— 

let’s talk afterwards. 

Really quick, I want to just go really, really quickly to another 

point, which is that Dodd-Frank was sold under the premise that 

if community banks played ball and had a seat at the table, they 

would be protected from its new regulatory regime, in particular, 

jurisdiction under the CFPB. 

In fact, thanks to reporting in the Washington Post, we know 

that Chairman Frank had a strategy of selling Dodd-Frank as a 

bill that protected community banks because they would be exempt 

from supervision by the CFPB. 

In fact, the reporting says that—Mr. Frank, in communicating 

with the community bankers, said that, ‘‘There is going to be a 

bill—this is Mr. Frank talking to the community bankers, according to the Washington Post—and either you are going to have to 

get on the bus or be run over by it. I don’t expect you to support 

the consumer agency—now the CFPB—in public, but what is it 

going to take to get you to be neutral?’’ 

The community banker representative says, ‘‘Well, Mr. Chairman, that is going to take a lot. We don’t want to have examination 

forces from this bureau coming into our banks, given all of the 

other regulators that are in our banks. And we only have 20 or 30 

employees in each of these banks, and they are being eaten alive 

by exams.’’ 

They jockeyed back and forth, settling on a standard. This is 

Chairman Frank and the community bankers. 

62 

‘‘The CFPA’s—that is what they called it then—supervision 

would extend only to banks whose assets exceed $10 billion.’’ 

And then, according to the Washington Post, again, Chairman 

Frank said, ‘‘I am not asking you to come out and support this, but 

will you stay silent?’’ 

The community banker lobbyist says, ‘‘I can make that work. We 

have a deal. I reached across the desk and shook his hand.’’ 

The Washington Post then reported that this deal was one of the 

most important made in the path of what would 9 months later become the law known as Dodd-Frank. 

Mr. Wilson, given that recounting of a critical deal made to get 

Dodd-Frank to the finish line, and given the regulatory maze that 

you have to go through in order to avoid these regulatory burdens, 

do you believe that Chairman Frank lived up to his end of the bargain in terms of exempting small community banks from the regulatory burdens? 

Mr. WILSON. We are subject to those regulations. We were not 

subject to examination by another agency. But when they make 

changes to the regulations, it changes my whole process, and it 

changes my training of my staff. And so, it is very complex. 

Mr. BARR. Thank you. My time is up. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Minnesota, Mr. 

Ellison. 

Mr. ELLISON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Ranking Member 

Waters. 

Chairman Frank, out of all of the things in the Dodd-Frank Act, 

is there one piece of the legislation that you are particularly 

pleased that we were able to get through? 

Mr. FRANK. May I begin by responding to that outrageous suggestion that I broke my word? 

I lived up exactly to that deal, as the gentleman on my right implicitly said. It was that they would not be supervised. There was 

never any suggestion that they would be exempt from the rules. 

And your question, I would say to Mr. Barr, did I live up to my 

deal? The answer is: I did. And Mr. Fine, with whom I made the 

deal, would affirm that. 

So, no, I don’t think you and I will be talking about your bill, Mr. 

Barr, because I won’t have my motives improperly impugned and 

a suggestion made that I am not good to my word when there is 

absolutely no basis for it. 

As far as the bill is concerned, to me, the most important piece 

is one of the things that I now worry about, which is risk retention 

in mortgage lending, I really believe that the single biggest cause 

was, and it was an intervention and it wasn’t regulated because it 

was new. 

You had regulation of mortgage lending pretty good up through 

the 1980s, because most mortgages were made by banks and banks 

are regulated. And even if we don’t have QM, the FDIC, the OCC, 

will still regulate the loans that Mr. Wilson’s bank gives. And I am 

satisfied with that. That is, there is a general need to be reasonable. 

63 

But what happened was banks, through money coming in from 

outside the banking system—and, yes, the banks were unfairly maligned, particularly the smaller banks. 

Most of the bad stuff happened outside the banks because all of 

a sudden money became available—not all of a sudden. There was 

liquidity available. You didn’t have to go to depositors. When you 

went to depositors, you got regulated. 

But there was all this liquidity from oil countries and Asian 

countries with large balances of payment. So, a whole lot of lending 

shifted to outside of the banks. 

At the same time, thanks to intellectual property innovation, it 

was now possible to make thousands of loans, bundle them into a 

security and sell them. 

So the ability to take the risk without having the responsibility 

for it proliferated, and I believe that was the root of the problem: 

the ability to make those loans. 

And I think there has been an inaccurate argument, oh, the Federal Government forced people to make them. Well, the CRA didn’t 

force Mr. Wilson to make bad loans then or now. And some of the 

agencies facilitated it, like Fannie and Freddie, but a lot of private 

people did it, too. 

People did it because they could make money, and they could 

make money in a way—and Mr. Carfang said it right, I think— 

they thought they could—as far as they were concerned, the risk 

disappeared. 

It didn’t disappear. It just went into other places, the people who 

bought the security, the people who issued the credit default swaps 

against those securities, like AIG. 

And so that is why I am troubled by a suggestion that there 

won’t be full risk retention. And I think somewhere they may get 

it backwards. 

They are tougher on loans that are going to be held in portfolio 

and softer on loans that are going to be securitized. And that is 

why I see these as flip sides of the same coin. 

I would like them to be softer, easier, defer—and, in both cases, 

there is a common theme. You are deferring to the business judgment of the lender or the securitizer. That is, let Mr. Wilson make 

loans if he is willing to stand by that and keep them in his portfolio. 

On the other hand, if I want to securitize those loans, let me do 

that, as long as I stand behind them with risk retention. So that 

was the single biggest issue, it seemed to me, and I am a little 

nervous about what is happening to it. 

Mr. ELLISON. Yes. Mr. Wilson, do you want to respond to that? 

Mr. WILSON. I just wanted to plead with former Chairman Frank 

to support community banks as in House Rule 2673, not to say he 

won’t support that because of something that was said here, but to 

support community banks as in the exemption from those mortgages we hold in our portfolio and from the escrow requirements 

to support that concept. 

Mr. FRANK. I will certainly work for that end. I was simply saying I can’t negotiate with someone who thinks I am a liar. 

Mr. ELLISON. I do have one quick question I want to ask before 

I lose my time. 

64 

One of the things that has happened here is not just the bills 

that sort of, I believe, erode Dodd-Frank, but the lack of funding 

for critical agencies that are supposed to carry it out, like the SEC 

and the CFTC. 

Do you have anything to say about that? 

Mr. FRANK. Yes. I am proud of the fact that we insulated the 

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from that strangulation by 

non-appropriation that has happened to the CFTC. 

And, again, I think—I started answering and Ms. Moore ran out 

of time. I think the Republican’s chairman says it is as bad as the 

health care bill. But the reaction of the Republican Party to these 

two bills has been very different. 

There has been no bill, to my knowledge, to repeal the whole of 

the Financial Reform bill or even any substantial part of it. 

There have been some things at the margins, some of which I 

think are good, some of which aren’t. But there has been no attack 

on the whole thrust of it, and they do it by funding. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from North Carolina, 

Mr. Pittenger. Would you yield a brief moment to the chairman, 

please? 

Mr. PITTENGER. Yes. I will yield. 

Chairman HENSARLING. I think it was Leo Durocher who said, 

‘‘Kid, you have third base so screwed up nobody can play it.’’ So we 

are going to take a little time in this committee and get it right. 

And, again, we have already dealt with Dodd-Frank’s greatest 

sin of omission in dealing with the GSEs, and we will soon deal 

with too-big-to-fail. And I look forward to having former Chairman 

Frank support a number of our community bank regulatory relief 

provisions. 

I thank the gentleman for yielding. 

Mr. PITTENGER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank each of you for your testimony. 

Mr. Wilson, I certainly sympathize with a lot of what you said 

today. I served on the Community Bank Board for a decade. 

And in Charlotte, where I live, we have had a number of consolidations of banks that just could not address the continued requirements and obligations, cost, compliance issues, and it has been bad 

for consumers and bad for the banking system. 

Mr. Carfang, I would like to take a look at some of your remarks 

and just get a little bit more insight into what you provided today. 

You have mentioned that banks are focusing on the safe segments, 

those outside the regulatory cross hairs. 

Could you elaborate on that? 

Mr. CARFANG. Sure. Banks are afraid of making mistakes in this 

environment. And so they are looking for the customers that are 

the— 

Chairman HENSARLING. Mr. Carfang, can you move the microphone a little closer to you, please? 

Mr. CARFANG. I’m sorry. Excuse me. 

So banks are looking for customers to provide stable deposits. 

Companies with seasonal activity are actually finding themselves 

at a disadvantage in actually finding a bank to take their deposits. 

65 

Banks are now responsible—in addition to ‘‘know your customer,’’ 

they are now responsible to know your customer’s customer. 

And that extension is getting a lot of banks out of the corresponding banking business. So major banks are no longer banking banks like Mr. Wilson’s bank, and he then doesn’t have access 

to upstream services to provide to his customers. 

Banks—a simple example, electronic benefit cards for welfare 

payments are a very efficient and effective and safe and secure way 

of providing benefits, yet under the ‘‘know your customer’’ rule, as 

it is being interpreted, banks are responsible to do all of the due 

diligence on the holders of their card, which is obviously an impossibility, and banks are exiting that business. 

We have retailers exiting the courtesy check-cashing business because of vague fears about anti-money-laundering, believe it or not, 

check cashing in a grocery store or pharmacy. 

These are some consequences, not necessarily that they have 

been regulated and are illegal, but they are falling into a gray area 

because of some of the—just the vocabulary in the rules that continue to be written. 

Mr. PITTENGER. Thank you. 

Other outcomes that you have mentioned were that deposits 

were being discouraged because of higher fees and lower interest 

and there was a restriction of credit to all but the most well-documented borrowers. 

Give us some more thoughts on that as well. 

Mr. CARFANG. Sure. Because banks now have to limit the size of 

their balance sheets, some to stay under the $50 billion limit and 

others for other regulatory reasons, credit, in effect, has to be rationed. 

And because banks are afraid of making a bad loan, a lot of the 

judgment has come out of this that—so we are down to checklists, 

so do you have all of your W-2s, and are they lined up, and can 

you show in your brokerage statement where your deposit came for 

your mortgage and things like that. 

All of those add cost and complexity and, frankly, cause banks 

much larger than Mr. Wilson’s bank to scale back to simply the 

most credit-worthy or the most well-documented borrowers. 

Mr. PITTENGER. Thank you very much. 

Another implication. You said that, due to extended interpretations of the ‘‘know your customer’’ rule to include your customer’s 

customer, banks are exiting certain electronic benefit card segments, and these concerns are also resulting in the scaling back of 

the corresponding bank services within community banks. 

Mr. CARFANG. Yes. And I would like to address the issue of the 

systemically important designation and the lack of screaming about 

that. 

In fact, the benefit of being a designated SIFI is lower deposit 

cost. So banks would not be screaming bloody murder about SIFI. 

But the nonbanks, the insurance companies and the asset managers who don’t gather deposits are, in fact, screaming bloody murder because the benefit is not going to them at all. 

Mr. PITTENGER. Thank you, sir. 

I yield back. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The gentleman yield backs. 

66 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Connecticut, Mr. 

Himes. 

Mr. HIMES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I really do want to 

thank you for the focus on the question of too-big-to-fail. I know we 

disagree over the relative merits of Dodd-Frank. 

I am a real believer that the creation of the CFPB and the fact 

that American families will be protected from some of the more 

predatory and toxic products that have beset them for a long time 

is a real step forward. I also think the regulation of the notional 

value trillions of dollars derivative market is a real victory. 

But none of us really know, Mr. Chairman, the answer to the 

question of whether we ended too-big-to-fail. None of us really 

know if there is, in fact, a funding advantage for those large institutions. 

I have looked carefully at the statistical analysis offered by Mr. 

Kupiec. The statistical significance of his analysis is pretty small. 

It is also—Mr. Kupiec understands, of course, the difference between correlation and causality. 

There are a lot of things that impact the funding costs of a bank, 

including the fact that they are international, they have diversity 

of businesses. A large money center bank looks almost nothing like 

Mr. Wilson’s bank. 

Nonetheless, nobody really knows whether we have ended toobig-to-fail. Mr. Frank made the point that simply reasserting 

Glass-Steagall probably wouldn’t do it. 

One thing that is for sure is that we took a whack at it in Title 

I and Title II. The right question, I think, is not did we end toobig-to-fail. We are not going to know that, frankly, until a systemically important institution is on the ropes. Then, we will see. 

Sheila Bair, whom I happen to trust on these matters, says that 

she thinks that sort of institution can be resolved. But we are not 

going to know until we see one of these institutions hit the skids. 

So I guess what I really want to do is continue this line because 

I actually think it is a really useful line of analysis. And I am going 

to ask Mr. Frank and Mr. Carfang, and if I have more time, I will 

open it up. 

But what I am really interested in is: We have established tools 

for regulators to both monitor—very aggressive tools—to change 

the nature of the businesses of systemically important institutions 

and a whole set of procedures to resolve those institutions in the 

case of them running into trouble. That may or may not be adequate. Anyone who says they know the answer to that, of course, 

is not being honest. 

So my question is—and I will start with Chairman Frank and 

then go to Mr. Carfang—what more could we and should we do to 

make sure that we never see a repeat of— 

Mr. FRANK. Obviously, that is a central question. 

And one of the things we should do is this. Brad Sherman said 

that what he thinks will happen is, if we have another crisis, Congress will vote to give them money. 

Well, no Congress can bind a future Congress. If that is the theory, then nobody can do anything in a bill that stops the future 

Congress. 

67 

My own view is that nothing could be more unlikely, given the 

current political mood. And that is the point I would like to start 

with, to Mr. Himes. 

People say, ‘‘Oh, it will work. If we have a crisis, there will be 

a bailout.’’ How? I want to know how they think that is going to 

happen. 

Will the Federal Reserve ignore the rule that says they can only 

lend money to an institution that is solvent? Will the Secretary of 

the Treasury violate Federal law and give people money? I don’t 

understand the scenario. The political pressure would all be the 

other way. 

So my view is the best thing we can do—one thing is just there 

is a self-fulfilling prophecy. People say, ‘‘Oh, the big banks that are 

too-big-to-fail, they are getting all these benefits because people believe that they will be bailed out.’’ 

They benefit from people saying that. People have a right to say 

what they want, but that is, I think, an inaccurate, self-fulfilling 

prophecy about what will happen. 

Again, I do not foresee a situation in which there would be political pressure on the Federal Government to ignore the law that 

says you don’t give them money and allow them to keep acting. 

The only other thing you can do is—and I thought Mr. 

Perlmutter’s questions were right—we want to keep them from failing. But we tried everything we could. 

I guess the other thing to do would be to mandate smaller banks. 

But, again, Lehman Brothers precipitated a crisis, and I don’t 

know what it would take to get everybody $1 smaller than Lehman. 

Mr. HIMES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Carfang? 

Mr. CARFANG. There is no clear definition of ‘‘systemically important.’’ And if we knew what we were trying to regulate in order to 

strengthen the economy, we would be much better able to do that. 

The United States is the largest economy in the world. No U.S. 

bank ranks in the top 5 largest banks in the world. Only three in 

the top 20. Systemically important is really a function of interconnectedness, complexity, and things of that nature. 

I agree with Representative Frank that at some absolute size— 

if you are $1 trillion on your own balance sheet, yes. 

But if you are an asset manager or insurance company where 

you are not even holding the cash, you are simply a custodian for 

part of the people’s cash, that is absolutely—not only is it ludicrous, it is chilling, because it tells everyone else, ‘‘Gee, behave, because you might be designated systemically important.’’ 

And if you are not a deposit-taker to take advantage of that deposit subsidy by being designated systemically important, you are 

at a serious competitive disadvantage. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Delaware, Mr. 

Carney. 

Mr. CARNEY. I want to thank the chairman and the ranking 

member for holding the hearing today and thank all the panelists 

for coming, bringing your expertise and your opinions, particularly 

former Chairman Frank for—notwithstanding the fact that you 

68 

don’t miss us here, that you are coming back. And we certainly 

miss you. 

You were very helpful to me, as a junior Member, a freshman 

Member in the last Congress, and now I feel like you are looking 

over my shoulder at everything I say and ready to slap me on the 

side of the head with your hand extended. 

Recently my father passed away, and recalling all the wonderful 

things that he did for me and my family, I recall that he, when I 

got my first home, signed the loan for the mortgage for my brother 

and me. And it was a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage because that was 

the only way that he and I could afford the monthly payments. 

And I know, Mr. Wilson, that a lot of first-time homebuyers and 

people with modest means use the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage to 

get that first home and to be able to build up equity. You mentioned that your bank doesn’t do many of those, but you are here 

on behalf of the Texas Bankers Association. I read through your 

testimony. There is a lot of concern in there about housing finance 

reform. 

Former Chairman Frank, on a regular basis, in my first term, 

would talk about the unfinished business of GSE reform. I have 

been fortunate enough to work with Mr. Himes and Mr. Delaney 

on a bill that we think addresses a lot of the concerns and would 

preserve the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage: H.R. 5055. And in the 

Texas Bankers—on their Web site, they mention GSE reform as a 

priority. 

One of the concerns they have is that the compensation paid to 

the GSEs previously and now for what amounts to a full government backing is simply not priced correctly and that it becomes a 

barrier for entry for private capital. 

Our bill would do that. We believe it would place that risk appropriately. It would give an explicit government guarantee, the same 

terms as the private capital. 

Are the Texas bankers concerned about the availability of the 30- 

year fixed in proposals to reform GSEs? 

Mr. WILSON. The 30-year fixed rate is a viable—it is not a product I have ever offered, although I would offer a 20-year amortization with a 5-year balloon. But, yes, the access to credit is important to Texas bankers. 

Mr. CARNEY. So that is the primary goal of our piece of legislation, to preserve that instrument of affordability, and we think that 

we do it. 

Chairman Frank, you have said a number of times this morning 

you are concerned about securitization, and that being a significant 

problem. 

What are your concerns going forward as we look at reform and 

particularly reform of Dodd-Frank? 

Mr. FRANK. I think it is time to get rid of Fannie Mae and 

Freddie Mac. As I said, we were the first ones in 2007 to put them 

into severe constraints and stop the bleeding, and they began to 

make some money. 

I think there was this question: Do we want to preserve the option of a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage? And I am convinced by people I have talked with in the banking industry, the real estate industry, and the homebuilding industry, that absent some governVerDate Nov 24 2008 18:50 Jun 05, 2015 Jkt 091158 PO 00000 Frm 00072 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\91158.TXT TERRI
69 

ment involvement, that is not sustainable, because nobody is going 

to lend—or very few people are going to make a 30-year fixed-rate 

loan with no protection against interest rate, that there needs to 

be some protection not against credit risk—that should not be a 

public function—but against interest rate risk. 

Mr. CARNEY. And, by the way, that has been the testimony of all 

the people who have come before— 

Mr. FRANK. Yes. So I think your approach, the approach in the 

Senate with Senator Crapo—Corker-Warner, Crapo and Johnson, 

and—I think, frankly, that is where we are. 

And Chairman Hensarling said, ‘‘We are going to do Fannie and 

Freddie.’’ But the fact is that bill hasn’t gone to the Floor. I understand it was a real chairman’s job to get it through. I know what 

those are like. 

But we have about, what—you have about 3 or 4 weeks left in 

the total session, or 5 weeks. I think it’s pretty clear that bill 

couldn’t pass the House because it represents a viewpoint that is 

a valid, intellectual viewpoint, but that is a minority, that more 

people agree with you, Mr. Carney, that you need to have some involvement to protect people against the credit risk on a 30-year 

fixed-rate mortgage. 

So my prediction is that the Republicans are going to complete 

their fourth year in a row of controlling the House and having 

passed no legislation in the House on the GSEs. I wish that weren’t 

the case. 

Mr. CARNEY. I would be interested—my time is running out, but 

I would be interested in the panelists’ views on the various bills 

that are before this committee. 

We have had a lot of discussion today about differentiating banks 

by regulations. So Chairman Tarullo has come up with some 

thoughts, and I would like to explore that with several of you. 

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The Chair wishes to make an announcement that it is the Chair’s intention to recognize the Members who 

are currently in the room. Those who may be monitoring this in 

their offices, tough luck. This has the blessing of the ranking member. 

Mr. FRANK. And of the former chairman. 

Chairman HENSARLING. Well, I am always happy to have the 

gentleman’s opinion. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from New Mexico, Mr. 

Pearce. Would you yield to the Chair for just a brief moment? 

Mr. PEARCE. Yes. 

Chairman HENSARLING. I thank the gentleman for yielding. 

Apparently, the Democratic-controlled Senate might be having a 

little problem with their GSE bill. I would like to note that for the 

record. 

And we have a disengaged President on the subject as well. I 

look forward to him changing his mind, perhaps, in the last 2 years 

of his Administration. 

I thank the gentleman for yielding. 

Mr. PEARCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And at this time, I would appreciate if we would post the chart 

that everyone has in front of them. 

70 

Mr. Wilson, your testimony aligned most closely with the people 

in my district because we have a very rural district, with a lot of 

small community banks, and they are telling us similar stories. 

And we were told that Dodd-Frank was only for the big banks, 

in other words, there was this bifurcation that would cause small 

banks not to have to go through everything. 

Now, it is my understanding that you would have to go through 

each step of this chart. First of all, you have to fit the small creditor qualifications, then look at the loan features, then the balloon 

payment features, the underwriting features, the points and fees, 

portfolio, and then the type of compliance presumption, the higher 

price—on the higher-price loan. 

Is that pretty well the regulatory process that you would have to 

go through to originate a loan? 

Mr. WILSON. Yes, sir. 

Mr. PEARCE. Yes. And so you have 17 employees at the bank. 

How many employees would it take for you to accomplish all of 

this? 

Mr. WILSON. I have— 

Mr. PEARCE. Don’t go over 100 or anything. 

I understand it is—you would not be able to accomplish it with 

the number of people that you have right now. 

Mr. WILSON. Yes, sir. 

Mr. PEARCE. Yes. And so we are led to believe that there are two 

different kinds of regulators that are going to come in and, if you 

are a big institution, they use one set of values. 

Are you finding that they actually come in, or do they just enforce the same set of values all the way down to the small guys? 

Mr. WILSON. The regulations apply to us in the—we have always 

been regulated by the FDIC and they—and our Texas Department 

of Banking, and they have done a really good job of regulating us. 

The problems that are being addressed in Dodd-Frank, a lot of 

those occurred by nonregulated people. And the CFPB, I would 

argue, ought to be regulating those folks and leave us with the 

guys that have always regulated us. 

Mr. PEARCE. So the problems did not originate on Main Street, 

but we transferred the punishment down to Main Street and actually left out Fannie and Freddie—two of the bigger offenders left 

completely out—and Wall Street itself has more capabilities than 

to perform the regulatory tasks than do the small banks. 

And that is the reason that—you said you have lost 80 banks out 

of the State of Texas? 

Mr. WILSON. Yes, sir. 

Mr. PEARCE. That is an amazing number. 

Now, if you consider—let’s say that in your small town of San 

Diego, Texas, that there are—along the spectrum there are people 

with better means and people of lesser means. 

Now, which group is going to be most punished by shutting down 

local community banks? Do the people on the low end of the income 

ladder in San Diego understand where else they could go for a 

loan? Do they have the capability, the wherewithal, to go to Dallas 

or Houston or Hobbs, New Mexico, or somewhere like that? 

Mr. WILSON. No, sir. But there are some payday lenders there in 

San Diego, but for the smaller piece of that. 

71 

Mr. PEARCE. Yes. So what we are going to do is leave a vacuum 

there and people who are not monitored, who are not regulated, are 

going to show up and fill that vacuum. 

Is that the way you would read it? 

Mr. WILSON. Unfortunately. 

Mr. PEARCE. And you said that you don’t give mortgage loans 

anymore just because of the high risk. 

What risk do you find involved in giving mortgage loans? 

Mr. WILSON. There is the compliance risk and it is the—being 

told what kind of mortgages I can make and then going through 

and trying to do the qualified mortgage— 

Mr. PEARCE. Yes. That whole list of things, the full two sheets. 

Mr. WILSON. —the escrowing—having to escrow taxes and insurance. We are just not staffed or equipped for that type. I have 

never in my 35 years done that. 

Mr. PEARCE. And so, again, we are going to make it harder for 

people in the rural areas, especially on the lower-income spectrum, 

to get loans for houses or trailer houses. 

Do you ever find any competition coming in from Wall Street to 

loan money for houses in your district? 

Mr. WILSON. No, sir. 

Mr. PEARCE. Yes. So, basically, what we are telling rural America with Dodd-Frank is that if you live in the rural part of the 

country, you are just going to be up the creek without a paddle 

or—there are other descriptions we could use, but we will probably 

leave it to that one. 

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time. 

I appreciate, Mr. Wilson, that you are providing a service that 

is desperately important for the low-income part of this Nation. 

Thank you very much. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The gentleman yield backs. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from Alabama, Ms. Sewell. 

Ms. SEWELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you and 

Ranking Member Waters for bringing this panel and all of our 

guests who are here today. 

I wanted to continue the line of questioning that Congressman 

Carney started with respect to SIFI—the designation for SIFIs and 

I wanted to know, Chairman Frank, is there some magic to the $50 

billion number or would you—there are lots of bills that are floating around, including one that I am signed on to with Mr. Luetkemeyer, and it suggests maybe a $100 billion capitalization size-wise 

would be preferable. 

And I wanted to know your thoughts on— 

Mr. FRANK. As I said before you were able to get here, I do agree 

that there is room for that. I was at the meeting at the Chicago 

Federal Reserve conference when Governor Tarullo talked about 

doing that, talked about exempting the smaller banks from— 

Ms. SEWELL. Sure did. 

Mr. FRANK. —Volcker and the compensation explicitly. I think 

that is a very good set of ideas. And, yes, I think that should be 

revisited. 

72 

I think you find some absolute number below what you can’t go 

and then you look at some other factors. You don’t want too much 

uncertainty, I think, or you run into the problems Mr. Carfang has 

talked about. 

But, yes, I think—you said is it a magic number. No. But you 

always have to have a number. Is 21 the magic number for voting? 

Is 435 the magic number for the House of Representatives? 

You always have to pick a number, and it will always be somewhat arbitrary. Calling it a magic number denigrates the process 

that is inevitable. 

But, yes, I think that we should look at that $50 billion again, 

although, again, the problem was here, Lehman Brothers started 

the last thing. 

And, Mr. Carfang raised a good question about what is it that 

we are talking about when we say ‘‘systemically important.’’ And 

it is a degree of interconnectedness. It is a degree to which, if you 

can’t pay your debts, that is going to reverberate throughout the 

economy. And that is the focus, I think, of the analysis. 

Ms. SEWELL. Can you elaborate a little bit—I was here when you 

were talking about nonbanks being sort of caught in that definition 

of SIFIs. Your thoughts about asset management companies— 

Mr. FRANK. I will again repeat what I said. I said a comment to 

the FSOC, saying, as a general principle that I don’t think asset 

managers or insurance companies that just sell insurance, as it is 

traditionally defined, are systemically important. They don’t have 

the leverage. Their failure isn’t going to have that systemic reverberatory effect. 

On the other hand, you had AIG, which was an insurance company, and the insurance business was so good they made more 

money literally than they knew what to do with. 

And, with AIG—and you go about the causes—the Federal Reserve—Mr. Bernanke came to us in September of 2008 and said, 

‘‘I have just given $85 billion to AIG.’’ We have changed the law. 

He couldn’t do that again because they weren’t solvent. And, therefore, he could not have done that under our current bill. 

But a week later they were telling us that they needed so much 

for the TARP, and they included another $85 billion for AIG. We 

said, ‘‘You already told us that.’’ They said, ‘‘No. That is an additional $85 billion for AIG.’’ AIG not only didn’t have the money to 

pay off, they had no idea how much they owed. 

But that is my view on that. Asset managers’ insurance, as a 

general rule, no, but there might be activities they engage in that 

say yes. 

Ms. SEWELL. What would you say to the line of conversation that 

Mr. Wilson just had with my colleague about rural America not 

being able to benefit from Dodd-Frank and being— 

Mr. FRANK. It is not what I would say. It is what I have said, 

again. 

I do think I would like to see a very sharp distinction in loans. 

I would like the main safeguard against bad loans to be risk retention, because that leaves the decision in the hands of whomever’s 

making the loan or securitizing it. And I would give much more 

leeway for portfolio loans. 

73 

Again, if you say that portfolio loans aren’t subject to some of 

these rules, you are not saying they are unregulated. Banks still 

have to go to their primary regulator. But I think, if people would 

hold loans in portfolio, that would be fine. 

When we had the Fannie-Freddie fight, I was one of the ones 

who said, ‘‘Make them keep their loans in the portfolio. Don’t have 

them securitizing much.’’ By 2005, I was convinced that we had to 

pass legislation and change it. 

Ms. SEWELL. Yes. The reason I ask is because I represent a large 

swath of rural Alabama and wanted to thank you for your leadership when you were chairman on manufactured housing as an option for maintaining affordable housing. 

And I yield back the rest of my time. 

Mr. PEARCE [presiding]. The gentlelady yields back. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. 

Westmoreland. 

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. Kupiec, we have heard from financial regulatory agencies 

that they conduct thorough cost-benefit analyses as they implement 

Dodd-Frank. 

You have been on the front lines of this effort because you led 

the FDIC’s Office of Financial Research under Chairman Bair. 

Do you feel the FDIC and other domestic and global regulators 

have objectively measured the cost and benefits of the Dodd-Frank 

reforms they implement? 

Mr. KUPIEC. Absolutely not. The FDIC, to the best of my knowledge—and I was the line officer for all the economists—never did 

any cost-benefit analysis for any rule internally, and they were 

scared to death that it would become a requirement. 

The Federal Reserve on Basel, I never saw any cost-benefit analysis that came out of the Federal Reserve, nor did I see any that 

came out of the OCC. 

I was the chairman of the Basel Research Task Force for the last 

3 years. When the Basel Committee put out its cost-benefit analysis on the effects of adopting Basel III, I was on the group who 

was going to write the paper. 

The paper assignment came from the chairman of the Basel 

Committee right before the Icelandic volcano erupted in March of 

that year and the meeting was canceled. There was no meeting of 

the group ever held. 

A draft paper arrived in my email box in June. I was not involved in any of the analysis. I don’t know where the analysis came 

from. 

I provided comments, which were very critical in the analysis, 

not knowing where it came from and knowing very many holes in 

the analysis. The comments were ignored. 

And a final draft came in my mailbox in August for me to sign 

off on because they wanted my name on the paper because I have 

some academic standing as a well-known banking economist and I 

was chairman of the Basel Research Task Force. 

I refused to put my name on the paper because I did not know 

where the analysis came from. It was not supported. It was built 

off of six or seven different modeling approaches cobbled together 

74 

all over the world with no data analysis provided to anybody on the 

group. 

I declined to put my name on the paper, which subsequently 

caused me significant difficulties in the FDIC. 

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Dr. Kupiec, let me ask you: Who stopped 

you from doing this analysis and— 

Mr. KUPIEC. There was never a meeting to plan how there would 

even be an analysis of how the implementation of Basel III should 

even be measured. A fully drafted paper appeared in my mailbox 

in June for me essentially to agree to. I don’t work like that. 

Mr. WESTMORELAND. So would you say that they were trying to 

inflate the benefits and underestimate the— 

Mr. KUPIEC. Oh, absolutely. And I could give you many specific 

examples of that if you wanted to go into details, and my comments 

were exactly to that effect. 

And it is interesting that subsequently, in the fall, when there 

was a negotiation among the Basel Committee membership to try 

to figure out what the capital ratio should be in the final rule, 

Chairman Bair was trying to get the Fed to get the ratio higher 

than they wanted. The Fed wanted a lower, more lenient ratio, and 

Chairman Bair referred to this Basel study as evidence that it 

didn’t hurt things to raise the ratio. 

And Governor Tarullo and Pat Parkinson actually called Chairman Bair and presented my critique of the paper, asking her how 

she could use that discussion to strong-arm for higher capital when 

her own banking economist who is on the committee wouldn’t sign 

on to the result. So I do not think this was done, in general. 

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Thank you very much. 

And I want to read something into the record. The American Action Forum places the price tag for annual compliance with the 

Dodd-Frank Act at $21.8 billion and 60.7 million paperwork-burden 

hours, the equivalent of 30,370 employees working full-time to complete annual paperwork. These burdens are up from $15.4 billion 

and 58.3 million hours last year. That is an increase of 41 percent 

for the cost and a 4 percent increase for the paperwork hours. 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics and Occupational Outlook Handbook said employment of financial examiners is projected to grow 

27 percent from 2010 to 2020, faster than the average for all occupations. And it is hard to say that this does not create any burden 

on our financial institutions. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Indiana, Mr. 

Stutzman. 

Mr. STUTZMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you to the witnesses for being here today and for 

sharing with this committee. 

I would like to, first of all, say, Mr. Chairman, that I know, for 

Hoosiers back home who are having to deal with the rules from 

Dodd-Frank and the new standards that they have to be held to, 

it is definitely a burden to them in ways that they have never seen 

before. 

Mr. Chairman, I am sure you remember the young man who is 

here and—a couple of months ago that the gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Barr had invited, who was a fifth-generation banker, 

75 

shared with this committee how that a small bank in Central Kentucky, fifth generation—he was the fifth generation, had survived 

the Civil War, had survived World War I and II, survived the Depression, wars in between, the Recession, but didn’t know that this 

bank would survive Dodd-Frank. 

And I think that sums it up in a lot of ways in what small banks, 

community banks, mid-sized banks, are dealing with today and 

that we are seeing a consolidation in a way that I don’t believe 

should have ever been the intention of any policy passed here in 

Washington. 

I know that, as we look—I heard from others on the other side 

of the aisle about how Washington saved our economy from going 

over the brink. 

And I will tell you there are a lot of folks back in Northeastern 

Indiana who felt like they did go over the brink, that they never 

were able to recover, they still haven’t recovered. 

And the fact that food stamps are at an all-time high today 

should reflect on the policies that this Administration—that Congress in 2009, 2010, passed, part-time labor is at an all-time high. 

What Dodd-Frank has done to not only just rural America, but 

to urban America, suburban America, has tied the hands remarkably in ways that many people don’t even understand. They just 

know that things are not getting better. 

And when they go to their bank in LaGrange, Indiana, and all 

of a sudden they can’t get a loan when before they were able to— 

they paid their bills, always made sure that their credit was solid— 

they are trying to figure out what has happened. 

I would like to touch a little bit on the Volcker Rule. What does 

that do? How do I explain to people back home the effects of the 

Volcker Rule? 

And, Mr. Carfang, there was a study done by Oliver Wyman 

which states that the impact of the Volcker Rule will be similar to 

the financial crisis, which disrupted liquidity and credit availability. 

Can you describe how the Volcker Rule will have—what impact 

it will have on liquidity and credit availability? Will it be a positive 

or a negative impact? 

Mr. CARFANG. The Volcker Rule will reduce the amount of proprietary training done by a bank—or, actually, eliminate proprietary trading or ring-fence that so that the depositors are protected. 

What you have, then, is less liquid markets. So there is less trading in the securities. There will be a wider bid-and-ask spread. 

So when you go to sell, there are fewer buyers; and, therefore, 

you will sell at a lower price. When you go to buy, there are fewer 

sellers and you will buy at a higher price. 

This would be—in Indiana, the same is true in farming. If there 

is not a big market in the product, the spreads are wider when you 

buy and sell. 

Mr. STUTZMAN. What will be the combined impact? Can you talk 

about that a little bit on interest rates? What other effects could 

we see? 

Mr. CARFANG. I have actually testified to this committee on that 

topic, and I likened it to an experiment—a chemical experiment 

76 

where we are putting in Basel III, we are putting in bank capital 

requirements, we are putting in the Volcker Rule and a number of 

other things. 

And, frankly, we don’t know what the outcome will be except 

that it is a deer in the headlights on the part of corporate treasurers and medium-sized and small bankers. 

Mr. STUTZMAN. Thank you. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The last Member to be recognized is the gentleman from Ohio, 

Mr. Stivers, and he is recognized now. 

Mr. STIVERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to thank the chairman for holding this hearing. 

I want to thank all the witnesses for bearing with us through 

what has been a long hearing. 

The first question I have is for Mr. Deas. But before I give you 

a question, I want to thank Gwen Moore for her leadership on the 

Centralized Treasury Unit. She and I have worked together to try 

to get that issue fixed. 

Can you tell me what will happen if we don’t actually get that 

bill fixed today? I know there are no action letters. There has been 

some regulatory relief. But what happens if we don’t actually get 

that passed for end users like you? 

Mr. DEAS. It will increase the—so it just increases the uncertainty of the end-user margin exemption. To the extent that then 

those transactions would be ineligible for the exemption, then companies like my own would have to post cash margin, which would 

subtract from money we would otherwise invest in our business. 

Mr. STIVERS. And if you had to do that, would you continue to 

manage your risk in a centralized way that is smarter and allows 

you to offset risks that offset each other or would you probably 

move to a less active form of risk management? 

Mr. DEAS. We would either have to do that in a completely different way with uncertain costs or we would have to retain the risk 

ourselves. Either way would likely cause an increase in cost. 

Mr. STIVERS. And risk for your business. 

Mr. DEAS. And risk. 

Mr. STIVERS. Thank you. 

The next question I have is for Mr. Kupiec. This issue has been 

beat several times, but I think it is really important to hit it again. 

The Dodd-Frank Act set the asset level of systemically important 

institutions at $50 billion. Do you know if there is any relevance 

to the selection of this arbitrary number? Is it cross-referenced anywhere else? 

Mr. KUPIEC. No. It is an arbitrary number. There is no scientific 

basis for $50 billion. 

Mr. STIVERS. I think Congressman Luetkemeyer did a great job 

of talking about the American Banker article yesterday that talked 

about two banks that are now approaching $50 billion and what 

has happened to their stock price, what has happened to them just 

as a result of potentially moving closer to that number. 

Even Governor Tarullo—and I know that Ms. Sewell referenced 

this—has said that a $100 billion number would be acceptable to 

him. 

77 

But isn’t there now an acceptance that $50 billion is absolutely 

too low among almost everybody who is out there? 

Mr. KUPIEC. $50 billion, I think, is too low for all the intrusive 

regulations that come along with it. My recollection—and it could 

be a bit fuzzy—was that the $50 billion came out because, at the 

time, CIT, which was a nonbank financial institution, decided not 

to bail out, and it was slightly below $50 billion. 

And I think, if my recollection is—that tied people’s hands at the 

time, that they couldn’t go. So they said, ‘‘That has to be bigger 

than CIT. So let’s call it $50 billion.’’ 

But I think it is reasonable to think that regional banks, if you 

fixed the resolution mechanism so that didn’t cause bigger banks 

if they fail—that you could exclude regional banks. 

And regional banks, ones that do primarily commercial banking, are as big as $200 billion right now. You would need to leave some 

growth room. 

So I personally, knowing a fair bit about banks, wouldn’t be shy 

at all and would shoot for some number like that. 

If it was a regional regular run-of-the-mill commercial bank with 

not a lot of capital markets, not a lot of the risky operations, I don’t 

think that would be unusual at all. 

But I think you need to fix the resolution process so that if they 

do get in trouble, if they fail and they are broken apart, that has 

to be fixed in the FDIC Act. 

Mr. STIVERS. That was clear in your comments earlier and your 

original testimony. So I appreciate that testimony. 

So, essentially, every witness here today, even Chairman Frank, has agreed that $50 billion is too low a number. 

And, by the way, congratulations on the beard, Mr. Chairman. It 

is coming along fine. Five or ten more years— 

Mr. FRANK. It has grown more than I had hoped it would in this 

hearing. 

Mr. STIVERS. So—you know, and I know that—my other question 

to all of you is—and I think Chairman Frank acknowledged it earlier—while we have to pick some number, that is absolutely true, 

but it is the risk that these—the activities that these institutions 

engage in that create risk, not necessarily the asset size that 

makes that happen. But I understand there has to be some number. 

Does everybody agree that it is really activity that generates 

risk? 

Mr. FRANK. Not just that—activity generates risk, but impact is 

generated by interconnectedness. 

Mr. STIVERS. Absolutely. 

Mr. FRANK. To both sides of the equation. 

Mr. STIVERS. And that is why the five standards created for 

nonbank financial institutions really focuses on interconnectedness, 

and that is what the Luetkemeyer bill really focuses on. You are 

absolutely right. 

But I guess my point in my last 8 seconds is these regional banks 

that have been pulled into this are really a lot like Mr. Wilson’s 

bank. They just got a little bigger. And they do exactly what Mr. 

Wilson’s bank does. They serve Main Street. And I hope we can fix 

it. 

78 

I yield back my nonexistent time, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman HENSARLING. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

I would like to thank all of our witnesses for their testimony 

today. 

The Chair notes that some Members may have additional questions for this panel, which they may wish to submit in writing. 

Without objection, the hearing record will remain open for 5 legislative days for Members to submit written questions to these witnesses and to place their responses in the record. Also, without objection, Members will have 5 legislative days to submit extraneous 

materials to the Chair for inclusion in the record. 

The hearing stands adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 2:01 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.] 

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A P P E N D I X 

July 23, 2014 

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