Costly new regulations make small banks a bad investment, financier Kenneth Langone said.

“Don’t own the stock of a small bank,” Langone, 79, co-founder of Home Depot Inc., said in a taped interview for the television program “Wall Street Week” on Newsmax TV. “Regulated the way it is now, it’s a regressive tax.”

While the biggest U.S. banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp. have enough “scope” to afford costs tied to new rules, smaller lenders struggle to manage those expenses, Langone said. The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act unjustly punished banks of all sizes, he said.

“The tragedy is how the banks were made the scapegoats,” Langone said. “The banks to me are being beaten up mercilessly, unfairly.”

“Wall Street Week” is produced by SkyBridge Media, an affiliate of SkyBridge Capital, the fund-of-funds business founded by Anthony Scaramucci. SkyBridge, which sometimes has other business relationships with the show’s participants, advertisers and sponsors.