* Senate banking Republicans seek cost-benefit reviews
* Comes after JPM's Dimon pressed Bernanke on issue
* CFTC IG has criticized agency on sloppy reviews
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans on the U.S.
Senate Banking Committee will examine whether regulators are
doing enough to analyze the economic impact of dozens of
financial reforms.
Chairman Richard Shelby and nine other Republicans said
they will conduct "in-depth briefings" with the internal
watchdogs of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the
Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Reserve and
other regulators, the Republicans on the committee said in a
statement Wednesday.
The Republicans' call for the review comes days after
JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon publicly
challenged Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke on the issue.
"Has anyone bothered to study the cumulative effect of all
these things?" Dimon asked at a bank conference in Atlanta.
Bernanke said that's not possible given how many changes have
been made.
Republican lawmakers, along with those affected by the 2010
Dodd-Frank reform law, have accused regulators of emphasizing
speed over deliberation in writing new rules.
They have been given ammunition by some of the regulators'
inspectors general.
The CFTC's IG in April issued a 21-page report saying the
agency rushed to meet arbitrary deadlines, and failed to
sufficiently analyze the costs and benefits of new rules for
swaps traders. [ID:nN18242989]
"We must continue to monitor and improve the amount and
type of analysis that the financial regulators are conducting
in implementing this far-reaching law," Shelby said
Wednesday.
The CFTC and SEC are required to conduct economic analyses
of their rulemaking, and sloppy cost-benefit analyses could
make reforms vulnerable to legal challenges.
Federal regulators are struggling to carefully write and
publish the slew of new rules, and have consistently missed
deadlines set out in Dodd-Frank.
(Reporting by Karey Wutkowski; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)
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