Banking
So Much for That Plan
"More than 70% of commercial bank assets are held by organizations that are
supervised by at least two federal agencies; almost half attract the attention
of three or four. Banks devote on average about 14% of their non-interest
expense to complying with rules" (Anonymous 88). A fool can see that
government waste has struck again. This tangled mess of regulation, among
other things, increases costs and diffuses accountability for policy actions
gone awry. The most effective remedy to correct this problem would be to
consolidate most of the supervisory responsibilities of the regulatory agencies
into one agency. This would reduce costs to both the government and the
banks, and would allow the parts of the agencies not consolidated to
concentrate on their primary tasks. One such plan was introduced by
Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen in March of 1994. The plan called for
folding, into a new independent federal agency (called the Banking
Commission), the regulatory portions of the Office of the Comptroller of the
Currency (OCC), the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation (FDIC), and the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS). This plan
would save the government $150 to $200 million a year. This would also allow
the FDIC to concentrate on deposit insurance and the Fed to concentrate on
monetary policy (Anonymous 88). Of course this is Washington, not The
Land of Oz,...
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