Now that Donald Trump and the long-ish list of Goldman bankers in his inner circle are set to roll back Dodd-Frank in a concerted and ongoing effort to “make Wall Street dangerous great again,†America’s banks can finally get back to business as usual.
That is, back to business as they knew if before the financial crisis woke America up to the fact that “business as usual†on Wall Street generally means embedding untold systemic risk in the scaffolding that underpins the financial system. Here’s an amusing bit from aÂ
New York Times piece out Friday:
If only we had been clever enough to take Donald Trump neither literally nor seriously, we would have known that after vilifying Wall Street throughout his campaign, he would embrace it once he got to the Oval Office.
And, just like that, Wall Street is swarming the Trump administration and steering financial policy. On Feb. 3, Mr. Trump invited the members of his Strategy and Policy Forum to the White House. Stephen Schwarzman, the group’s chairman and the billionaire co-founder of the Blackstone Group, was seated at Mr. Trump’s right. Jamie Dimon, the chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, sat across from him. Mr. Trump said he expected to cut “a lot out of†the 2010 Dodd-Frank law that re-regulated Wall Street after the financial crisis.
“There’s nobody better to tell me about Dodd-Frank than Jamie,†Mr. Trump said, presumably meaning that there was nobody better to help him dismantle Dodd-Frank than Jamie.
Hilarious, right?
Anyway, between a friendlier regulatory environment, higher expected growth, and higher rates, many investors do indeed expect that the new administration will go a long way towards restoring the glory days for America’s financial institutions.
For those interested in the space, below find what Deutsche Bank calls “the single most important question for each bank.â€
