Mike Selig, Chief Counsel on the SEC’s Crypto Task Force, was nominated to serve as the next chair of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.

Selig’s appointment is expected to advance regulatory coordination between the CFTC and the SEC, particularly on deregulation of financial markets and light oversight over cryptocurrency.

The Fed Board voted 6 to 1 in favor of a proposal to further weaken the stress tests for large banks. Governor Barr voted against the proposal.

The Fed’s proposed changes will now enable the banks to game the tests to reduce their capital requirements even more. It will give the banks the answers to the test before they take it, rendering the tests essentially worthless.

Read Better Markets’ statement here.

Banking Regulators rescind interagency policies related to large banks’ management of climate-related financial risks. The Banking Agencies are supposed to focus on their mission to identify and ensure mitigation of all risks regardless of source, origin, or ideology. Politicizing and undermining the safety, soundness, and stability of the banking system and the economy by picking and choosing only some risks does not make the risks go away. On the contrary, it ensures that those risks will increase and spread, almost certainly exploding in the future when banks and policymakers are unprepared and forced to undertake much more drastic actions than would have otherwise been required. This is not just regulators putting their head in the sand and ignorantly denying reality; it is an affirmative dereliction of duty and violation of their mandates to protect the banking system, the economy, and all Americans from all financial risks.

Read Better Markets’ statement here.

The OCC granted conditional approval to Erebor Bank, which “plans to target its products and services to technology companies and ultra-high-net-worth individuals that utilize virtual currencies.”

This decision is a clear indication of the OCC’s openness to and encouragement of new banking industry entrants with a focus on digital assets. This has prompted several other crypto bank applications to the OCC, including Sony and Stripe.

FDIC bank supervisors will no longer identify reputation risk at banks, bending to the demands of the Trump Administration. The Trump Administration and the regulatory agencies claim that the change in supervisory focus will enable fair access for all to the banking industry. But their real goal is to blindfold and handcuff banking supervisors, which will inevitably result in unethical and dangerous actors gaining access to banks for funding.

Read Better Markets’ statement here.

FDIC and OCC will limit what is considered an unsafe or unsound banking practice to just things that relate to a bank’s financial condition, with the notice of proposed rulemaking approved today.

With this rule, bank supervisors will now be constrained and limited in using Matters Requiring Attention (“MRAs”) to identify, document, and stop dangerous activity at banks.

The American people rely on bank supervision experts at the FDIC and other federal banking regulatory agencies to recognize and take action to stop dangerous activities that threaten the stability of banks and the financial system. Doing that job well requires them to be on heightened alert for new, novel, untested, unknown, and potentially dangerous risks, whether they affect a bank’s financial condition today or not. The FDIC’s record of doing that has made it the gold standard in protecting Americans’ savings. Today’s action threatens that gold standard and will directly undermine FDIC supervisors from doing their jobs, and all Americans will pay the price.