Letter on Senate Banking Committee hearing on Dodd-Frank implementation

The Honorable Tim Johnson
Chairman
Committee on Banking, Housing and
Urban Affairs
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable Richard Shelby
Ranking Member
Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Chairman Johnson and Ranking Member Shelby:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the world’s largest business federation representing the interests of more than three million businesses and organizations of every size, sector, and region, believes that monitoring systemic risk and promoting financial stability are important goals and must be achieved without hampering economic growth and job creation.

In advance of the May 12, 2011, Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee hearing, “Oversight of Dodd-Frank Implementation:Monitoring Systemic Risk and Promoting Financial Stability” the Chamber urges Senators to take into account unintended consequences of the recent law and ask the witnesses the following questions:

1. What steps are being put in place to ensure that the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) and other regulators such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Office of Financial Research, and the Federal Insurance Office will follow due process in the consideration of rules, as well as transparency and disclosure?
2. Are regulators monitoring the layering and duplication of regulations and regulatory structures within agencies and across agencies?
3. Do regulators feel that any form of designation, even if only as a potential source of systemic risk requiring increased observation, will hinder a company’s or industry’s competitiveness and will a process or recommendations be established to have the designation removed? If not, why not?
4. How is FSOC dealing with the absence of permanent appointees in important positions on the Council and does that impact its responsibilities?
5. How will disagreements on specific rules and overall strategies amongst regulators be resolved? For example, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the banking regulators proposed substantially different rules establishing margin requirements for over-the-counter derivatives.
6. Information collection and data are important tools for regulators. However, with dozens of regulators and differing needs for similar information, multiple requests can be time-consuming, costly, and burdensome.What efforts are underway to share data and streamline information requests among regulators?
7. How are regulators conducting cost-benefit analyses, and how are they being used to develop individual rules and to estimate the collective effects of multiple rules?
8. What economic analysis is being undertaken to determine the competitiveness impacts of regulations upon American businesses in a global economy?
9. Have regulators discovered conflicts between the Dodd-FrankWall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and other existing laws such as Sarbanes-Oxley? Is legislative action necessary to resolve these conflicts?
10. To what extent will regulators establish clear rules of the road through regulation, or will a “comply or litigate” model be used?

These are important questions as to how financial markets can operate and fuel job creation. The Chamber looks forward to working with the Committee on these issues and others that are important to America’s economic recovery.

Sincerely,

R. Bruce Josten

cc: The Members of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs

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Letter on Senate Banking Committee hearing on Dodd-Frank implementation