Put the Fed, FDIC, and OCC Back In Their Proper Places

The Federal Reserve System (‘Fed’) and its governing Board (‘FRB’) were never meant to regulate, and this still shows. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (‘FDIC’), by contrast, was meant to regulate, and this still shows as well. It’s accordingly a source of frequent failure that we have, since 1999, muddied up the jurisdictional waters of these two agencies which, along with the Comptroller of the Currency (‘OCC’), constitute our principal bank overseers. And the time has come, I think, to give these agencies their functions back – their clear and unadulterated functions.

A bit of history will clarify both how we got to where we are now and why this was a mistake…