Is financial reform good or bad for business?

As the Senate continues debating financial-industry reform this week, I’d like to re-iterate a point I first made in a Time.com article: lots of businessmen are in favor of a sweeping overhaul.

You wouldn’t necessarily know that from reading the headlines, since headlines tend to capture the highest profile lobbying—like what comes from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Those stories usually say that companies are wary of financial-industry reform, typically because of the fear that the cost of doing business will rise.

But that attitude is far from pervasive.

Why Jamie Dimon is Afraid of Elizabeth Warren

There are a lot of reasons to like the idea of a consumer financial protection agency. My colleagues Barbara Kiviat and Michael Grunwald have named the more substantive ones here, here and here. But I think I have stumbled across possibly the most telling data point yet on why the CFPA is a good idea: [...]

Don’t kill the Consumer Financial Protection Agency

The WSJ is reporting that Christopher Dodd is flirting with giving up on the idea of a stand-alone Consumer Financial Protection Agency. The House’s financial-reform bill included such an agency, albeit in a form watered-down from what the Obama Administration initially envisioned. According to the WSJ, Dodd will only agree to take the agency out [...]

Obama vs. the Chamber of Commerce

The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize gave another push this afternoon to his administration’s proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency, with a speech at the White House. The only thing I heard that was really new was that he busted the chops of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, saying one of its anti-CFPA ads—which claims [...]