Big unwind begins: Republicans target crisis financial rules

WASHINGTON (AP) — Emboldened by a business-friendly president, Republicans in Congress are moving to unwind the stricter regulations that took effect after the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession.

The sweeping legislation rolled out by Rep. Jeb Hensarling, the Texas Republican who is Dodd-Frank's fiercest foe and heads the House Financial Services Committee, would deliver a body blow to the financial law.

Only a few weeks in office, President Donald Trump launched his attack on the financial law, ordering up a government review of the complex legislation that has been filled out with hundreds of rules written by regulators in a six-year slog.

[...] there's a new trade-off:

While it enforces consumer-protection laws, the CFPB also gained powers under Dodd-Frank to scrutinize the practices of virtually any business selling financial products and services: credit card companies, payday lenders, mortgage servicers, debt collectors, for-profit colleges, auto lenders, money-transfer agents.

The agency carried out an ambitious program of investigations across the spectrum of financial products, wrote new rules for mortgage lending and opened a vast new database for consumers to lodge specific complaints against financial companies.

—The Financial Stability Oversight Council, a group of top federal regulators, would be stripped of its authority to label certain non-bank financial firms as potential threats to the system because their collapse could threaten the economy.