“We will work diligently to limit regulations, lower taxes on hardworking Americans and small businesses, and get the engine of economic growth firing on all cylinders once again,” Mnuchin said.
On January 19, 2017, the latest of Trump nominees faced his nomination hearing. The Senate Finance Committee was the location where former Goldman Sachs partner Steven Mnuchin took questions and shared his views on financial regulations, his qualifications and more. It should be noted that Goldman Sachs runs an online consumer-lending platform, known as Marcus.
Mnuchin might best be remembered for working with California-based lender portfolios with defaulting home loans. This was all done under the company names OneWest and the reverse mortgage operation called Financial Freedom. He defended the practice in his testimony, saying he was committed to loan modifications intended to stop foreclosures and that he was an advocate for struggling homeowners.
During his testimony, Mnuchin indicated that he would limit the authority of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), a group established to oversee America’s largest lenders. He said that this kind of broad regulation is killing smaller community banks and he would relieve regulation on small lenders like community banks so that we do not, “…end up in a world where we have four big banks in this country.”
When listing federal financial regulators, he noted that “…in certain cases, there is overlapping regulation,” like the Concerning the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB), the FDIC, and the OCC. Further, he stated that the CFPB should be funded by appropriations, which some might say would allow Congress to defund its effectiveness. This could be inferred that he would continue the CFPB program but have a different funding structure.
“We will work diligently to limit regulations, lower taxes on hardworking Americans and small businesses, and get the engine of economic growth firing on all cylinders once again,” Mnuchin said. We at the Native American Financial Services Association are optimistic that “all cylinders” means “all” and that includes Indian Country as well.
