Bankers have reason to hope Trump triumphs

Have you noticed that America’s bankers are seething over proposed new capital rules? What gave it away? Perhaps it was the advertisements that warn of dire consequences for the economy, which blare out during prime-time spots in Sunday-night football games. Maybe it was the not-at-all-veiled threats from executives. Suing your regulator is “never a preferred option”, Jeremy Barnum of JPMorgan Chase told investors on a recent earnings call, but “it can’t be taken off the table.” Or perhaps it was the deluge of letters that recently arrived in the postboxes of the Federal Reserve and other banking agencies.

America’s process for creating new bank rules has many stages. Regulators publish their agenda in the Federal Register, a scintillating journal published every weekday, which chronicles plans for rules, proposed rules, finalised rules and so on. They talk to industry members and carry out impact analyses. Back-and-forth between industry and overseer, at this stage, is done over coffee, often in private rooms in federal buildings. Then a “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” is published, the “comment period” begins, interested parties submit letters to regulators—and the battle emerges into the open.