Romney: I’d Like To Repeal Wall Street Reform

By Tanya Somanader/think progress

With the constant stream of Wall Street donationsflowing into his campaign coffers, it was only a matter of time before GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney called to repeal Wall Street’s number one enemy — the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law. Though Congress enacted the law to provide vital consumer protections and to prevent Wall Street from spurring another financial crisis, Republicans have continually attempted to cripple the law piecemeal, either by attacking the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or weakening derivatives regulation. But Romney decided yesterday that a repeal of the law was necessary because, in part, the law’s length is too “overwhelming”:

“The extent of regulation in the banking industry has become extraordinarily burdensome following Dodd-Frank,” Romney told a roundtable of 18 businessmen at The Common Man Restaurant.

“I’d like to repeal Dodd Frank, recognizing that some revisions make sense,” Romney said. [...]

[H]e said, the 2,000 pages of the bill are “overwhelming” for community banks and the fact that pages of rules must still be written creates too much uncertainty.

Of course, the fact that Romney has finally read some of the law is a step in the right direction. Just last month, he couldn’t name any specifics of the law, saying only, “It’s 2,000 pages. I’m sure there’s something in there that’s good.” Now, he finds that the law’s regulation of derivatives and policy “to have different capital requirements if someone is holding a home mortgage compared to someone holding high-risk securities” actually “does make sense.”

His realization of the law’s efficacy makes his call for repeal all the more perplexing. After all, a repeal would not only block necessary consumer protections from taking effect but would also “allow the nation’s largest financial institutions — including those at the center of the 2008 financial crisis — to operate just as they did before the crash.” With Republicans already feeling the backlash for their role in the economic downturn, Romney may want to consider exactly whose interests he’s fighting for.