Making Banking Supervision Suck Again

Willfully blinding bank examiners could send us hurtling to yet another financial crisis.

by Dylan Gyauch-Lewis
October 31, 2025

The Revolving Door Project, a Prospect partner, scrutinizes the executive branch and presidential power. Follow them at therevolvingdoorproject.org.

With headlines about demolishing Eleanor Roosevelt’s White House office, deploying National Guard units to Democratic-run cities, and skyrocketing health care insurance premiums, the more banal machinations of Trump 2.0 have a tendency to fade into the background. Among the most important is a complete retreat from bank supervision. In less than a year, the regulatory regime overseeing one of the most important and interconnected sectors of our economy has been reduced to a mere cutout.

Unlike taking a wrecking ball to the East Wing, when it comes to financial regulation, “a lot of changes might seem fine on their own, but all together it’s the proverbial death by a thousand paper cuts,” according to Graham Steele, a fellow at Stanford Law School and former top Treasury Department official under Joe Biden.

“Every Federal Register that gets published has a new land mine” for the banking industry, said Horacio Mendez, president and CEO of the Woodstock Institute. Right now, the big question seems to be what blows up first.
https://prospect.org/2025/10/31/making-banking-supervision-suck-again/