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Comment by ar9av | Hacker News Reader

Barney Frank is the Director of Signature Bank, so naturally he'd make up conspiracies about why it was shut down rather than recognizing it as the danger that it is. Even more than the bank's reputation and his affiliation with it, if he were to admit a failing at the bank, it would be a personal blow to his legacy since the Dodd-Frank Act was specifically supposed to prevent this kind of shit from happening.

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It's conspiracy fact.

"Any buyer of Signature must agree to give up all the crypto business at the bank"

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/us-regulator-taps-p...

Said crypto business was being actively investigated by US prosecutors and the SEC. As a potentially criminal enterprise it’s no wonder that it can’t be part of a sale:

https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/signature-bank-faced-crim...

Given that Trump gutted Dodd-Frank, what point are you making exactly?

Presumably, a bank could follow any behavior dictated by the original Dodd-Frank Act voluntarily, if it was a good piece of legislation in the first place.

The point of legislation like this isn't to support good actors who were going to make good choices regardless, it's to limit what bad actors will do when left to their own devices.

If everyone did the right thing on their own then we wouldn't need laws to prevent wage theft, or false advertising, or people dumping toxic chemicals in rivers people might drink out of, or murder.

I think the point is... you works think that the person who helped write the dodd Frank act, would probably follow it, even if it wasn't in law.

That sounds nice but it’s childish, like suggesting people voluntarily pay more taxes than owed. Don’t hate the player, hate the game. It’s perfectly reasonable to follow the rules of the game while believing the rules can and should be be improved. Or in Barney Frank’s case, actually doing so.

How would the original Dodd-Frank legislation have stopped Frank's own bank from failing? Or is it the case that there are always inherent risks in banking and that no legislation is sufficient to prevent all failures? Perhaps even, sometimes legislation has unintended side effects that lead to adaptive behavior in the market which then causes a shift in risk patterns that then ultimately causes a different, altogether unforeseen disaster?

He says in the article that he quickly realized the 50 billion threshold was too low and began advocating to raise it. Why would you expect him to follow the part of his legislation that he thinks is a mistake, after he succeeded at fixing that mistake?

It's also to (at least theoretically, can't comment on Dodd-Frank specifically but other areas of compliance that I've dealt with) ensure that even good actors don't stray too far. "Normalization of deviance" is a real issue, even for well-intended individuals and organizations. Having some manner to hold people to account can reduce (though certainly not eliminate) those incidences as well, or provide a way to get back on track (including, potentially, paths for self-reporting and rectifying to discourage coverups).

The point of legislation is to enact behavior because not everyone is a beneficent actor. If we could rely on beneficence alone, there would be no need for law.

(It should be obvious that banks do not do strictly beneficent things.)

Sure, but in this case, the co-author of one of the 21st century's most consequential banking regulations was placed in a leadership role at a bank that ended up failing.

Only if Dodd-Frank addressed only individual bank owner risk and not systemic and depositor risk.

Depends. If competitors aren't playing by the same rulebook, you're at a competitive disadvantage, and that risk could outweigh the risks you'd prefer to avoid. Regulation is needed not just to prevent risky actions, but to evenly distribute the incentive to avoid risky actions.

That's not true of banks, because as history has shown, a temporary competitive advantage as a result of riskier behavior often ends with insolvency (indeed, often is the case with business in general, but especially banking). In the case of Frank and his leadership and influential role, it stands to reason he would foresee such risks and avoid them. As of yet, though, I haven't heard any concrete argument about a specific item of the original legislation (or its current leaner form) that would have prevented Signature or SVB failures.

This makes no sense. It was a bank not a hedge fund.

Do you think banks don't need to compete? Aren't exposed to risk? They're not hedge funds, but they're still participants in various investment markets, and compete for customers on rates.

You mean S.2155? The legislation that Barney Frank supported?

True, he supported it overall but...

> Problems with the bill, Frank said, include the amount at which a bank is considered risky and subject to harsher oversight. The new bill increases the threshold five times, from $50 billion to $250 billion.

> “Fifty [billion dollars] was wrong,” Frank said. “It was too low. … But I think above 125 [billion dollars] was a mistake.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/16/bill-to-rewrite-dodd-frank-b...

What would you have done as president in that moment? Sign this bi-partisan bill or not sign it? (Strike through $250M and write in $125M and sign that is not an option.)

I find it hilarious when the executive branch (of either team red or team blue) gets blamed for faults which plainly and obviously stem from the legislative branch.

> Given that Trump gutted Dodd-Frank, what point are you making exactly?

Given that the legislation in question was bipartisan, what point are you making?

>Senators had assembled a rare bipartisan coalition to pass the bill by winning support from 17 Democrats

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/divided-hous...

When something passes with full republican support, and a small fraction of democrats it's disingenuous to call it bipartisan.

When the Republicans don't have the votes to pass a given piece of legislation and a large fraction of the Democrats in the Senate take their side, you can't call it anything else.

> naturally he'd make up conspiracies about why it was shut down rather than recognizing it as the danger that it is

I would have agreed with you a few years ago, but we've now seen SBF, Donald Trump, and other major figures admit to crimes to journalists (and sometimes on TV).

Regardless, I think you have to investigate from every angle, including asking someone who is likely to lie to you at the advice of their lawyer.

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