Financial Reform - A Disaster In The Making

As if the stock market downturn and declining home sales aren't enough, the so-called Frank-Dodd Financial Reform bill will make sure to kill off one thing that many of us depend upon – our local community banks.

The comprehensive financial reform agreed upon by the House and Senate on Friday, along with all the new regulations of the past year, could signal the end of community banking. The new reforms will give more power to the Federal Reserve to regulate how [small banks] do business.

What does all this mean for our customers? Less credit will be available, costs will increase, and we will be less able to make loans to regular people who were creditworthy in the past. This is the perfect storm for the small retail banking customer. We will start to see more small community bank failures and mergers because of voluminous regulation.

I thought financial reform was supposed to help both consumers and banks to survive. Instead it looks like it's designed to destroy small banks and make it very difficult to get loans of any type. How is this helping anyone...except the banks that are too large to fail?

It has become increasingly apparent the Democrats in Congress are not friends of the American people. The only ones their interested in helping are themselves...to our money