U.S. News: Regulators Keep Up Criticism
WASHINGTON -- Top U.S. regulators rebuked Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Tuesday and continued criticizing the administration's proposed revamp of financial regulation, signaling that turf battles will continue over one of the White House's top domestic agenda items.</br></br>During a Senate hearing, federal banking regulators took aim at central aspects of the administration's proposal, questioning the creation of an agency to protect consumers and the concentration of regulatory power in the Federal Reserve.</br></br>Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan said parts of the proposal to overhaul bank rules were "not consistent with its own stated objective." Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair said the plan was focused on the wrong solutions.</br></br>"It is difficult to see why so much effort should be expended to create a single regulator when political capital could be better spent on more important and fundamental issues," Ms. Bair told the Senate Banking Committee.</br></br>The criticisms came days after Mr. Geithner called top regulators to the Treasury and told them during an expletive-laced meeting to quiet their public criticism of the proposal. Mr. Dugan, Ms. Bair, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke were among those at the meeting, where Mr. Geithner told regulators they had been given the chance to air their grievances but that it was time to stop.