The proposed requirements, titled Basel III endgame, were slated to increase the cost of borrowing, with E.J. Antoni, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, previously telling the Daily Caller News Foundation the regulation change would disproportionately hurt average Americans while not addressing the current issues in the banking system: “I think the burden of this regulation will fall disproportionately on individual borrowers and small businesses … What’s going to happen is that credit will be less profitable for the lender. And so then the only way the lender is actually going to offer that credit is going to be at a higher interest rate because they have to offset the additional cost with additional revenue, and their revenue obviously comes from the interest on loans. So effectively, what you’re going to do is raise the cost of credit and raise the interest rate on all these different types of credit. So it could be a mortgage, it could be a credit card — lots of different things.”
Michael Barr, the Federal Reserve’s vice chair for supervision, announced that he would step down on Monday amid speculation President-elect Donald Trump would move to fire or demote him before the conclusion of his term in 2026.
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In addition to Basel III, Barr also oversaw a wave of regional bank failures in the spring of 2023, including Silicon Valley Bank, First Republic Bank and Signature Bank.
Barr had attempted to overhaul banking regulations during his time as vice chair, pushing to hike reserve requirements — the amount of cash banks are legally required to keep on hand — for banks holding $250 billion or more in assets by 20%, before amending the regulation to a much smaller increase of 9%.
Barr, who was appointed by President Joe Biden in 2022, said he will resign from the role by Feb. 28 or earlier but will continue to serve as a member of the Fed’s Reserve Board, according to a press release from the central bank. His departure from the nation’s top banking supervision role helps clear the way for Trump to reform financial regulations and prevents the legal battle that could have arisen if the president-elect had moved to fire or demote him. (RELATED: Jerome Powell Suggests ‘Influx’ Of Migrants Are Contributing To Rising Unemployment)
