At Hearing, Warren Presses Trump Regulators on Wall Street-First Agenda and Trump Crypto Corruption Amid Affordability Crisis

At Hearing, Warren Presses Trump Regulators on Wall Street-First Agenda and Trump Crypto Corruption Amid Affordability Crisis

"President Trump is bringing the next great financial crisis closer into view, yet his regulators seem determined to serve only Donald Trump and his billionaire buddies."

Watch opening statement here (YouTube) | Watch Q&A here (YouTube)

Washington, D.C. - Today, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, gave opening remarks and questioned prudential regulators Michelle Bowman, Vice Chair for Supervision, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Travis Hill, Chairman, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Jonathan Gould, Comptroller, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and Kyle Hauptman, Chairman, National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), on the Trump Administration's Wall Street-first deregulation and the President's crypto corruption.

Below is Ranking Member Warren's opening statement as delivered:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

President Trump has had more than a year to keep his #1 campaign promise, to lower costs for American families. And boy, has he failed. Costs are going up across the board. Prices are up for groceries, utilities, healthcare and the National Association of Home Builders says that, thanks to Trump's chaotic tariffs, it costs $11,000 more to build every new house in America. Meanwhile, job growth has slowed to a crawl and 83,000 people working in manufacturing lost their jobs last year.

Ordinary Americans are squeezed hard, but boy it is a good time to be a Wall Street CEO. Last year, the CEOs of the six largest banks together earned more than a quarter of a billion dollars in compensation. Those banks paid out more than $140 billion dollars in dividends and buybacks to wealthy shareholders - it is a record.

The rich are getting richer, and everyone else struggles. In the Trump Economy, it's Wall Street first and American families last.

We've seen this story before, we know how it ends.

In the Great Financial Crash of 2008, 10 million families lost their homes, the unemployment rate skyrocketed to 10%, and nearly $20 trillion dollars in savings and retirement plans evaporated.

Washington helped cause that crash by eliminating commonsense guardrails that kept banks safe and focused on serving communities. When the crash hit, Washington bent over backwards to funnel trillions of dollars to bail out Wall Street. Wall Street executives who deserved handcuffs were instead rewarded instead with golden parachutes. It was brutal capitalism for families on Main Street, socialism for billionaires on Wall Street.

The memories of a family being thrown out of its home because of a predatory mortgage or of a 70-year-old grandmother coming out of retirement to work at Walmart because her pension vanished did not fade. But Wall Street lobbyists and piles of campaign cash have worked hard to erase them. Now they have their champion in the White House and he has assembled a team of Wall Street First regulators.

Take the Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision, Michelle Bowman. President Trump appointed her to the Fed during his first term. She helped deregulate Silicon Valley Bank and other large banks. A few years later, those same banks failed - the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th largest bank failures in U.S. history. And was Ms. Bowman held accountable? Nope, President Trump gave her a promotion.

Now, she and Trump's other regulators are implementing Wall Street's wish list.

At the top of the list? Weakening capital rules, including stress testing. Banks love debt. They want to make their bets using other people's money so depositors and taxpayers are left holding the bag if things blow up. Capital rules require banks to fund loans and investments with some of their own money, so that they have skin in the game in those decisions. Strong capital cushions help the economy by reducing the likelihood of financial crashes and taxpayer bailouts.

Now, megabanks are drawing down their capital cushions through higher payouts to wealthy executives and shareholders, increasing their risk.

Regulators have also rubber-stamped mergers, allowed banks to engage in dangerous crypto activities, rescinded a key rule designed to drive investment in low-income communities, eviscerated fair lending standards, and taken financial cops off the beat - each cutting staff by 15 to 30%.

The bank regulators have also terminated enforcement actions against JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs, while failing to identify new law breaking on Wall Street. Either Wall Street bankers have suddenly stopped breaking the law, or Trump enforcers are keeping their eyes deliberately closed. I'm betting on closed eyes.

Warning lights in our overall economy are flashing red.

President Trump is bringing the next great financial crisis closer into view, yet his regulators seem determined to serve only Donald Trump and his billionaire buddies.

Thank you Mr. Chairman.

Below is Senator Warren's exchange with prudential regulatorsduring the hearing:

Warren: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported on a story about ties between Donald Trump and the top spy in the United Arab Emirates, who is the President's brother and the country's National Security Advisor-he is actually called "Spy Sheikh." A few days before Trump was sworn into office, this spy spent half a billion dollars to secretly acquire a 49% stake in Trump's crypto company.

What does the U.A.E.'s top spy get for his half billion dollars? The Trump Administration agreed to sell the UAE our most-sensitive AI chips. Our own national security experts say the UAE- and the Spy Sheikh's companies - may be a conduit for funneling high-tech to China - technology that strengthens China militarily.

Right now, Trump's crypto company, World Liberty, has a bank charter application pending with the OCC, an agency that the President controls.

Comptroller Gould, you run the OCC. Did World Liberty disclose in its application that the Spy Sheikh's company was a principal shareholder in the proposed bank?

Gould: Senator, thank you for the question. I'm not going to discuss the specifics of any application.

Warren: Are you telling us you won't tell whether or not they disclosed it? Do you acknowledge that it is supposed to be disclosed to principal shareholders?

Gould: Senator, unlike the last 4 years of the Biden administration, under President Trump's leadership we are actually doing what we say we will do. And I would refer you to the-

Warren: Well let's see if you're doing what you say you will do.

Like all applicants for a bank charter, the OCC regulations require World Liberty to disclose all principal shareholders, which are persons with at least a 10% direct or indirect stake in the proposed bank. Those insiders must file a Biographical and Financial Report with the agency. Failure to do so would be grounds for a dismissal of the application. Evidently, you have not dismissed the application, so I assume the disclosure was made.

Will you show Chairman Scott and me an unredacted application so that we can see that for ourselves and see that you are in fact following the law?

Gould: Senator, the only thing to which I will commit is following our established procedures which are outlined in the regulations that you provided, as well as the 131 pages in the Comptroller's license and manual.

Warren: We are the Banking Committee and we have oversight here, I would like to see, in camera it is non public. I would like to see that, along with Chairman Scott, I would like to see that application, just to ascertain that the appropriate disclosures have been made. Will you commit to doing that?

Gould: Senator, I would be happy to entertain your request and discuss with my team and make sure we are doing and affording you the same privileges that we have afforded past administrations in similar situations.

Warren: I don't know that anyone has had to ask that before because I don't think any President has ever had a pending bank application before.

President Trump's crypto company is now at the center of perhaps the most disgraceful Presidential corruption scandal in U.S. history. An American president who sells out our national security to make money for himself-and if you grant World Liberty a bank charter, you will be a party to that.

So, Comptroller Gould, given the clear national security risks posed by UAE ownership of a U.S. bank, President Trump's huge financial conflicts, that we just talked about, and your own conflict given that you serve at the pleasure of that same President, will you deny or at least delay review of World Liberty's application?

Gould: Senator, consistent with my statutory obligations, we will process that application as we process all applications. And I would note that the only political pressure I have felt from any part of the United States government, Senator, is from you.

Warren: Well it is pressure to follow the law. If you follow the law, you will reject the President's application. As soon as you approve that application, and we all know you're going to approve it, you go from being a cheerleader for President Trump to an accomplice in his corruption.

Now let me see if I can just get to one other problem and that is not just doing Trump's bidding but also doing Wall Street's bidding. We know Vice Chair Bowman, that reducing capital cushions at megabanks increases the likelihood of crashes and taxpayer bailouts.

I did some research, turns out that your rulemaking would reduce required capital at the largest banks by more than $200 billion dollars, or 23% for the big bank companies. I will submit a question for the record so that I don't go over.

But, this is entirely contrary to your own comments that you would not put our nation at risk. You are doing so.

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