Headline in the WSJ: Regulators’ Penalties Against Wall Street Are Down Sharply in 2017

Gosh No One Saw That Coming!

The reporting side of the WSJ, the good guys, have studied enforcement in Wall Street matters and have concluded that fines are way down.

Wall Street regulators have imposed far lower penalties in the first six months of Donald Trump’s presidency than they did during the first six months of 2016, a comparable period in the Obama administration, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.

Lawyers who defend financial cases said a shift to a business-friendly stance at regulatory agencies in the Trump administration is one of several reasons for the decrease. 

To be fair there are reasons other than Donnie handing out goodies to his rich pals,

Other factors include delays resulting from the change in administrations and the winding down of cases from the financial crisis.

But the drop is dramatic.

Penalties levied against firms and individuals by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority in the first half of 2017 were down nearly two-thirds compared with the first half of 2016—putting regulators on track for the lowest annual level of fines since at least 2010, the Journal found. Fines of $489 million in the first half of 2017 compared with $1.4 billion in the 2016 period.

And of course the law enforcement is more than equally applied in this area.  Low income families have no fines levied against them for violating financial laws and regulations.