Alex J. Pollock reviews banking regulatory restrictions and analyzes their effects on real estate lending.

Longstanding policies that were intended to promote confidence in the independence of regulatory decision-making have now been wiped away by the Dodd-Frank act, which has in effect placed all the financial regulators under the direction of the Treasury secretary.

For many years, community financial institutions have been denied fair and equal access to the secondary market. Banks prosper by making prudent loans with an adequate return and maintaining a reasonable cost structure. Today 97 percent of our banks are community banks and they are increasingly finding this business model under siege.

Risk-inviting microeconomic rules of the banking game that are established by government have always been the key additional necessary condition to producing a propensity for banking distress.

Long-term trends in the evolution of banks help explain the bubbles in both commercial and residential real estate credit, increasing bank failures, and the insolvency of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Banking centers must offer their clients security; Dubai's banking sector could exist only because it was backed by an implicit security guarantee from the United States.

The Bush administration’s efforts to achieve tort reform through regulatory agency preemption has garnered much academic and press coverage. On November 29, 2006, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in the case of Watters v. Wachovia Bank. At issue is the scope of the National Bank Act and federal...

Please join AEI for a series of policy discussions on the Hill to mark the week of the State of the Union address. These discussions will frame the many challenges we face at home and abroad in 2012 while also offering solutions. Food will be provided at each of the events on the Hill, so please RSVP to guarantee your meal.