In what was likely among the first U.S. earnings calls since President Joe Biden said Sunday he would discontinue his re-election campaign, Truist CEO Bill Rogers wasted no time addressing the elephant in the room.
When asked Monday morning about lackluster loan balances, stagnant demand and the potential for growth, Rogers said, “There’s a lot of uncertainty out there — in the world and in the market. … Take this weekend.”
With a new presumptive Democratic nominee in the race for president, it may be worth chipping away at some of the uncertainty, and exploring — from a 10,000-foot view — what the banking sphere might expect if Vice President Kamala Harris is elected to the nation’s highest office in November.
In 2020, the last full year Harris served in the legislative branch, she introduced the Accountability for Wall Street Executives Act, a measure that would bolster states’ legal rights to prosecute bankers at nationally chartered financial institutions.
States once had that ability, but in 2009, the Supreme Court ruled that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency had exclusive authority to enforce oversight of federal banks.
Under Harris’s measure, state attorneys general would have gained the ability to issue subpoenas to get records on banking matters involving real estate and consumer protection.
When Harris served as California’s attorney general, she did not take part in a $25 billion nationwide settlement with banks, compensating homeowners harmed by lending practices that led to the foreclosure crisis. She opted instead to get the state its own settlement, worth $12 billion of mortgage relief.
Harris has a notable “coaching tree,” too. The law professor she chose in 2012 to monitor California’s foreclosure settlement was Katie Porter, who has served in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2019.
Some left-leaning critics faulted Harris for failing to prosecute OneWest Bank, the Steven Mnuchin-led lender that California’s Justice Department found that it committed “widespread misconduct” in its foreclosure practices.
Harris did, during her attorney general days, serve a search warrant on Wells Fargo, seeking the names of employees who opened unauthorized accounts between 2011 and 2015.
“She has demonstrated a clear willingness to stand up to Wall Street to protect workers and families from the economic harms inflicted by unchecked financial sector risk-taking,” Gregg Gelzinis, a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, told Bloomberg in 2020.
