Yesterday we met with Jamie Dimon, CEO of J.P. Morgan.  When the subject of regulation of the banks came up, he referred us to this famous graphic that has become known as “the spaghetti overregulation chart.”

The chart is from many years ago, but he assures us that most of these oversight agencies and their maze of cross-current rules are still in place.  Here is how he describes the impact:

“All of these rules are extraordinary, and it does cause a lot of people to be pushed out of the system because banks were afraid of being sued, because if, after the fact, something goes wrong — coulda, woulda, shoulda — you could pay a billion dollars” in penalties.”

We count more than 20 financial regulatory agencies. The Trump Administration is trying to consolidate, and so far, they have mostly idled Elizabeth Warren’s Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB).  We’d like to see about 10 more of these redundant agencies go away.