Press Releases

Congressmen Rick Crawford (AR-1), Tim Griffin (AR-2), Steve Womack (AR-3), and Tom Cotton (AR-4) today sent a letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry, and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Chairman Martin Gruenberg expressing concern about the unintended consequences of recently finalized rules implementing Section 619 of the Dodd-Frank Act, commonly called the Volcker Rule, in Arkansas.

“It has come to our attention from numerous community banks in Arkansas—the type that played no role in causing the 2008-09 financial crisis—that the Volcker rule’s treatment of Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) backed by Trust Preferred Securities (TruPS) could have an adverse impact on these banks’ accounting of capital and earnings.”

The letter goes on to ask that the Administration acknowledge that community banks didn’t cause the financial crisis and weren’t supposed to be harmed by the Volcker Rule in their forthcoming re-examination of this issue.

Full text of the letter can be found here.

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