Repeal Dodd-Frank -- now

There were two articles tweeted by the Newt 2012 Twitter account -- which you can follow it by clicking here -- about the damage Dodd-Frank is doing.

The first, posted on NationalReview.com, is titled: "Dodd-Frank: Wrong, Wrong, Wrong." With a subtitle of: How not to fix a problem.

The article reads:

[Dodd-Frank] doesn’t address at all the main discernible causes of the economic crisis of 2008, which have not gone away. The housing bubble and imprudent lending into it were the principal problem, and the principal culprit is the United States government, for legislating a substantial percentage of private-sector commercial mortgages to be on a non-commercial basis; for issuing executive orders to the giant, pseudo-private-sector Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make the majority of their mortgage loans on that basis; and for keeping interest rates and mortgage equity requirements so low for so long.

Here is the link again.

The other article, by Jeffrey Carter of the blog Points and Figures, explains how the legislation will increase food prices.

Carter writes:

Not only is it proving to restrict access to money by poor people, it is imposing crushing costs on smaller banks-effectively putting them out of business. This makes access to capital even tougher, because instead of going to a small bank where you can develop a relationship, a businessman now needs to go to a large monolith bank where they are a number.

Oh wait, there’s more.

Because of how the bill changes the way futures and options are regulated; along with how grain elevators and Futures Commission Merchants are regulated, your food costs are going up.

After quoting from the Federal Register, Carter continues:

Assume that you wanted to stay in business and not simply fold up your shop. What’s that verbiage going to cost you? The CFTC estimates that it will be somewhere between $16,750-$61,750 initially, and $12,600 annually once every member has a recording system. That means a farmer in a tractor that is talking to their broker monitoring the market all the way up the food chain to the hot shot trader on a trading desk.

No doubt that the costs will be significantly higher than that. Purely altering your operations will cost you more than that.

What’s that mean to the market?

These extra layers of regulation mean that producers will have to charge a higher price for food. The price will be passed down from the field through the elevator, through the trading pits, through the food producers, and greet you at the checkout counter at the grocery.

He concludes:

Repeal Dodd-Frank. Now. I appreciate the sentiment of the bill and think we need to do something with regard to banking, but this was obviously the wrong approach. It is as damaging as Obamacare. It is an economy destroyer.

Hint: Markets price in the future....

(elipsis in the original)

When Dodd-Frank is driving up costs for everyone, discouraging investment, drowning small banks in paperwork while making big banks even bigger, and increasing food prices, why is Newt the only candidate seriously talking of repealing the bill?

Why is he the one candidate who is being called "the community banking candidate?"