Popular vote loser Donald Trump rolled over for the banksters last week to great fanfare from Wall Street, announcing that he was going to sign an executive action that would scale back Dodd-Frank reforms and get rid of in important rule protecting consumers against conflicts of interest by their retirement advisers. But a funny thing happened on the way to issuing this order: it doesn't kill those consumer protections, after all.
The White House dropped a provision from a presidential memo issued last week that would have delayed a rule requiring your financial advisor to provide you with advice that's in your best interest.
The absence of the delay of the so-called fiduciary rule is sowing confusion over the fate of a regulation estimated to cost the financial services industry as much as $20 billion.
A draft of the memo, which was obtained by CNBC, had instructed the Labor Department to push back the effective date by 180 days and conduct a review of the rule's costs and benefits. A senior White House official briefing reporters less than 24 hours before the memo was finalized Friday said the administration intended to "defer the implementation." As late as Friday morning, opponents of the rule were cheering the expected delay.
That delay isn't in the final text of the memo that was released hours after Trump's big photo op signing it, with former Goldman Sachs COO Gary Cohn beaming over his shoulder. So the rule goes into effect on April 10, just like President Obama intended, so far. Why it was left out of the final memo is unclear. It might be because there's a law, the Administrative Procedures Act, which requires that agencies have to go through a notice and public comment period before they can change rules that are already on the books. Or maybe it was a drafting error. Or maybe they just forgot. Because it's not like this White House is functioning efficiently or normally.
This is probably just a temporary victory, because the Trump regime will certainly feel blowback from the banksters. But for now, let's call it a win.