Mark Whitehouse, Columnist

Banks Sure Don’t Look as If They Need Relief

Amid soaring profits, it’s hard to see how regulation has hurt performance.

Doing fine.

Photographer: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
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To hear bankers or the Trump administration tell it, the Dodd-Frank financial reform passed after the 2008 credit crisis has weighed heavily on the industry and the economy. Banks struggle under thousands of pages of regulations. They need relief.

Plausible as that might seem, it’s hard to reconcile with the data on banks’ actual performance.