GAO to Probe Three Federal Regulators

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is looking into the actions of three federal regulatory agencies—the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA)—to determine if they have been too lenient in dealing with problematic actions by the nation’s major financial institutions.

According to a Reuters report, the GAO has already been investigating the Federal Reserve following requests by two Democratic legislators, Reps. Maxine Waters and Al Green, that the federal entities were engaged in a severe act of deferential treatment to the financial institutions known as “regulatory capture.”

The GAO's financial markets and community investment division is also researching whether “regulatory capture” existed in the actions of the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS), which was merged with the OCC in 2011. The FDIC, OCC and NCUA offered no public comment on the report.