There's a reason we have banking regulations

Scott Gryder's guest editorial on March 19 neglects some relevant items. He complains about two issues with the Dodd-Frank law: the additional documentation and controls required of banks and the interchange fee cap.

To his first point, Dodd-Frank was not written for the convenience of banks. It was necessary because banks, both large and small, blew up the economy … again. Financial crashes occurred almost every decade from colonial times until Glass-Steagall in 1933. Left alone, banks cannot be trusted to manage the economy. Mr. Gryder wants banks left alone. Let him bail them out next time..

Secondly, if interchange fee prices had been set in a real marketplace, there would be no need for price controls. But that was not a marketplace. It had only two providers, both charging similarly. Cost of entry was prohibitive. That was textbook monopoly. And it still is. Mr. Gryder would put the monopoly back in charge to return to the fee structure that drove the law.

Laws and regulation should be effective and harm as few people as possible, but by necessity they change things. Mr. Gryder wants to remove the law but offers no solution to the problems the law addresses. Financial rules may not have dead bodies behind them, but they protect the public nonetheless. Mr. Gryder's changes would have consequences, too, and we already know what they are.

Mark Muehlhausen

Schaumburg