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While the US settlement requires the bank to make improvements on its compliance controls, Goldman managed to avoid any obligation of having a government-appointed monitor to oversee its compliance department, which had been an earlier priority for prosecutors and would have added enforcement heft to the probe’s resolution. “I would have insisted on having this imposed on Goldman,” said Rodriguez Valladares. “Having an independent outside monitor could expose weaknesses in their controls in multiple areas of the bank. Without an independent monitor, regulators and investors will never know all the details of how Goldman got away with this scandal.”

“The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has really been gutted [under the Trump administration],” said Mayra Rodriguez Valladares, a capital market consultant and trainer who works with banks on risk and management issues. “The CFPB was never anything that the Republicans wanted. They fought it hard when it was going to be part of Dodd-Frank, and then when the law passed, they have fought its design, mission, its objectives every step of the way.”

“They (Moody’s) really are putting all of these coastal municipalities on notice. And it’s not just the municipalities. Importantly, they’re putting the states on notice,” says Mayra Rodriguez Valladares, managing principal of MRV Associates, a bank and capital markets consulting firm. States with large coastal populations and economies face credit risks over a multi-decade horizon because of a weaker economy, increased maintenance costs and lost tax revenue, the report states. That’s going to be particularly hard on financially stressed states like New Jersey, Valladares says.”

Rodríguez Valladares said banks still face plenty of risks. Many businesses are still in forbearance programs and could owe more once those end. Further federal relief is uncertain, and more people are likely to lose their jobs. “It would not surprise me to see banks in the first and second quarter of next year to again be increasing their loan loss reserves,” Valladares said.

“An ANPR is not a regulation or even a proposed one, its purpose is for regulators and government agencies to solicit comments from the public on a wide range of questions,” said Mayra Rodriguez Valladares of MRV Associates, a regulatory consultancy. “Until financial institutions are fined a lot more, closed down, and those who look away are hauled off in handcuffs, no ANPR or even bad headlines will do much.”

“Corporate defaults on loan obligations are higher now than in 2009, right after the massive crash, as banking expert Mayra Rodriguez Valladares wrote at Forbes. The total number of defaults could pass those in 2009. That’s bad news for the bundled debt business. According to data from S&P Global Ratings, hundreds of CLOs have been downgraded to junk status.”