Even if Government Shuts Down, Expect Business as Usual at Bank Regulators

How will a government shutdown affect the regulatory bodies that cover banking?

It seems that since the agencies’s funding is not predicated by Congress, so they won’t be directly affected.

At the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., for example. it will be business as usual.

“As a non-appropriated agency, we anticipate operating business as usual,” an FDIC official wrote to Bank Innovation.

A spokesperson for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency echoed this, saying “The OCC will not be affected.”

And what about that the hottest of hot-potato agencies, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau?

“The CFPB is not funded through Congressional appropriations and would, therefore, not be directly impacted by a government shutdown,” the agency told us, and followed up with this statement. “The CFPB’s funding is a fixed percentage of the Federal Reserve System’s total operating expenses as reported in the Board’s Annual Reports.”

News of the possible government shutdown has reportedly upset Wall Street, which fears a shutdown will harm the government’s ability to find a way to raise the debt ceiling by mid-October. Meanwhile, a note from a Goldman Sachs & Co. analyst saying that a government shutdown would make a debt default less likely got a lot of press last week.

Should it take effect, this will be the first major government shutdown in 17 years. Last week, Citigroup analysts estimated that a one-week shutdown would probably cause a 0.1% hit to the national economy, according to The New York Times.