President Trump Is Officially Dissolving His Charitable Foundation - TIME

President Trump Is Officially Dissolving His Charitable Foundation

President Donald Trump is dissolving his charitable foundation nearly a year after it admitted to violating federal rules on “self-dealing,” according to newly-filed tax documents.

Internal Revenue Service documents filed this month and obtained by NBC News confirm Trump is making good on his promise from last December to shutter the Donald J. Trump Foundation in light of scrutiny over potential conflict of interest.

“The foundation announced its intent to dissolve and is seeking approval to distribute its remaining funds” to other charities, according to the IRS filing, which was uploaded to charity watchdog website Guidestar.org by the foundation.

In October 2016, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman ordered the foundation to halt its solicitation of charitable donations in the state. Now, a spokesperson from the foundation says that it is working with Schneiderman’s office in order to facilitate the foundation’s closing.

“The Foundation continues to cooperate with the New York Attorney General’s Charities Division, and as previously announced by the President, his advisers are working with the Charities Division to wind up the affairs of the Foundation,” the spokesperson told NBC. “The Foundation looks forward to distributing its remaining assets at the earliest possible time to aid numerous worthy charitable organizations.”

The foundation had about $970,000 in assets at the end of 2016, the documents show, according to NBC. The attorney general’s press secretary, Amy Spitalnick, told the outlet that the foundation legally cannot close yet since it is “still under investigation by this office.”

Tax records dating back to 2015 show that the foundation has violated the IRS’ provisions on self-dealing, which bars nonprofits from funneling charity funds to its leaders, their businesses, or their families.

Trump himself acknowledged the violation, saying in a December 2016 statement: “The Foundation has done enormous good works over the years in contributing millions of dollars to countless worthy groups, including supporting veterans, law enforcement officers and children. However, to avoid even the appearance of any conflict with my role as President I have decided to continue to pursue my strong interest in philanthropy in other ways.”

It remains unclear how Trump will seek to continue his charitable interests in the “other ways” he mentioned last year.

Putin to speak with Trump after meeting with Syrian President Assad - CNN News

Putin to speak with Trump after meeting with Syrian President Assad

By Ben Westcott and Jennifer Hauser, CNN

) November 21, 2017

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian President Bashar Assad met in Sochi, Russian state media reported Tuesday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian President Bashar Assad met in Sochi, Russian state media reported Tuesday.

(CNN)Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to call US President Donald Trump on Tuesday following a rare meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad to discuss the future of Syria, a statement from the Kremlin said.

Putin and Assad met for talks in Sochi, the Russian Black Sea resort, Russian state media reported Tuesday.

During the meeting, Putin was full of praise for the Syrian President and his work fighting ISIS.

"Syria is striving in the fight against terrorist(s) ... the Syrian people are going through very difficult trials and are gradually approaching the final, unavoidable rout of terrorists," Putin said according to Russian news agency Sputnik.

A Kremlin statement issued after the meeting quoted Putin as saying he would be phoning Trump on Tuesday, along with leaders of other countries involved in the Syrian conflict, such as Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

"Based on our meeting today I will hold consultations with the leaders of those countries... Today, a conversation with Emir of Qatar is already planned and, tomorrow, with president of the United States of America Donald Trump and then with leaders of the countries of the region," Putin said Monday, according to the statement.

Putin (right) praised Assad for his work fighting ISIS.

Putin (right) praised Assad for his work fighting ISIS.

It's the first time the two leaders have met since October 2015, just a month after Russia came to the aid of the embattled dictator with a series of airstrikes against rebels opposing Assad's regime.

Putin and his government have been one of the chief supporters of the Syrian President's government, both militarily and in helping negotiate ceasefires in the country's long-running civil war.

Hostilities between Assad and the Syrian rebels began in March 2011.

The two leaders met for talks ahead of a trilateral summit on Wednesday between Russia, Turkey and Iran, Syrian state media SANA said.

Both men, who are pictured hugging in official photos, agreed that the emphasis in the long-running Syrian conflict has moved from military operations to the search for a political solution.

"Huge successes have been achieved, both on the battlefield (and) on the political level. Many areas in Syria have been liberated from terrorist(s), and civilians who were forced to leave those areas have been able to return," Assad said according to state media.

"We must admit that the operation made it possible to advance the process of political settlement in Syria."

CNN's Matthew Chance and Emma Burrows contributed to this report.

British banks will lose “passporting rights” to do business in the European Union after Brexit - Independent

British banks will lose “passporting rights” to do business in the European Union after Brexit, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator has said.

Speaking in Brussels on Monday, Michel Barnier said that “Brexit means Brexit” – and that there could be no opt-ins to parts of the single market for certain industries.

“On financial services, UK voices suggest that Brexit does not mean Brexit. Brexit means Brexit, everywhere,” Mr Barnier said in a major speech to a think-tank.

David Davis ‘must be joking if he wants EU to compromise on Brexit’

“The legal consequence of Brexit is that the UK financial service providers lose their EU passport. This passport allows them to offer their services to a market of 500 million consumers and 22 million businesses.”

The pronouncement is bad news for the City, where over 5,400 British firms rely on passporting rights to bring in £9bn in revenue every year to Britain. The British Bankers’ Association (BBA) has said the loss of passporting would be “disruptive, costly and time-consuming”.

It also comes the same day as the EU announces where it will relocating the European Banking Authority, an EU agency currently based in London, after Brexit.

The chief negotiator said the EU might judge some UK rules as “equivalent” to EU passporting rights, but ruled out the City of London having access to EU financial markets under the same passporting deal as now.

Brexit trade talks to be pushed back by another four months, says Manfred Weber

Mr Barnier told the audience at the Centre for European Reform: “Those who claim that the UK should pick parts of the single market must stop this contradiction. The single market is a package, with four indivisible freedoms, common rules, institutions, and enforcement structures.

“The UK knows these rules very well, like the back of its hand. It has contributed to defining them over the last 44 years with a certain degree of influence. We took note of the UK decision to end free movement of people, and this means clearly that the UK will lose the benefits of the single market.

Michel Barnier speaking at the Centre for European Reform in Brussels (CER)

“This is a legal reality; the EU does not want to punish, it simply draws the logical consequence of the UK’s decision to take back control.”

As well as ruling out a carve-out for the financial sector, Mr Barnier appeared to suggest there could be no special deal for the UK’s car manufacturers to stay in the single market, as proposed by industry bodies.

Davis ‘demanded private RAF plane for Brexit talks’

Households are more than £400 worse off after Brexit

Irish border joins divorce bill on pile of reasons for Brexit deadlock

Government sabotaging its own Brexit talks with new law, MPs warn

In the same speech, the senior EU official also expressed disappointment at what he suggested as a fixation in some British circles on “no deal” being a viable option for the UK.

“We have a shared history and this started long before the last 44 years. This is why the no deal is not our scenario, even though we will be ready for it,” he said.

“I regret that this ‘no deal’ option comes up so often in the UK public debate. Only those who want to ignore the current benefits of EU membership can say that no deal would be a positive result.”

Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable said the decision was a “major blow” to the Government’s Brexit plans.

“Loss of this access risks blowing a hole in the budget at a time when our public services are already seriously underfunded,” he said.

“All of this could be avoided if the Government chose to stay in the single market.

“Instead, ministers seem intent on killing the golden goose by choosing an extreme form of Brexit that will seriously damage the financial sector.”

Britain to submit 'Brexit bill' proposal before December EU meeting - reuters

Britain to submit 'Brexit bill' proposal before December EU meeting

William James

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain will submit proposals on how to settle its divorce bill with the European Union before an EU summit next month and is expected to negotiate hard, finance minister Philip Hammond said on Sunday.

The EU told Prime Minister Theresa May on Friday that there was more work to be done to unlock the Brexit talks, repeating its early December deadline for her to flesh out Britain’s opening offer on the financial settlement.

“We will make our proposals to the European Union in time for the Council,” Hammond told the BBC, referring to the Dec. 14-15 meeting of EU heads of government.

He was speaking three days before he sets out Britain’s budget plan, where he will have to find room within tight fiscal constraints to help May convince voters that the Conservative government is tackling Britain’s domestic problems at the same time as negotiating its exit from the EU.

Last week, May met fellow EU leaders to try to break a deadlock over how much Britain will pay on leaving the bloc, an issue threatening to derail British hopes for a negotiated exit and an agreement on a new trading relationship by March 2019.

May has signalled she would increase an initial offer that is estimated at some 20 billion euros ($24 billion) - about a third of what Brussels wants.

Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond arrives at the BBC in London, November 19, 2017. REUTERS/Mary Turner

But Hammond, who has been criticised by supporters of Brexit for being too conciliatory towards Brussels and lobbying for a “softer” exit, said Britain would take a tough stance about how much it owes.

“There are some things that we’re very clear we do owe under the treaties, other things where we dispute the amounts or even whether something should be included,” Hammond said in a separate interview with ITV television.

“Of course we’ll negotiate hard to get the very best deal for the British taxpayer.”

Asked about the prospect of Brexit without a trade deal, Hammond said he was “increasingly confident” that an agreement could be reached because it was in the interests of both parties.

Hammond says hopeful main elements of EU-UK trade deal agreed before Brexit

Hammond says hopeful main elements of EU-UK trade deal agreed before Brexit

Despite scepticism in Brussels over the tight timetable, May and her chief negotiator David Davis have been clear they want to have a full post-Brexit free trade deal sealed by the time Britain leaves.

However, Hammond set out a softer stance on the timing of the trade deal.

“We hope that it will be agreed, certainly in principle, that the big elements of it will be agreed before March 2019 so that everybody knows where we are going,” he told ITV.

Reporting by William James; Editing by Mark Heinrich

There's a massive moral vacuum in the country right now - CNN Politics

There's a massive moral vacuum in the country right now

Chris Cillizza

Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large

Updated 1322 GMT (2122 HKT) November 17, 2017

white house trump sexual harassment accusers response_

White House reiterates Trump's claims that his sexual harassment accusers lied 01:26

(CNN)When an "Access Hollywood" tape featuring Donald Trump making comments about how money and power allowed him to grab women in their private parts without penalty -- and he still won the White House -- we knew there would be political and cultural repercussions.

When more than a dozen women accused Trump of sexually inappropriate behavior during the campaign -- and he still won -- we knew the impacts would be long lasting and meaningful.

When White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders stood in the briefing room and made clear that the formal administration position was that all of these accusers of Trump were liars -- and no one in his base batted an eye -- we knew that something significant had changed.

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And now -- amid sexual harassment allegations directed at Minnesota Democratic Sen. Al Franken, Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore and former President George H.W. Bush; accusations by female members of Congress of other inappropriate behavior by unnamed male colleagues; Harvey Weinstein, Louis C.K., Mark Halperin, Kevin Spacey, and on and on -- we see the fruit of the seeds planted during the campaign: a president of the United States either unwilling or unable to seize the mantle of moral leadership when the country is crying out for it.

That is not to say the blame for men behaving badly lies at the feet of Donald Trump. It is to say he is uniquely ill-equipped to step into the moral vacuum caused by these behaviors and lead.

Trump doesn't answer questions on Moore 03:38

Trump himself, for example, has offered nothing beyond a written statement regarding Moore, who now stands accused of seeking sexually inappropriate relationships with at least eight girls and women who were from age 14 to their early 20s when he was a 30-something assistant district attorney in Alabama.

Asked about the situation on Thursday afternoon, Sanders said this: "The people of Alabama should make the decision on who their next senator should be."

Which, translated, means this: President Trump is not going to wade into this mess. He's not going to go as far as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan and urge Moore to withdraw from the race. He's going to throw up his hands -- who can say who is telling the truth! -- and let Alabama figure it out.

Which, if you think about it, is roughly the same approach Trump took to the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville over the summer. There were bad people "on both sides," Trump insisted. And, he argued, who was he to litigate who had the right of it? Trump seemed entirely unbothered by the idea of equating neo-Nazis and white supremacists with those gathered to protest against them. In fact, he spent the weeks and months following Charlottesville insisting that time had proven him right. That the violent left was just as responsible for what happened in Charlottesville as the violent right. (There was not then and is not now any actual evidence that backs up Trump's belief.)

This sort of moral relativism -- or, better put, this absence of moral authority -- is, without question, the most profound difference that Trump has ushered into the White House. The 43 men who held the job prior to Trump had a very strong sense that the position, at root, was about leading the country to higher moral ground. That, for all the policy positions and political calculations, the beating heart of being president was about moral authority -- in our lives, in our country and around the world. That no matter what their political opponents said about them, no one could say the president didn't believe in always doing what he believed was the right -- as opposed to the easy -- thing.

Many fell short in that effort. Bill Clinton's affair with a White House intern -- and lies about their relationship -- was a failure. So, too, was George W. Bush's insistence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and, therefore, represented a clear and present danger to America. Richard Nixon came the closest to moral abdication with his treatment of the presidency as a perch by which primarily to settle political scores.

But, Trump seems to me to represent something different even than Nixon. Whereas Nixon ignored the inherent moral leadership asked of a president, Trump seems entirely unaware that it exists.

Trump: Does the 'alt-left' have any guilt for Charlottesville? 01:07

Trump's modus operandi in every situation is to take credit if the story is good and to push off blame when the story is bad. His moral compass seems primarily driven by what his political enemies -- as he conceives them to be -- say. If Democrats are pushing for him to answer for allegations by women that he sexually harassed them, the right answer is to deny everything and write it off to politics as usual. If he is being criticized for a slow and insufficient response to white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, he digs in and insists that he bears no responsibility to say who is right and who is wrong -- and anyone who suggests he does just doesn't like him.

And then there is this: If a series of politicians -- Republicans and Democrats -- and celebrities are caught up in inappropriate behavior with women, Trump is silent not only because he has no sense of what a president needs to do, morally, in these situations, but because he is concerned how saying anything would impact the still-extant allegations against him.

The events that have cascaded from the Harvey Weinstein revelations until today aren't as obvious a cataclysm as, say, a hurricane or a flood or a terrorist attack or someone with a gun murdering dozens of people. But this avalanche of allegations tears at our collective American soul and spirit in ways not dissimilar from those events. They make us question who we are, what we believe in and where we are headed as a country.

It is in these very moments when you need leaders to step into the void and, well, lead. To say, "I know this is not who we are. This is the worst of us, not the best of us. I know we can and will do better. And it starts now."

We do not have that person in the White House. Elections have consequences. And this is a very big one.

China's Quest For Clean Air Could Hit You in the Wallet - Bloomberg

China's Quest For Clean Air Could Hit You in the Wallet

Bloomberg News

November 20, 2017,

Smokestack corporate consolidation has pushed up metals prices

Impact passing through to consumer goods as cleanup gains pace

The great Chinese environmental cleanup, now in full swing, is shifting the corporate landscape in unexpected ways and even stoking inflationary pressure that may soon be felt in supply chains worldwide.

As President Xi Jinping’s government intensifies the fight against the country’s world-class pollution problem, companies are scrambling to adapt to tighter regulation while investing in cleaner energy. In industries from steel to textiles and consumer goods, the resulting shakeout has left the survivors with far more pricing power. That in turn is reinforcing the already-resurgent factory prices that contribute to global inflation.

These trends are reshaping the business environment, according to Cui Li, Hong Kong-based head of macro research at CCB International Holdings Ltd.

“The environment clean-up is and will be a key driver of the industrial consolidation," said Cui, who expects to see greater concentration in steel, paper-making and pharmaceuticals. “With costs rising from wages, land and pollution curbs, China’s manufacturers will have to invest and upgrade to survive. Those who survive will benefit.”

Take He Wenyong, manager of a mid-sized textile company that has supplied Walt Disney Co. and its license holders. Amid a forced switch to natural gas from coal in his industry, the company, Shenzhen Yabi Textiles Co., is benefiting from past investments and eating up the market share of smaller competitors that couldn’t foot the bill.

Speaking at Guangzhou’s massive trade fair earlier this month, He said his company is now able to raise prices by 8 percent. “Those small, messy factories took up a third of market share," said He, at a booth at the fair filled with merchandise such as beach towels inspired by the "Frozen" film franchise. "Now that they’re gone, everything is much better for us.”

Factory Wages

Bigger companies, like luggage-maker Samsonite International SA, report that cost pressures arising from environmental curbs in China affect all competitors. Scale, though, helps, according to Ramesh Tainwala, the company’s chief executive officer.

"Greater competition for skilled labor and the resultant rise in factory wages are also causing significant cost pressure," he said in an interview. "While we’ve seen a number of factories closing down, the closures generally involve smaller factories that lack the scale and resources to meet the more stringent environmental controls."

The shakeup began in heavy industries in 2016 as the government shuttered outdated or illegal steel mills, coal mines and aluminum smelters in a shock therapy strategy to reduce excessive capacity and curb pollution. Such measures powered a more-than 20 percent jump in global metal prices from the start of the year, and led to consolidation in the nation’s sprawling steel industry.

Amid the changes, even the nation’s top aluminum producer, China Hongqiao Group Ltd. has been considering whether to relocate shuttered plants to other countries, with Indonesia top of the list of possibilities, Bloomberg News reported last week. Hongqiao, also the world’s biggest smelter, has been forced this year to cut capacity as part of Xi’s drive to curb oversupply and reduce pollution.

Now downstream, consumer-facing manufacturers are feeling the pressure. On top of cutting the electricity supply of small and polluting workshops, China’s cabinet announced a ban on the import of waste materials such as plastic, textiles and unsorted waste paper in July, to battle "serious damage to the environment." Prices of plastic and paper surged, as making them from scratch -- by drilling oil and cutting down trees -- is much more expensive than recycling imported refuse materials.

What was seen as a bane of manufacturing is now emerging as an unexpected boon for the fittest that have survived. Investors are taking notice: Shares of China’s top three paper-product manufacturers -- Nine Dragons Paper Holdings Ltd., Lee & Man Paper Manufacturing Ltd. and Shandong Chenming Paper Holdings Ltd. -- have made stellar gains in the past year.

Read more on how the environmental crackdown is affecting the paper industry

Factories still left standing are passing on price increases to customers. The changed dynamic was evident at the Canton Fair in Guangzhou, which is billed as the world’s largest trade gathering, bringing together more than 25,000 exhibitors and 191,000 buyers. This year, foreign buyers noted significantly higher prices, and suppliers less willing to bargain.

Suitcase manufacturer Anhui Technology Imports and Exports Co. has hiked the price of its colorful hard luggage by almost 10 percent after the type of plastic used to make hard-shell suitcases surged 80 percent in August and September, according to Ren Yuyang, a salesman of the company attending the fair.

"At first, customers couldn’t accept such a jump," Ren said, calling the increase "terrifying" due to the fact that luggage makers like his typically have a 3 percent to 5 percent margin. “But now they have to bear with it because every supplier lifts their prices.”

Argentinian buyer Roxana Fernandez, who works for activity-clothing retailer Montagne Outdoors which has branches across the South American nation, said that she and her colleagues were taken aback by price rises of 20 percent to 30 percent at this year’s fair.

“They all said it’s because of the environmental policy, and there’s nothing they can do,” she said. "For us, we have to re-evaluate how much of our supply comes from China."

The extent of such increases vary among sectors. Low-end makers of socks, shoes and garments at the fair said they’re not powerful enough to pass on the cost increases fully.

What’s clear is that China’s factory-gate inflation will eventually reach consumers around the world through global supply chains. The domestic producer price index leads price changes for export goods, with a lag of a few months. Producer prices rose 6.5 percent in the first 10 months of 2017 over the same period a year earlier.

In the long run, rising supply prices will likely accelerate global buyers’ shift away from China in some categories like apparel, while raising retailers’ buying costs in others such as toys where there’s no quality alternative outside of China, said Lim Lian Hoon, Hong Kong-based managing director of consultancy AlixPartners.

Big buyers like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp. and Disney also have sophisticated sourcing operations and have already diversified significantly to other countries for cost savings.

"The closures have only had a very limited impact on Samsonite since we generally work with much bigger, well established suppliers," Samsonite’s Tainwala said. "Besides, Samsonite has already been working over the last handful of years to increase its sourcing outside of China, including major expansion of our own manufacturing facilities in Europe and India."

Yabi Textiles’s He has also considered moving to other countries. Pakistan, with its low costs and geographic closeness to Europe, is attractive.

"There are only two ways for China’s labor-intensive sectors: going up or going out," said Zhu Haibin, chief China economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in Hong Kong. "We are going to see fewer producers remain, with higher quality and their own brands."

— With assistance by Xiaoqing Pi, Rachel Chang, Emma Dai, and Martin Ritchie

The anti-regulatory environment that Trump promised just got a big boost - CNBC News

The anti-regulatory environment that Trump promised just got a big boost

President Donald Trump promised a less restrictive regulatory environment, particularly in banking.

Three recent developments — leadership changes at the Comptroller of the Currency Office and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as well as approved changes to the Dodd-Frank reforms — move that agenda forward.

The Dodd-Frank tweaks "might send a powerful political message to the Fed," according to analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods.

Jeff Cox

CNBC.com

Morgan Stanley CEO: 'We've hit the peak of bank regulations'

9:14 PM ET Wed, 15 Nov 2017 | 02:34

President Donald Trump promised fewer regulations for business in general, and banks specifically — and events over the past week have pushed that intention closer to reality.

The president didn't have a major direct hand in any of the moves, but each nudges the business climate closer to the environment he envisioned while campaigning. Consider the following:

Richard Cordray announced he is leaving as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, opening up a change in leadership and management for an agency Trump loathes, with the exit of a director many thought Trump would one day fire;

Joseph Otting was confirmed as the new comptroller of the currency, the overseer of the big Wall Street banks, in a move seen as friendly to the financial industry.

A Senate panel has agreed to key modifications to the Dodd-Frank reforms, most specifically raising the asset threshold for more intense regulations and easing rules for smaller banks.

Those three moves come on top of the president's recent nomination of Jerome Powell to head the Federal Reserve. Also, the Fed's newest member, Trump appointee Randal Quarles, advocated in his first public remarks that the central bank take a top-to-bottom look at regulation, supervision and enforcement.

In all, it's been a definite lurch forward for one of the three prongs in Trump economic's plan of lower taxes, less regulation and more infrastructure spending.

"It's hard to know what the effects of many of these things will be," said Doug Landy, a financial services regulation attorney and partner at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy in New York. However, "they're moving certainly in the direction they said they would."

Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Pete Marovich | Getty Images

Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

A new face at the CFPB

Trump has long criticized the CFPB for its aggressiveness in going after banks, so Cordray's departure represents a major opportunity. The president and congressional Republicans want to decentralize decision making, taking more of a commission approach rather than the top-down executive structure.

In the immediate future, Trump is said to be interested in putting budget director Mick Mulvaney at the helm, and charging him to put together a committee to run the bureau.

While Democrats and financial industry watchdogs bemoaned Cordray's departure and expressed worry over the future of consumer protection, industry advocates cheered the potential for a new direction.

"The Trump Administration and Congress should use this opportunity to improve the CFPB by adding a bipartisan board so key decisions are made in a bipartisan and transparent manner with more than just one person involved," Tim Pawlenty, head of the Financial Services Roundtable, said in a statement.

Rob Nichols, the American Bankers Association president and CEO, also endorsed a five-member commission, joining numerous other agencies in urging a regulatory balance of "consumer protection against access to credit."

Confirmed by the Senate along party lines Thursday, Joseph Otting is an interesting choice for the new Comptroller as he takes over for Keith Noreika, who was appointed interim head in May.

Otting comes to the job from OneWest Bank, where he worked with current Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. The bank has been criticized for its aggressiveness in foreclosures.

His primary task as Comptroller will be to work with banks on compliance with the Dodd-Frank reforms instituted following the financial crisis. Banks have long complained about the measures, particularly in regards to transparency and the requirements of annual stress tests.

Otting "will reflect the administration's desire to reduce burdens on banks and deregulate in a certain manner," Landy said. "They will be looking at where they feel the regulatory burden is in excess of the benefit it provides. How one views that depends on where one sits on the political landscape."

While Trump once had threatened a full repeal of Dodd-Frank, that now appears unlikely. Instead, Congress appears set to work with the new regulators, in order to find ways to tailor the omnibus legislation to maintain the banking industry's safety — all while not gumming up the economy's primary growth engine.

One big move down, many more to go

One of the biggest objections the banking industry has had regarding Dodd-Frank is the level at which banks are considered too big to fail — systemically important financial institutions (SIFI), in the legislation's parlance.

A Senate agreement meets suggestions that the level be moved from $50 billion in assets, a level that snares the top 35 banks, to $250 billion, which would cut that list to 10. The move then could reverberate to the Fed and cause it to change its stress tests, or Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review, which measures the health of 34 institutions.

"If Congress raises the threshold it might send a powerful political message to the Fed about how non-globally systemically important banks should be treated," analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods said in a note. "It could also could give the Fed political cover to further ease the CCAR for banks with less than $250 billion in assets."

An industry that became the focal point of the excesses that caused the financial crisis now finds itself in position for some relief.

In addition to outright Dodd-Frank changes, regulators are likely to change the way supervision and enforcement is carried out, representing an important change from the screw-tightening atmosphere that has prevailed since the crisis.

"Since the Great Depression, whenever you have a new line of laws coming out, after five to 10 years of people living them there always has been an adjustment," Landy said. "Think of it like a pendulum. There's always a center."

In fact, banks aren't really looking for an overhaul. CEOs of the largest institutions largely have said they've learned to live within the Dodd-Frank framework, but believe adjustments are needed, particularly to provisions like the Volcker Rule that prohibits banks from trading for their own benefit.

"They're comfortable with the basic set of provisions that have been provided," Landy said. "They do want less burden, less conflicting requirements, more transparency and things [removed] that they don't think are achieving the goals they were set out to do."