The transition team for President-elect Donald Trump announced it selected Paul Atkins, a former Republican member of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to be on the landing team for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
He will also be on the landing teams for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
Trump’s website currently states that Atkins most recently worked at Patomak Global Partners and is volunteering for this position.
Atkins' biography page that still lives on the SEC’s website states that he was appointed by Pres. George W. Bush to be a Commissioner of the SEC on July 29, 2002.
The website added that Atkins' career focused on the financial services industry and securities regulation. “Before his appointment as commissioner, he assisted financial services firms in improving their compliance with SEC regulations and worked with law enforcement agencies to investigate and rectify situations where investors had been harmed,” the website stated.
An article in MarketWatch by Robert Schroeder states:
The teams work with the outgoing Obama administration at various federal agencies to smooth the transfer of power. They won’t necessarily be hired for full-time jobs, Trump transition officials have said. But members do give an indication Trump is sticking to certain past statements and campaign pledges.
Paul Atkins, a former Republican member of the Securities and Exchange Commission and a critic of heavy regulation, has been tapped for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau team — a creation of the Dodd-Frank law Trump says he’ll dismantle.
The article noted that Trump is not the first president-elect to select landing teams, stating that Pres. Barack Obama’s administration also installed them at federal agencies after being elected.
The move is important given that Trump has already announced a plan to “dismantle” the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, which includes the CFPB.
In the words of the Trump transition team, Dodd-Frank and the economy it fostered “does not work” for America.
However, Trump’s website doesn’t provide any additional details on how President-elect Trump will go about dismantling Dodd-Frank.
