The highlight of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s confirmation hearing so far was his rousing defense of community banks against overbearing federal regulations. “Regulation is killing community banks,” he declared, and if the process is not reversed, we could “end up in a world where we have four big banks in this country.” He went on to offer examples of how regulations enacted after the 2008 financial crisis had some unexpected negative consequences. Mnuchin ran through a list of regulatory agencies — “the OCC, the FDIC, Consumer Protection Bureau, the Federal Reserve”— and noted that “in certain cases, there is overlapping regulation.” “My biggest concern, and I fully support regulation for banks with FDIC insurance, but my biggest concern is that this regulation is killing community banks,” he said. “We’re losing the community banking business. We’re losing the ability for small and medium-sized banks to make good loans to small and medium-sized businesses in the community, where they understand those credit risks better than anybody else.” “I think that we all appreciate the engine of growth is with small and medium-sized businesses. In my role at FSOC, in working with the different regulators, I would make sure that we did what