NEW YORK -- As the string of U.S. regional bank failures in recent months spurs talk in Congress about tougher regulation, former Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig argues that regulators "have more than enough authority" to handle the problem.
Ludwig headed the Office of the Comptroller for the Currency, the agency responsible for regulating national banks, under President Bill Clinton, steering the response to a credit crunch in the early 1990s. He sees such a crunch as a "genuine potential problem" now, but one that can be stemmed through tools like increased deposit insurance and expanded lending by the Federal Reserve.
