Federal Preemption of State Bank Regulation: A Conference Panel Summary (Special Issue)
In its new rules issued in 2004, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) said that its regulations “preempt”—that is, override—a number of state laws that conflict with a national bank’s exercise of its banking powers. Preemption is a particularly timely issue in the Federal Reserve’s Seventh District, where the Illinois Speaker of the General Assembly recently requested that official state entities not patronize banks that do not comply with Illinois state law. In this Chicago Fed Letter, the authors briefly review the issues surrounding the preemption debate and summarize the panelists’ comments.