Arthur Wilmarth, law professor at George Washington University, believes the OCC, along with the Office of Thrift Supervision, had a lot to do with why subprime loans became as big a problem as it did, by taking the power to supervise banks away from the states.

Lisa Madigan, the attorney general of Illinois, said in her testimony in January that the OCC was “particularly zealous in its efforts to thwart state authority over national lenders, and lax in its efforts to protect consumers from the coming crisis.”