Am I surprised that the banks protected from competition by the moat created by Dodd-Frank regulations are highly profitable?

My point was that "$3 billion over five years is very costly" is a largely meaningless statement when applied to the entire backing sector.

Yes. $667M/yr spread over how many different businesses? How much of that was overlapping with work that already had to be done?

are the costs more onerous for smaller banks or are they proportional to bank size?

I imagine the costs can be somewhat seen along the lines of good old `y = ax + b`, where the coefficient `a` (variable cost) is more or less doable but the term `b` (fixed cost) is high enough that it turns into a non-starter for smaller banks.

I seem to remember talk to the effect that the minimum cost for a small bank was something like $20m plus.