After Five Years, Dodd-Frank Is a Failure
Posted: July 20, 2015 Filed under: Economics, Law & Justice, White House | Tags: BANKING, Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, Central bank, Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, Federal Reserve System, Financial crisis of 2007–2008, Financial Markets, Financial Stability Oversight Council, Stanley Fischer, United States Chamber of Commerce 3 Comments
Before Dodd-Frank’s passage, former Sen. Chris Dodd said that ‘no one will know until this is actually in place how it works.’ Today we know.
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling writes: Tuesday will mark five years since President Obama’s signing of the Dodd-Frank law, the most sweeping rewrite of the country’s financial laws since the New Deal. Mr. Obama told the country that the 
legislation would “lift our economy.” The statute itself declared that it would “end too big to fail” and “promote financial stability.”
“What is most disturbing about Dodd-Frank is the authority it gives bureaucrats to control huge swaths of the economy.”
None of that has come to pass. Too-big-to-fail institutions have not disappeared. Big banks are bigger, small banks are fewer, and the financial system is less stable. Meanwhile, the economy remains in the doldrums.
Dodd-Frank was based on the premise that the financial crisis was the result of deregulation. Yet George Mason University’s Mercatus Center reports that regulatory restrictions on financial services grew every year between 1999-2008. It wasn’t deregulation that caused the crisis, it was dumb regulation.
Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images
The law has crushed small banks, restricted access to credit, and planted the seeds of financial instability.
“Oversight? CFPB funding is not subject to congressional appropriations, and Dodd-Frank requires courts to grant the bureau deference regarding its interpretation of federal consumer-financial law.”
Among the dumbest were Washington’s affordable-housing mandates, beginning in 1977, that led to a loosening of underwriting standards and put people into homes they couldn’t afford. The Federal Reserve played its part in the 2008 financial crisis by keeping interest rates too low for too long, inflating the housing bubble. Washington not only failed to prevent the crisis, it led us into it.
“Before Dodd-Frank, 75% of banks offered free checking. Two years after it passed, only 39% did so—a trend various scholars have attributed to Dodd-Frank’s ‘Durbin amendment,’ which imposed price controls on the fee paid by retailers when consumers use a debit card. Bank fees have also increased due to Dodd-Frank, leading to a rise of the unbanked and underbanked among low- and moderate-income Americans.”
Dodd-Frank was supposedly aimed at Wall Street, but it hit Main Street hard. Community financial institutions, which make the bulk of small business loans, are overwhelmed by the law’s complexity. Government figures indicate that the country is losing on average one community bank or credit union a day.
“Because of Dodd-Frank, financial markets will have less capacity to deal with shocks and are more likely to seize up in a panic. Many economists believe this could be the source of the next financial crisis.”
Before Dodd-Frank, 75% of banks offered free checking. Two years after it passed, only 39% did so—a trend various scholars have attributed to Dodd-Frank’s “Durbin amendment,” which imposed price controls on the fee paid by retailers when consumers use a debit card. Bank fees have also increased due to Dodd-Frank, leading to a rise of the unbanked and underbanked among low- and moderate-income Americans.
Has Dodd-Frank nevertheless made the financial system more secure? Many of the threats to financial stability identified in the latest report of Dodd-Frank’s Financial Stability Oversight Council are primarily the result of the law itself, along with other government policies.
“The director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency created by Dodd-Frank, can declare any consumer-credit product ‘unfair’ or ‘abusive’ and outlaw it.”
Dodd-Frank’s Volcker rule banning proprietary trading by banks, and other postcrisis regulatory mandates, has drastically reduced liquidity for making markets in fixed-income assets….(read more)
Mr. Hensarling, a Republican congressman from Texas, is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.
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pundit from another planet 
No Surprise… Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and Bill Clinton were the Brilliant Progressives who caused the housing bubble in the first place. In typical Leftist Liberal fashion two of these clowns show up, climb off of their Unicorn and with Jazz hands tell everyone they can clean it up.
Reblogged this on Brittius.
Look at the frigging brain-trust in the top, signing photo: It’s like the bar scene in Star Wars meeting in a methadone clinic. WTF did you expect from a bill with that pedigree?