The good, the bad, and the scary of Washington's attempt to reform Wall Street The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is Washington's response to America's call for a new regulatory framework for the twenty-first century.
In The New Financial Deal, author David Skeel offers an in-depth look at the new financial reforms and questions whether they will bring more effective regulation of contemporary finance or simply cement the partnership between government and the largest banks.
- Details the goals of the legislation, and reveals that how they are handled could dangerously distort American finance, making it more politically charged, less vibrant, and further removed from basic rule of law principles
- Provides an inside account of the legislative process
- Outlines the key components of the new law
To understand what American financial life is likely to look like in five, ten, or twenty years, and how regulators will respond to the next crisis, we need to understand Dodd-Frank. The New Financial Deal provides that understanding, breaking down both what Dodd-Frank says and what it all means.
The New Financial Deal
UNDERSTANDING THE DODD-FRANK ACT AND ITS (UNINTENDED) CONSEQUENCES
After watching the government bail out Bear Stearns and AIG in 2008, and pump well over one hundred billion dollars into Citigroup, Bank of America, and the other largest banks the same year, Americans realized that the existing regulatory framework did not work. The Dodd-Frank Act, which President Obama signed into law in July 2010, was Washington's answer. The legislation created an entirely new set of rules for both the instruments and the institutions of contemporary finance. Although the reforms were desperately needed, they were drafted by the same people who designed the bailouts of 2008, and it shows.
In The New Financial Deal: Understanding the Dodd-Frank Act and Its (Unintended) Consequences, David Skeel explains where the legislation came from, tracing its assumptions back to the 2008 crisis and offering an inside account of the key moments in the legislative process. He analyzes each of the main components of the Dodd-Frank Act, explaining how they will work and showing that the new regulatory framework depends on precisely the qualities that Americans found so offensive about the bailouts of 2008: special treatment of the largest financial institutions and ad hoc intervention in the event of trouble. Skeel's assessment is not entirely pessimistic, however. He argues that a few features of the Dodd-Frank Act are genuine improvements, such as its regulation of financial derivatives, and he outlines several simple bankruptcy reforms that would curb the worst excesses of the new partnership between the government and the largest financial institutions.
