Media Coverage: July 2010 Archives

by Roy C. Smith

After two years of effort, the US Congress last week gave President Obama a massive and very ambitious financial reform bill, the Dodd-Frank Act, to sign.

The 2,300 page law in 15 sections affects all financial service activities in various ways but it does little to improve systemic risk control. It strengthens the hands of regulators, but relies on them entirely to identify and avert future crises, things they have not been successful in doing in the past.

Too-big-to-fail financial firms (those with more than $50bn of assets, of which there are about 40 in the US) are largely left alone, free to be as large and complex as before.

However, if one of these financial firms faces a liquidity crisis in the future, which is likely given their aggressive business strategies, rescuing it with taxpayer funds to avoid a systemic crash will be much more difficult. Precluding bailouts when they are necessary will severely limit the government's ability to manage the next crisis.

Read the full opinion editorial on eFinancialNews.com

by Roy C. Smith

The financial overhaul bill set for passage sometime next week is supposed to "bring accountability to Wall Street." In announcing an agreement between the House and Senate last week, Senator Christopher Dodd noted that "the American people have called on us to set clear rules of the road for the financial industry to prevent a repeat of the financial collapse that cost so many so dearly."

The final bill, though, does little to prevent a systemically important bank from failing, and makes it far more difficult for regulators to assist one seeking to avoid failure. This all but insures that the system-wide calamity the bill should be trying to prevent will, in fact, occur again.

Read the full opinion editorial on Bloomberg.com