The President is scheduled to sign the 2,315 page Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act at the Ronald Reagan building today, July 21, 2010.
His prepared remarks read:
These reforms represent the strongest consumer financial protections in history. And these protections will be enforced by a new consumer watchdog with just one job: looking out for people – not big banks, not lenders, not investment houses – in the financial system. Now, that’s not just good for consumers; that’s good for the economy.
In case you find the full legislation to be too demanding, the White House blog has presented what it refers to as “the online attention-deficit version.” I am always pleased to see elected officials raising the level of policy discourse.
Of course, the 2,315 pages is only the beginning. As MarketWatch reports:
The Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to begin shortly an “extremely labor intensive” and “logistically challenging” effort to write a large number of regulations based on sweeping bank-reform legislation on the verge of approval, agency chairwoman Mary Schapiro said Tuesday in prepared remarks at a hearing on Capitol Hill.
Meanwhile…the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission continues its investigation, hoping to provide its final report to Congress on December 15, 2010 (as mandated by the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009).
Given that the basic regulatory architecture will have been put into place and agencies will be embroiled in rulemaking, one can predict that the final report will have minimal impact. Thankfully, understanding the core causes of the financial crisis is immaterial to designing a solution.
Don’t forget to mention the consequences that have already started because of this bill.
Greg Mankiw provides a good excerpt from the WSJ about the rating industries refusing to allow clients to use their ratings.
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2010/07/dodd-frank-anti-stimulus-bill.html
” . . .the White House blog has presented what it refers to as “the online attention-deficit version.”
I’m guessing that any regular Joe or Josephine who scans that version will have read more of the bill than a majority of Senators who just voted “aye” on it, or probably even more than the President himself.