With the four-year anniversary of the Dodd-Frank Act’s passage into law only days away, former Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., said Tuesday that he believes the financial reform law that bears his name is “working pretty well,” and he warned lawmakers to be “extremely cautious” in reopening the law to changes.
Yet the Bipartisan Policy Center offered several suggestions for lawmakers and regulators.
Speaking at a meeting held by the Center in Washington titled “Dodd-Frank at Four: Making Progress, Meeting Challenges & Finding Solutions,” Dodd — who served in the Senate for 30 years and was chairman of the Senate Banking Committee — conceded that by “no means is Dodd-Frank a perfect law.”
He said that the “political, financial and social environment today is vastly different” than it was when Dodd-Frank was crafted and passed into law on July 21, 2010, “in the aftermath of the worst financial crisis in history” and that “opening up of the law” today would create a “Pandora’s box” and “cause more harm than good.”
Eugene Ludwig, founder and CEO of Promontory Financial Group and a former comptroller of the currency, agreed in his remarks at the BPC event that Dodd-Frank “has made the financial system safer and more stable,” adding, however, that the law doesn’t entirely mitigate the risk for “issues down the road.”
Dodd, who’s now the chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, said that because of Dodd-Frank, “the sense of confidence” in the “economic well-being and soundness of our nation’s financial institutions is returning.”
He added, however, that “we’re not entirely out of the woods yet,” noting that the rulemaking process at agencies “has slowed,” with agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission having “far too many rules to implement.”