Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform

On July 21, 2010, President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which is commonly referred as the Dodd-Frank Act. This act was passed as a response to the Great Recession in order to prevent potential financial debacle in the future. This regulation has a significant impact on American financial services industry by placing major changes on the financial regulation and agencies since the Great Depression. This paper examines the history and impact of Dodd-Frank Act on American financial services industry.

Dodd-Frank is the latest financial reform passed by Congress, and by far the most extensive. According to Amadeo, Dodd-Frank is “the most comprehensive reform since the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933” (2012, para.1). The goals of Dodd-Frank are to implement consumer protections, end bailouts with tax payer money, create a council to identify risks, eliminate loopholes for risky behavior, implement say on pay for executives, protect investors, and enforce strict regulations on Wall Street (House of Representatives, n.d.). Dodd-Frank lacks clarity and is lengthy, running over 1,000 pages long (New York, 2012). In many cases, Dodd-Frank does not contain explicit rules, but instead creates an outline whereby financial oversight agencies have been charged with conducting research and writing and implementing the rules.

We now know to keep financial regulations in place to prevent another economic catastrophe. After fall of 2008, the

While there are many more provisions and over 2000 pages included in the Dodd Frank Act most of these provisions have yet to be implemented. The Know before You Owe Act and the Credit Card Act are two provisions that one can actually see the change and progress happening within these acts. These provisions are two examples on just how beneficial the Dodd Frank Act is and will continue to be towards consumers. This act helps consumers to understand and know just what they are purchasing and nothing is hidden so that brokers and banks can’t take advantage of consumers like what happened in 2007 and

The general objective of this policy paper is to deeply understand the latest and most influential financial reforms and the current financial environment in U.S through relatively comprehensive analysis with regard to the Dodd-Frank Act. In doing so, I move forward to provide some suggestions on improving the relevant legislature.

more stringent regulations. After a careful examination of the Dodd-Frank, it can be shown that

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created in 2010 as a response to the financial crisis of 2008. The government agency was established by the Dodd-Frank Act which President Barack Obama passed as a means of controlling and preventing excessive risk-taking ("Wall Street Reform: The Dodd-Frank Act"). The financial crisis occurred in part because of the limited regulation of financial institutions and the wave of irresponsible mortgage lending (The Economist). Subprime borrowers with poor credit histories and insufficient funds for repaying the loans were allowed to borrow money which they could not pay back, thus in turn initiating a nationwide housing market crash (The Economist). Many of these borrowers were granted these loans because of the poor judgement of banks and financial institutions, thus the government needed to create an institution which would protect consumers against unfair and deceptive practices. The mission of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is just that-to protect consumers in the financial marketplace by enforcing federal consumer financial laws (CFPB, 2016). In order to achieve this, the bureau monitors the financial market for potential risks to consumers and supervises companies in order to uncover institutions practicing abusive and fraudulent acts. Developing laws to create a fair market place is a top priority of the bureau, as it works to enforce these rules and regulations and make them more effective. The agency also conducts

The Volcker Rule is said to limit speculative trading and do away with proprietary trading by banks. This change could make it more difficult for banks to be profitable. The act also contains a provision for regulating derivatives such as the credit default swaps that were widely blamed for contributing to the 2008 financial crisis. The Volcker Rule also regulates the financial firms' use of derivatives in an effort to prevent "too-large-to-fail" institutions from calling for big risks that might wreak havoc on the wider economic

During the 1930s, the most prominent reason for U.S. banking regulation was to prevent bank panics and more economic disaster like those that had been experienced during the Great Depression. Later deregulation and financial innovation in industrialized countries during the 1980s eroded banks monopoly power, thus weakening their banking systems and seeming to embody the fears of post-Depression policy makers who instituted regulation in the first place. Fear that individual bank failures could spread across international borders creates pressure to harmonize bank regulation worldwide. One advocate suggests that universal banking, at least for industrialized countries with internationally active banks, would “level the playing field” by eliminating competitive advantages created by government subsidies. Although this is a valid point, one of the major driving forces behind the globalization of the banking world is the ability of banks to take

The United States has one of the biggest and fastest growing economies of the world. Our financial system has been affected by numerous crises throughout the years and as a result Congress has reacted in the most recent times and two well-known acts have been signed into laws by the presidents at the time to protect investors and consumers alike. A brief overview of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, a discussion of some of the provisions therein, opinions of others regarding the act and also my personal and professional opinion will be discussed below. The same will be examined about the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

In simple terms, Dodd-Frank is a law that places major regulations on the financial industry. It grew out of the Great Recession with the intention of preventing another collapse of a major financial institution like Lehman Brothers. Dodd-Frank is also geared toward protecting consumers with rules like keeping borrowers from abusive lending and mortgage practices by banks. It became the law of the land in 2010 and was named after Senator Christopher J. Dodd (D-CT) and U.S. Representative Barney Frank (D-MA), who were the sponsors of the legislation. But not all of the provisions are in place and some rules are subject to change, as we'll see. The bill contains some 16 major areas of reform and contains hundreds of pages, but we will focus here on what are considered the major rules of regulation. One of the main goals of the Dodd-Frank act is to have banks subjected to a number of regulations along with the possibility of being broken up if any of them are determined to be “too big to fail.” To do that, the act created the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC). It looks out for risks that affect the entire financial

I believe the Frank-Dodd Act accomplishes what it is intended for because of the many changes banks now do their business. Banks should be kept as banking and not risking money that people trust them to save. Money is hard to earn and people want to put away some in order to have a good retirement. Before if you went overdraft at the bank they used to charge you an “overdraft fee” regardless you wanted them to approve it or not. Now you have the option of what many banks call “overdraft protection” where they still charge you the overdraft fee and cover your purchases. Now you have the choice to permit the bank. Before credit card application were

One of the primary factors that can be attributed as to have led the recent financial crisis is the financial deregulation allowing financial institutions a lot of freedom in the way they operated. The manifestation of this was seen in the form of:

The goal of financial regulation is to increase efficiency in the market, as well as enhance the market 's ability to absorb shock caused by financial instability. There are many reasons for financial instability, but it can be narrowed down to

To address deficiencies in the financial regulations revealed by the financial crisis affecting the world since 2008 it was developed a new Basel Accord, - BASEL III. BASEL III is a global regulatory standard on bank capital tolerability, stress testing and market liquidity risk agreed upon by the members of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision in 2010-11. Basel III strengthens bank capital requirements and introduces new regulatory requirements on bank liquidity and bank leverage. (Tarullo, DK, 2008)