MANDEL NGAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
OBAMA 2.O / FINANCIAL REFORM
said Sheila Bair, former chairman
of the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation, expressing disappointment with the sluggish pace
of reform.
“The longer this drags on, the
more people get cynical.”
The sprawling Dodd-Frank reform act, passed in 2010, is chock
full of rules that could help avert
another crisis. It forces banks to
pay penalties for being too large
and gives officials tools to possibly
wind down a failing big bank safely.
It orders the regulation of complex derivatives and tries to make
it harder for banks to gamble with
their own money. It establishes new
bodies to oversee risks in the financial system and protect consumers.
But about two-thirds of DoddFrank’s rules have not yet been
finalized, and more than 100
rulemaking deadlines have been
missed. Meanwhile, no banker has
yet gone to jail for any of the actions leading up to the crisis, and
efforts to hold the banks accountable have been few and far between, consisting mainly of modest
fines, with the banks neither ad-
HUFFINGTON
01.27.13
Obama
meets with
members of
his economic
team,
including
Treasury
Secretary
Timothy
Geithner
(left).