Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Dodd-Frank bogged down

The Dodd-Frank reform of financial regulations was a monstrosity from the outset that promises to make a bad problems worse while creating a host of new problems. It's been nearly two years since the President signed it into law, but no one yet has much of an idea how it will affect them:
As the lawyers at DavisPolk point out in their Dodd-Frank progress report for the month of May, Dodd-Frank required regulators to write 398 rules. So far, regulators have missed 148 of the 221 rule-writing deadlines — two-thirds — that have already passed.
You shouldn’t blame the regulators. Mr. Dodd and Mr. Frank sponsored a bad law. Appointees and civil servants face an impossible task.
It's one thing to face a future with new rules that will be both onerous and ineffective, but on top of that, we have to wait years to find out which routine and legal actions today will be illegal in the future.