Money & The Economy

Dodd-Frank: A Year Of Uncertainty

WASHINGTON, July 21, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The following was released today by the Republican National Committee:

OBAMA SAID DODD-FRANK WOULD PROVIDE “CERTAINTY TO EVERYONE” BUT BUSINESSES ARE OPERATING IN “AN ENVIRONMENT OF REGULATORY UNCERTAINTY”

PROMISE: President Obama Said That Dodd-Frank “Provides Certainty To Everyone From Bankers To Famers To Business Owners To Consumers.” “It provides certainty to everyone from bankers to farmers to business owners to consumers. And unless your business model depends on cutting corners or bilking your customers, you have nothing to fear from this reform.” (President Barack Obama, Remarks By The President On The Passage Of Financial Regulatory Reform, Washington D.C., 7/15/10)

REALITY: Dodd-Frank “Will Unleash The Biggest Wave Of New Federal Financial Rule-Making In Three Generations.” “Yet Dodd-Frank, with its 2,300 pages, will unleash the biggest wave of new federal financial rule-making in three generations. Whatever else this will do, it will not make lending cheaper or credit more readily available.” (Editorial, “The Uncertainty Principle,” The Wall Street Journal, 7/14/10)

Due To The Intense Period Of Rule-Making “Market Participants Will Need To Make Strategic Decisions In An Environment Of Regulatory Uncertainty.” “U.S. financial regulators will enter an intense period of rulemaking over the next 6 to 18 months, and market participants will need to make strategic decisions in an environment of regulatory uncertainty.” (“Summary Of The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform And Consumer Protection Act, Enacted Into Law On July 21, 2010,” Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, 7/21/10)

  • “The Legislation Is Complicated And Contains Substantial Ambiguities, Many Of Which Will Not Be Resolved Until Regulations Are Adopted …” “The legislation is complicated and contains substantial ambiguities, many of which will not be resolved until regulations are adopted, and even then, many questions are likely to persist that will require consultation with the staffs of the various agencies involved.” (“Summary Of The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform And Consumer Protection Act, Enacted Into Law On July 21, 2010,” Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, 7/21/10)

Harvard Finance Professor Hal Scott: “This Massive Revamp Of American Regulation Creates Uncertainty For Now, And, With Basel III, Significant Costs In The Future, With Uncertain Benefit.” (Hal Scott, Op-Ed, “Little To Celebrate On Dodd-Frank’s Birthday,” Financial Times, 7/19/11)

OBAMA SAID THAT DODD-FRANK WOULD MAKE THE ECONOMY “STRONGER” BUT IT HAS HAMPERED BUSINESSES AND MAIN STREET WITH RULES AND HIGHER COSTS

PROMISE: Obama Said That Dodd-Frank Was Part Of Building “An Economy That Is Stronger And More Prosperous.” “Along with the steps we’re taking to spur innovation, encourage hiring, and rein in our deficits, this is how we’re ultimately going to build an economy that is stronger and more prosperous than it was before and one that provides opportunity for all Americans.” (President Barack Obama, Remarks By The President At Signing Of Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform And Consumer Protection Act, Washington D.C., 7/21/10)

REALITY: “To Date, The Total Estimated Compliance Costs From Dodd-Frank Remained At $1.26 Billion, But Of The 140 Major Rulemakings, Only 26 Contain Quantified Cost Estimates.” (Sam Batkins, “The Week In Regulation: July 5-8, 2011,” American Action Network, 7/8/11)

“The Rules Have Changed So Many Times … If You’re Not On Top Of All The Issues It’s Very, Very Difficult To Stay In Business Today.” “[Mike] McHugh, president and chief executive officer of Continental Home Loans Inc. in Melville, New York, is about to endure even more change as the Dodd-Frank Act, designed to prevent another mortgage-fueled frenzy like the one that led to the 2008 credit crisis, kicks in this summer. ‘The rules have been changed so many times,’ McHugh said. ‘If you’re not on top of all the issues it’s very, very difficult to stay in business today.'” (Lorraine Woellert and Carter Dougherty, “Dodd-Frank Rules Make Mortgages Less Profitable: One Year Later,” Bloomberg, 7/12/11)

“But It’s The Derivatives Portion—The Part Of The Bill Aimed Directly At Wall Street—That Might End Up Touching Most Lives In Rural America.” (Michael M. Phillips, “Finance Overhaul Casts Long Shadow On The Plains,” The Wall Street Journal, 7/13/10)

  • Derivatives Reform Could Make Hedging More Expensive For Farmers Since “New Requirements On Big Players Will Create Higher Costs For Small Players.” “The question for these farmers is whether such rules will make hedging more expensive. Some say new requirements on big players will create higher costs for small players, including the cash dealers will have to put aside to enter into private derivatives transactions. Some brokers think restrictions on big-money banks and investors will drain the amount of money available to the everyday deals farmers favor.” (Michael M. Phillips, “Finance Overhaul Casts Long Shadow On The Plains,” The Wall Street Journal, 7/13/10)

 

PRESIDENT OBAMA SAID THAT DODD-FRANK WOULD GUARANTEE “NO MORE TAXPAYER-FUNDED BAILOUTS – PERIOD” BUT THEY ARE “STILL POSSIBLE”

PROMISE: President Obama Said That Dodd-Frank Assured That “There Will Be No More Taxpayer-Funded Bailouts – Period.” “Because Of This Reform, The American People Will Never Again Be Asked To Foot The Bill For Wall Street’s Mistakes.  There Will Be No More Taxpayer-Funded Bailouts — Period.” (President Barack Obama, Remarks By The President On The Passage Of Financial Regulatory Reform, Washington D.C., 7/15/10)

REALITY: Standard & Poor’s Says That Despite Dodd-Frank, Future Taxpayer Bailouts Of Systematically Important Financial Institutions Is “Still Possible.” “Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services believes that the primary goal of DFA is to make banks less risky and better capitalized so the need for extraordinary support is reduced. However, given the importance of confidence sensitivity in the effective functioning of banks, we believe that under certain circumstances and with selected systemically important financial institutions (SIFI), future extraordinary government support is still possible.” (“The U.S. Government Says Support For Banks Will Be Different ‘Next Time’ – But Will It?,” Standard & Poor’s, 7/12/11)

Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke Says That Too-Big-To-Fail Institutions Could Still Receive Taxpayer Bailouts From The Treasury. “As bad as this news is for taxpayers, the potentially worse news came when Mr. Hennessey asked if, in times of crisis, the government could still assist a particular company now that Dodd-Frank reform is the law of the land. Mr. Bernanke quickly put the matter to rest by noting that a too-big-to-fail company undergoing the government’s new resolution process could still receive money from the Treasury. Uh, oh.”  (Editorial, “The Diviner of Systemic Risk,” The Wall Street Journal, 9/4/10)

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Rich Mitchell

Rich Mitchell is the editor-in-chief of Conservative Daily News and the president of Bald Eagle Media, LLC. His posts may contain opinions that are his own and are not necessarily shared by Bald Eagle Media, CDN, staff or .. much of anyone else. Find him on twitter, facebook and

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One Comment

  1. This term “to big to fail” is a made up term the liberals use to discribe what they believe would not happen if they were in charge. So what is it in the twisted mind of a liberal that would have to exist for a company to get “to big”? I believe the term “to big to fail” is a racist term based on class warfare. I haven’t studied Communist ideology enough to understand these terms they use to discribe all the different capitalistic operations that would lead to becoming to “big”. Shouldn’t we all want to start a business that got big? I would. And it’s the same thing as getting “to rich”. How much is to much when it comes to making money? The liberals seem to think they know how much is “to much money”. They think they can prevent people from accruing so much money that they can rest assured they will never be allowed to accrue so much that they would be “to big to fail”. Yeah, I’ll bet liberals would do whatever they could through regulations, restrictions, rules, laws, whatever to keep every business from making so much money they would never have to worry about making “to much” money. Like I loose sleep at night worrying about making to much money. Ohhh, that would be so horrible that I had made “to much money”. Bullcrap!!

    It’s Barney Frank and Chris Dodd who have made “to much money”, except they didn’t make it the old fashion way, by working in their own business and they earned the money they made. No, they stole the money from American tax payers. They took the money from tax payers monies sent in from paying the taxes taken from their pay checks, and gave themselves huge salaries for running Freddie/Fannie for the government. Isn’t that a conflict of interest? Isn’t that double paying them while in the service of the government? That is against the Constitution? I know it is. The Constitution says that Senators cannot be paid but by the salary that is set up for them. That is why they have to resign from any privately owned business they own, or are partners with, and are supposed to turn over all their stock, etc., etc.. And the reason why is because of conflict of interest. The law is there to prevent representatives from making laws that favor their own businesses or business area of interest where the representatives could make more money off of their own law favoring their business. When Barney Frank is over the Senate Banking Commission that makes laws that banks have to follow, and then they create these two mortage monsters who do business with banks in order to sell mortages to poor people(supposedly), but what they ended up doing was violating the law and did business with banks, Wall Street, and European banks, and international investment corporations by setting laws that favored that kind of businesses. They looked at what they were doing as giving poor people the advantage no one else had in that if you satified their application that they had forced the banks to have, then you got a house. But alot more that Barney Frank and Chris Dodd were the two biggest crooks that there has ever been in our government, only because they were able to get paid to run these two financial intities out in the open and were paid tens of millions of dollars a year. Frank was able to let different people come in and help him run the two intities, like Bernecke, Rohm Emanuel, Paulsen, Franklin Reins, Jamey Gorelic, and others, all who make tens of millions of dollars in salary paid them from the money that Freddie/Fannie were bilking the American tax payer out of every year.

    And this is what Obama has reestablished so that it could do exactly what it did before, and in the same exact way it did before, but this time with even more stricter rules over the banks, Wall Street and especially them because what it does is hide who, and how much investors are putting into Freddie/Fannie and Frank and Dodd’s pockets, and the new bank reform laws passed last year by the biggest fraud of them all, Obama will make sure no one finds out about what they are doing this time around. Somehow Obama has got Frank and Dodd to create some way to rearrange how the money flows from the tax payers to Freddie/Fannie so that this time according to Obama they won’t get to big to fail.

    The only things that the Republican’s claim that they did to try to stop Freddie/Fannie from failing the first time was to take them out of the hands of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, and make them just like any other mortage companies. And make them like other mortage companies who borrow money from a bank. And if the applicant doesn’t have the money or capital to back up the loan, then they don’t get it. Ohhh, but to these to liberal Socialist frauds Frank and Dodd, that was racism. So, they tried to force the Republican’s to let them pass law on the banks that would make them loan money to people who shouldn’t buy a house. And those are the regulations that the Democrats claim Republican’s wouldn’t allow to be put on Freddie/Fannie and that is the reason why they failed. No, the reason why they failed is because Frank and Dodd used ACORN to force Republican’s to allow Democrat law to be forced onto the banks. Republican’s didn’t want trouble with Blacks about being able to buy a house. So it was Democrats like Obama who will cause Freddie/Fannie to fail again.

    We cannot allow Frank and Dodd, who should be in prison for fraud and god knows what else because of their involvment with Freddie/Fannie and all the people who made huge money off of the backs of Blacks, and illegal Mexican aliens to. And it won’t do anything to give trust and no worry for any business who might want to borrow money from a bank. They can forget it after the Frank, Dodd We Don’t Trust The American Business Owners To Build Their Own Wealth Act!!

  2. Everybody knows that it was Barney Frank and Chris Dodd who lied to the Senate investigative committee twice about the solvency of Freddie/Fannie, once in 2003 and again in 2005. It was the LACK of regulations that gave the Democrats to make the laws that forced the banks to loan money for a house to people who didn’t even have jobs to be able to buy a house. The laws that were in place to protect the banks from people who were borrowing money they had no way to pay back were over ridden by Democrat laws that they claimed preventing the banks from what they called “red lining” that the banks practiced in order to designate which applicants were bad risks and which ones were not, were mostly Blacks. They are the people who ACORN declared that the banks were practicing “discremination” against the the Democrat regulations were supposed to put a stop to, WERE the laws that protected billions of dollars that the banks had to loan to applicants.

    Barney Frank and Chris Dodd declared Freddie/Fannie bankrupt right after the “October Surprise”. And they weren’t supposed to be doing anything to resurrect these two giant frauds, but they quietly brought them back into business basing what they were doing on the law that created them. They claimed that under the law there was no such thing as they’re going bankrupt since their money came from the government, which obviously could never run out of money. Even though a lot of the money that was there that Barney and Dodd were drawing their huge salaries from was coming from those who didn’t have their house foreclosed on. So there was still money coming in because Barney and Chris never did actually do the paperwork bringing Freddie/Fannie to an end. So they were still in business. And now Barney and Dodd(he’s retiring so that he can’t be prosecuted for his crimes, since they were done when he was in the Senate, and can’t be charged if he’s a civilian in a few months), are demanding that the Congress allow them billions of dollars to pay for buying more mortgages to sell.

    Hey, wait a minute, wasn’t that what TARP was supposed to be for, and that was to buy all the “toxic” mortgage’s from all the banks that were holding foreclosed houses that were sold to people who had no money to begin with and should not have ever gotten a loan? Yep. And why wasn’t TARP used like it was supposed to especially since we were told that if Bush didn’t allow Congress to pass that spending authorization for the money to be taken from the Treasury to keep the economy from collapsing. Well, that was a lie cooked up by Nancy Pelosi, Paulsen, Bernecke, Jim Johnson, and Franklin Reins, Barney Frank, and Chris Dodd. Boy, all these frauds, criminals are supposed to be in prison.

    What Bush should have done was have all those people arrested by Treasury officers and put in prison for lieing to the investigaton committee, fraudulantly selling mortagages to unqualified lendee’s, ripping off the American tax payer of about two trillion dollars. But what do they do? Bush agrees to putting Paulsen over the Treasury and he immideately withdrew eight and ahalf trillion dollars to pay off all the foreign banks and international investment corporations that lost money on their derivitives on Freddie/Fannie mortagages that failed to the tune of only 32 billion dollars. So why did they need eight and ahalf trillion dollars? To make sure that America could not be able to back up any need for money to keep it’s own economy going. That’s why we are so much closer to our economy failing now than we were before October of 2008. Obama is going to make sure that we remain close to collapsing because that way he can make himself dictator when it does!!

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