How Dodd-Frank Ate The U.S. Economic Recovery

Investors Busniness Daily ^ | 07/28/2015 | IBD Editorial

[expat_panama]

Regulation: The Dodd-Frank Act's fifth anniversary this month has received surprisingly little notice. Too bad. It's a pernicious law, one that a devastating new report suggests is largely to blame for our lackluster economy.

How bad is Dodd-Frank? One of its main goals, cited by both the White House and the then-Democrat-run Senate, was to get rid of the "too big to fail" doctrine that made some banks too important to allow to go bust.

It sounded good at the time. But in fact, it's had the exact opposite effect, leading to a decline in small banks and rising market share for the very largest. A cynic might suspect this was how it was designed to be. But what it's done to the economy is worse.

In eye-opening testimony to the House Financial Services Committee Tuesday, American Enterprise Institute fellow Peter J. Wallison said: "I believe that all the new regulation added by the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010 is the primary reason for the slow growth this country has experienced since 2010."

For the record, Wallison isn't just another anonymous "expert" or media pundit. He was a member of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and co-chair of the Financial Reform Task Force in 2009.

And unlike many pundits still sounding off, he warned loudly and often in the early 2000s that our banking system was in danger of going off the rails. Later, he warned about Dodd-Frank's many flaws. Both times he was ignored; both times ended in disaster.

In the 23 quarters since the recession ended, economic growth has averaged a meager 2.2%.

As former Sen. Phil Gramm, an economist, recently noted, if this recovery had merely been as strong as the average post-World War II recovery, we'd have had 14.4 million more jobs, and...

[abb]

Did we miss another buying opportunity Monday?

[1010RD]

CNN, you’ve been shown clearly and fully that there can be no such thing as a trade deficit. Stop lying, CNN, and stop using the Left’s boogeymen to scare people. It’s un-American.

[expat_panama]

It’s un-American.

lol!!  That's like O saying GWBush's budget deficit was 'un-American'.  Fact is that complaining about the 'trade deficit' is as American as apple pie.  OK, like stale moldy apple pie but it's still deeply set in there.  Most people don't know that a lower trade deficit is also supposed to be a top goal of the Federal Reserve.  Sure they like to toot about how much they care about jobs but that legislation passed in the '70's that made jobs a fed priority also put the trade deficit right up there too.

fwiw, the fed doesn't really do anything about 'jobs' either...