President Obama at a White House meeting Monday praised financial regulators for their implementation of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law meant to prevent further financial crises.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the president also told the regulators “to consider additional ways to prevent excessive risk-taking across the financial system, including as they continue to work on compensation rules and capital standards.”
Obama met with the heads of all the major federal financial regulators and his top economic advisers in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in a relatively rare occurrence.
Regulators have finished writing major rules required by Dodd-Frank in the past year, including a requirement that banks hold a certain amount of liquid assets and the Volcker Rule, which prohibits banks from using customers’ deposits for speculative investments. The president specifically recognized their work in finalizing the Volcker Rule, Earnest said.
Earnest said Obama “has been pleased with the progress that the regulators have made in implementing the law” and predicted that financial reform “is actually going to be one of the most prominent aspects of President Obama’s legacy.”
Nevertheless, many provisions of the law have been implemented behind schedule, especially ones that required multiple agencies to write. The Davis Polk law firm, which tracks the implementation of Dodd-Frank regulations, report last week that already more than 40 percent of 280 deadlines set by the law have been missed.
In response to the meeting, the Republican chairman of the House committee that oversees financial regulation blasted the law. “Dodd-Frank is every bit as far-reaching in its harmful consequences for struggling Americans as Obamacare,” Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas said, warning that consumers were bearing the costs of the law’s regulations.
“Another White House meeting between President Obama and an army of Washington regulators won’t do anything to help stressed families,” Hensarling added, calling on Obama to ask Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to take up House-passed bills to provide regulatory relief.
The White House meeting came ahead of a scheduled meeting Monday afternoon at the Treasury of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a group of many of the same regulators charged with monitoring overall threats to the financial system.
