Toward the Next Financial Crisis?

PILEUS

In 2010, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act “to promote the financial stability of the United States by improving accountability and transparency in the financial system, to end ‘too big to fail’, to protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts, to protect consumers from abusive financial services practices, and for other purposes.” Dodd-Frank was a massive piece of legislation (the Economist quipped that it was too big not to fail). One of the key criticisms was that so much of what Dodd-Frank aspired to do was delegated to rulemaking in the regulatory agencies. Ultimately, whether Dodd-Frank would prevent another financial crisis would depend on the quality and compatibility of some 398 rules.

One of the many targets of Dodd-Frank was the securitization process. In the days of traditional banking, banks financed their loans with deposits and then retained those loans until they matured (the “originate-to-hold”…

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