At an event in Washington Thursday, the ""Bipartisan Policy Center"":http://bipartisanpolicy.org/ (BPC) announced the launch of its new ""Financial Regulatory Reform Initiative"":http://bipartisanpolicy.org/projects/financial-reform to evaluate the financial regulatory system after the Dodd-Frank Act.
[IMAGE]Led by co-chairs Dr. Martin Baily (former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton) and Dr. Phillip Swagel (former assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury), the initiative is designed to assistant Congress, the executive branch, and regulators as they work to develop and modify financial supervision and regulation.
""Through this new effort we will assess what aspects of Dodd-Frank are working well and what aspects need improvement, while preserving the intent of the law,"" Baily said at the launch. ""We will propose concrete and actionable recommendations for incremental changes to the legislation, as well as more substantive reforms to fill in the gaps left from Dodd-Frank.""
The group consists of a number of former regulators, policy advocates, academics, and practitioners from all over the political spectrum. Its ranks include: Annette Nazareth, partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell and former SEC commissioner; Eric Rodriguez, VP of the National Council of La Raza; and John Coffee, professor at Columbia Law School, among others.
""Our initiative members have a deep expertise in the issues we will be considering and members from both sides of the aisle will make specific proposals in each area,"" said Aaron Klein, former deputy assistant secretary for economic policy coordination at the Treasury and initiative director.
The initiative will consider five aspects of financial reform: systemic risk; failure resolution; capital markets and the Volcker rule; consumer financial protection; and regulatory architecture. Within those areas, the program will consider domestic and international policy effects, the impact of regulatory policies on growth and job creation, the influence U.S. policy may have on other countries' policies, and other issues.
The initiative also plans to review the ""landscape of regulatory actions and inactions"" since the enactment of Dodd-Frank, with a series of white papers to come out starting in 2013. As part of the initiative's launch, Klein and the co-chairs released their first ""white paper"":http://bipartisanpolicy.org/sites/default/files/FRRI%20White%20Paper.pdf with an overview of the issues they're going to cover.
""We understand that it is not possible to eliminate all future financial crises through rules and regulations,"" Swagel said. ""Still, we believe now, two years since the enactment of Dodd-Frank, is a key time to gauge the aspects of the legislation that have helped stabilize the financial system, and to consider possible changes to improve the regulatory system.
""We must be sure that any new reforms also promote economic growth, as we continue to deal with the lingering effects of a deep and difficult recession,"" he continued.