One Year, Two Papers, and More to Come

On October 18, 2012, exactly one year ago, the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) launched the Financial Regulatory Reform Initiative, and it has been a great first year for us. Starting near our launch, we began sharing “What We’re Reading” blogs, which recap topical research, reports and articles on financial reform. (You can sign up to receive them here.) We also released Analysis of the Nominations Process for Financial Regulators, which is continually updated in the form of BPC’s Nominations Tracker.

Our initiative committed to reviewing what Dodd-Frank does well, what could be improved and what remains uncertain since the bill’s passage. On May 14, 2013, our first report on Title II of Dodd-Frank, titled “Too Big to Fail: The Path to a Solution,” took on an issue that has remained front and center since 2008: whether financial institutions can truly “fail,” or whether governments will still step in when severe market troubles surface. By bridging the divides between those who believe that the Bankruptcy Code is the only workable solution and those who believe in the new powers given to the FDIC in Title II of Dodd-Frank, our paper achieved bipartisan consensus on a contentious issue. Exactly one year from our initiative’s launch, Federal Reserve Board Governor Dan Tarullo recognized this paper and the efforts of our Failure Resolution Task Force co-chairs, praising them as “thoughtful commentators who have proposed amendments to the Bankruptcy Code for application to large financial firms.^1″

Shifting gears, our second report addressed a new federal regulator created in Dodd-Frank, and what it has done to date. Released on September 24, 2013, our report, The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Measuring the Progress of a New Agency, captures the work of the new CFPB, giving praise where it is due while also finding areas that need improvement. Our team was proud that only weeks after the release of our report, the Wall Street Journal reported that the CFPB will be adopting one of the paper’s major recommendations.

We expect to release our third major report on the Volcker Rule on Thursday, October 24, 2013. Two more will follow in the coming months, on regulatory architecture and systemic risk. We will continue to seek to inform the debate with blogs and op-eds, such as Martin Baily and Aaron Klein’s piece in Yahoo Finance from January, calling for a more “Sensible Regulation of Derivatives.” We have some other interesting things planned for the rest of 2013 and 2014, for which you should stay tuned.

Thanks to our excellent co-chairs, Martin Baily and Phill Swagel, our group of consistently impressive task force co-chairs, our senior advisors, Jim Sivon and Greg Wilson, and everyone at BPC who has helped make this a successful first year. We are looking for the next year to be even better.

¹ Tarullo, Daniel. Speech at the Federal Reserve Board and Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond Conference, “Planning for the Orderly Resolution of a Global Systemically Important Bank,” Washington, DC. October 18, 2013. Available at: http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/tarullo20131018a.htm#fn3