Dodd-Frank: Creating As Many Problems As It Solves

[Geee]

Investors Business Daily:

Over the next year, we will probably see much controversy over the implementation of ObamaCare. Health insurance is something that almost every adult has some acquaintance with, and there seem to be glitches aplenty in the legislation, much delay in issuing regulations and some possible changes resulting from litigation.

We're likely to see or hear less about the operations of the Dodd-Frank financial regulation legislation, passed four months after ObamaCare. Most of us don't work at banks or financial institutions, which will have to grapple with its myriad provisions and the regulations to be issued thereunder, and we tend to toss out those disclosure forms our bank sends out.

But Dodd-Frank may produce more problems than it solves. That is the thesis of David Skeel, professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, in his new book, "The New Financial Deal: Understanding the Dodd-Frank Act and Its (Unintended) Consequences."

Skeel does not find fault in Dodd-Frank's effort to regulate derivatives — contracts in which one party agrees to pay another in case of changes in interest rates, currency exchange rates, oil prices or just about anything else — with provisions encouraging them to be conducted through clearinghouses.