Wall Street has spent millions lobbying to weaken many features of Dodd-Frank financial reform law that are not yet in place. Goldman Sachs, for instance, has spent $15 million lobbying since 2009.
CEO of Goldman Sachs Lloyd Blankfein, who has said before that he thinks the “vast bulk” of the Wall Street reform law is good, suggested there are even parts of Dodd-Frank that might not go far enough:
Overall we needed to have reform. A lot of the reforms contained in Dodd-Frank look good to me and some of them look excessive and some of them may even turn out to be inadequate. But we’ll be able to tell — we’re still in the process of trying to get it right. And unavoidably, I’m sure, we’ll make the system, the regulators, and the people who are having these regulations enforced will make some mistakes along the way, and we’ll try to get it right.
Blankfein didn’t point to any specific areas of the law that could use strengthening, and noted that because of Dodd-Frank’s “skeletal” framework, “I don’t know if you can make a judgment yet whether it’s too much or not enough because we don’t really know what it is.” Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs is working alongside other banks to fight for loopholes that could exempt half their trading business in derivatives from new regulation. (HT: Huffington Post)