Blow by blow?_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Blow by blow?

To a Beltway expert such as Kaiser, that a dysfunctional and hyperpartisan Congress passed such a sweeping bill constitutes a small miracle. He concludes that “the big banks and Wall Street institutions never gave up trying to shape the bill to serve their interests, but that they had little success.” As former Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank, whose name is on the bill, says: “Money is influential [in Congress], but votes will kick money’s ass any time they come up against each other. . . . Public opinion drove that bill.” At another point, Frank declares, “The big banks got nothing.”

Kaiser’s account reminds you of those fairy tales that end with the wedding and don’t follow up to see how the prince and princess’s married life turns out. “Act of Congress” doesn’t cover what happened after the law’s enactment. In large part because of the ongoing, messy aftermath, many students of finance don’t see Dodd-Frank as much of a triumph at all. In the wake of this generation’s worst global financial and economic crisis, Congress passed the bare minimum of what was necessary. Dodd-Frank did not restructure the financial industry. It did not remake the financial regulatory architecture. Instead, the law tinkered around the edges, increasing regulation for this, expanding the power for that. Congress left much of the toil to financial regulators with limited resources. Troublingly, this has given the banks another opportunity, out of the public eye, to wrest exemptions that emasculate the rules.