Government Has Financial Amnesia and Denial, Too

The success of new laws and regulations is best measured by how they address and fix the core problems they are designed to solve.

By this simple standard, Dodd-Frank is a failure. The regulatory paperwork for banks has nearly tripled, making the processing of loans more difficult, costly and protracted when the economy can least afford it. Banks are still “too big to fail,” and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac remain wards of the state, having cost taxpayers some $170 billion and counting. Systemic risk has dramatically increased since 2008 with the transfer and growth of debt from the private to the public sector. Thus, perhaps amnesia is a condition more characteristic of Mr. Geithner and Washington than the people at large.

Scott S. Powell
Discovery Institute
Seattle