Don't Sweat the Dodd-Frank Rollback

Now that President Barack Obama signed the $1.1 trillion “CRomnibus” spending bill this week, Jamie Dimon and other bank CEOs are dancing on the remains of Dodd-Frank, the landmark 2010 Wall Street reform package that hoped to prevent another financial crisis. “The Wall Street interests—the big banks—they’re back,” Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois apocalyptically proclaimed a few days earlier, after lawmakers successfully included language in the bill that rolled back Section 716 of Dodd-Frank, which barred financial institutions from betting on the kind of risky derivatives that contributed to the collapse while using federally insured funds. Former Rep. Barney Frank, a namesake of the original law, called the repeal “a road map for further attacks on our protection against financial instability.” Dimon called House members to push for the repeal, while Citigroup lobbyists reportedly wrote 70 of the measure’s 85 lines. Sounds like an epochal win for Wall Street, right?