Efforts to weaken financial reform will continue to emerge warns Barr

January 8, 2015

Michael Barr suspects Republicans will continue to target aspects of Dodd-Frank writes Eric Garcia of MarketWatch in the January 7 story, “House rejects bill granting banks more time to comply with Volker.”

This Wednesday, the House voted on a bill that would have delayed implementation of the Volker rule—a Dodd-Frank financial reform that “prevents banks from making bets with their own money and limits their affiliation with hedge funds and private-equity funds,” reported MarketWatch. Although a majority of representatives voted in favor of the bill, the votes weren’t sufficient for the required two-thirds majority.

Michael Barr, a professor of public policy and law and former assistant secretary of Treasury, warns that efforts to weaken Dodd-Frank reforms will continue to emerge. “I think they are going to try and continue to attack Dodd-Frank on all kinds of fronts,” Barr told MarketWatch. “In both the House and the Senate, Democrats need to stand strong together to oppose any effort to weaken reform.”

Michael S. Barr is professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School, professor of public policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and at the Brookings Institution.