For Wall Street, Obama’s reelection means no dismantling of Dodd-Frank law
By Danielle Douglas
Whatever chance Wall Street had of seeing the Dodd-Frank financial reform law dismantled died with Mitt Romney’s election-night concession speech. The Republican nominee railed against the far-reaching legislation, promising to repeal it once he took office. But with President Obama clinching a second term, analysts say the financial services industry must come to terms with the fact that Dodd-Frank will become firmly entrenched. “Obama has the election behind him and the worry about alienating a lot of the special-interest money at this point,” said Sheila Bair, former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. “This should be all about his legacy now and providing a truly stable financial system, one that serves the credit needs of the economy.” Now that the election is over, there will be a clearer path to resolutions of regulations that have been caught up in interagency disputes, said Karen Shaw Petrou, managing partner of Federal Financial Analytics. She gave the example of the Volcker Rule, a provision of Dodd-Frank aimed at restricting banks from making risky investments with their own money. “Finalizing the basic framework of Volcker is in the industry’s favor because it eliminates the uncertainty that’s casting a pall over a lot of strategic planning,” Shaw Petrou said.