Tracking Progress on Financial Stability and Reform

In response to the worst financial crisis in more than 75 years, U.S. policymakers undertook wide-ranging reforms. For example, the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act) aims, among other things:

to promote the financial stability of the nation by improving accountability and transparency in the financial system,
to deal with issues around "too big to fail,"
to protect taxpayers by ending bailouts, and
to protect consumers from abusive financial services practices.

Since the Dodd-Frank Act was passed, we have published numerous reports on various topics related to the U.S. financial regulatory system, including:

Regulators’ efforts to implement the Dodd-Frank Act;
Potential effects of the Dodd-Frank Act on financial stability;
The new Financial Stability Oversight Council, which is charged with identifying risks to U.S. financial stability and includes representatives of the various financial regulators;
Options for resolving large, systemically important financial institutions that fail; and
Options for compensating market participants such as credit rating agencies.

Implementation of many of the act’s reforms has proved challenging, and many of them have yet to be finalized or to take effect. We have made numerous recommendations to regulators in these areas, and agencies have taken steps to implement some of them. You can also see more of our work on modernizing the U.S. financial regulatory system in our High Risk report.

Questions on the content of this post? Contact A. Nicole Clowers at clowersa@gao.gov.
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