The global financial crisis catapulted the previously uninteresting topic of financial regulation into the mainstream media. The crisis uncovered systemically poor industry practices that undermined every aspect of the financial services industry. The crisis stopped the mortgage industry in its tracks, devalued real estate, increased unemployment levels, and crippled lenders, banks, and commercial companies.
Financial authorities around the world were forced to implement radical overhauls to regulatory regimes that had clearly failed. The US was the first to act. The Dodd-Frank Act, also known as the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, was signed into law by President Obama in July 2010. The Act is the most comprehensive set of financial reform measures in the US since the Great Depression. It represented a paradigm shift in the US financial regulatory environment, affecting all federal financial regulatory agencies and almost every part of the nation's financial services industry.
Despite this, full implementation of the Dodd-Frank Act has been made difficult by the complexity of the law, delays in the publication of final rules by regulatory agencies, and efforts by lobbyists in Congress and the financial services industry to amend many elements of the legislation.
