Thomas Novelly reports for the Washington Free Beacon on public ignorance of major federal legislation designed to prevent the next American financial crisis.
Tuesday mark[ed] the fifth anniversary of the passage of the Dodd-Frank law, the largest financial regulation since the Great Depression—and more than a third of Americans have never heard of it, according to a new report.
According to a new poll data released by the American Enterprise Institute, when sample groups were asked, “How familiar are you with the Dodd-Frank law which regulates financial markets?”, 39 percent said they had never heard of the regulatory act, and only 4 percent were familiar with the legislation.
The Dodd-Frank Law was signed into law by President Obama on July 21, 2010 and in five years has grown to 22,296 pages, the equivalent of 34 copies of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, according to an infographic from Davis Polk & Wardwell law firm.
Since 2010, 139 bills have been introduced in Congress to repeal all or parts of the law. Less than 4 percent of those bills have passed into law, and 119 hearings Dodd-Frank related hearings have been held.
In addition to congressional efforts to repeal the law, the American people have also voiced their dissatisfaction. There have been 819,096 letters sent to the federal government and related agencies commenting on the bill, averaging 453 letters a day.
