A new report issued by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the federal regulators ended 2012 with less than half of the Dodd-Frank Act rules completed.
‘Overall, GAO identified 236 provisions of the act that require regulators to issue rulemakings across nine key areas,’ says the GAO in its report. ‘As of December 2012, regulators had issued final rules for about 48 percent of these provisions; however, in some cases, the dates by which affected entities had to comply with the rules had yet to be reached. Of the remaining provisions, regulators had proposed rules for about 29 percent, and rulemakings had not occurred for about 23 percent.’
Among the most prominent rules that remain unfinished is the Volcker rule, which was supposed to go into effect in July 2012.
‘Although regulators have established mechanisms to facilitate coordination and believe coordination efforts have improved the quality of the rulemakings, several regulators indicated that coordination increased the amount of time needed to finalize rulemakings,’ the GAO report says.
The GAO also notes that the complexity of many of the rules have made it difficult to be completed with any degree of speed.
‘For example, to implement the act's ban on proprietary trading, the regulators issued draft rules that contained over 750 questions for the public's input and spurred over 19,000 comment letters,’ says the GAO. ‘Further, regulators said that implementing the act's reforms requires a great deal of coordination at the domestic and international levels. Although regulators have established mechanisms to facilitate coordination and believe coordination efforts have improved the quality of the rulemakings, several regulators indicated that coordination increased the amount of time needed to finalize rulemakings.’