Rather than responding appropriately to the crisis, which would include developing a modern regulatory system with the flexibility to adapt to changes in the global financial system, we instead have been saddled with an increasingly prescriptive and inflexible regulatory environment that is characterized far more by more regulation than by smart regulation.  --SEC Commissioner Daniel M. Gallagher

While the US economy still remains the most powerful economic engine globally, rather than making US financial markets stronger, could parts of comprehensive financial regulatory reform be making them weaker, or driving economic activity we once took for granted elsewhere?  Important voices both in the the public and private sector have been raising the alarm about the potential that aspects of Dodd-Frank may be putting US financial health in peril rather than protecting it.  SEC Commissioner Daniel M. Gallagher is one such voice.  In a series of speeches before a variety of audiences, Commissioner Gallagher has questioned the effectiveness of Dodd-Frank in protecting us from another financial crisis, criticized the process by which Dodd-Frank was formulated, and worried openly about the quality and quantity of regulation required by the legislation.