Regulating wall street: Exploring the political economy of the possible

Abstract

US President Barack Obama signed into law the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in July 2010. Dodd-Frank is the most ambitious measure aimed at regulating US financial markets since the Glass-Steagall Act was implemented in the midst of the 1930s Depression. However, it remains an open question whether or not Dodd-Frank is capable of controlling the wide variety of hyperspeculative practices that produced the near total global financial collapse of 2008-09, which in turn brought the global economy to its knees, with the Great Recession.