AEI Issues Special Polling Report on Five-Year Anniversary of Dodd-Frank (with Lofchie Comment)

The American Enterprise Institute ("AEI") published a special report on a variety of polls tracking Americans' opinions on the Dodd-Frank Act, financial and political institutions, leaders, and the success of government regulation. The results included in the report were derived from a variety of sources covering surveys conducted beginning in 2010 (before the Dodd-Frank Act was adopted), with the most recent surveys conducted in February 2015.

Regarding polls that were conducted most recently (in 2014 and 2015), the principal takeaways include: (i) a substantial majority of Americans have never heard of Dodd-Frank or are not very familiar with it; (ii) Americans are split on the issue of whether financial institutions are under-regulated or over-regulated (although the majority believe that business in general is too heavily regulated); (iii) Americans do not believe that the economic system is more secure today than it was before the crash; (iv) Americans do not have much confidence in the ability of the government to regulate the financial system; (v) Americans generally have a low opinion of "Wall Street" (defined as the nation's largest banks and investment banks) and the people who work there; (vi) Americans trust small banks and credit unions more than large banks; and (vii) Americans' trust in banks is greater than their trust in the President or Congress.

Lofchie Comment: Two things stand out about the polls: (i) a substantial number of Americans believe that almost any degree of regulation of banks, and perhaps of business generally, is insufficient; and (ii) Americans question the merits of financial regulation, which, based on the polling, primarily relates to the quantity of regulation (too much or too little), instead of its quality.

See: AEI Special Poll Report by K. Bowman, Eleanor O'Neil and Heather Sims.