2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  The key to successful reform will be to identify the leverage points that exist and do our best to ensure regulators are up to the task in those areas while not burdening other aspects of the financial system with heavy intervention that might trigger the law of unintended consequences. Eye on target Let us be clear about the goals of reform. With so much energy being expended on the what, the when and the how of implementing Dodd–Frank, the first risk we run is forgetting the why—the reasons for the act, its primary goals. For this, we need only turn to the law itself, the preamble, which spells out the key objectives as follows: “To promote the financial stability of the United States by improving accountability and transparency in the financial system, to end “too big to fail,” to protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts, to protect consumers from abusive financial services practices and for other purposes.”7 On the subject of too big to fail, the legislation is quite blunt.
10  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  11  12  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  13  14  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  15  16  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  17