With the recent publication of its final rule, the federal government's Financial Stability Oversight Council is now in position to designate certain nonbank firms as "systemically important financial institutions" (SIFIs). There is probably no aspect of the Dodd-Frank Act that will have more damaging effects on competition in the U.S. financial system.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council is now prepared to designate 'systematically important financial institutions', another step towards creating an unhealthy and dangerous relationship between the biggest financial firms and the federal government. Read AEI financial services expert Peter Wallison's detailed insights on how this change poses a serious threat to the US financial system.

Longstanding policies that were intended to promote confidence in the independence of regulatory decision-making have now been wiped away by the Dodd-Frank act, which has in effect placed all the financial regulators under the direction of the Treasury secretary.

Panelists will address questions regarding Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's recently proposed two-part plan for addressing systemic risk.

The Dodd-Frank Act recognizes that investor understandings about endgame rules influence a firm’s appetite for risk and that, higher capital requirements on systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs) cannot by themselves end creditor perceptions that in most circumstances SIFIs are economically, politically, and administratively too difficult to fail and unwind.

As required by the Dodd-Frank Act, the FDIC and the Federal Reserve Board of Governors have issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPR) to implement the "Living Will" requirements of Section 165(d).

The underlying idea—that financial institutions are "interconnected" and the failure of one will drag down others - is not implausible. But like so much else that underlies the Dodd-Frank Act, it was accepted as true—and acted upon—without much evidence, or even much thought.

The financial crisis was caused not by Lehman’s failure but by a common shock to all financial institutions that were holding privately issued mortgage-backed securities based on subprime loans. The way to prevent future financial crises is to prevent future common shocks.