Co-author of the Dodd-Frank Banking Act Barney Frank’s Signature Bank Seized by Regulators

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

New York NY, Barney Frank, co-author of the Dodd-Frank Act, the radical overhaul of the banking system after the 2008 global financial crisis, was having his very own Dick Fuld moment.

Barney Frank is a retired American politician who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1981 to 2013. He was a member of the Democratic Party and represented the state of Massachusetts in Congress. Frank is perhaps best known for his role in co-authoring the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010.

The Dodd-Frank Act was a response to the financial crisis that occurred in 2008, and it aimed to increase regulation of the financial industry in order to prevent similar crises from happening in the future. The Act included a wide range of provisions, such as the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, increased oversight of derivatives trading, and new rules for the securitization of mortgages.

Frank was the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee at the time that the Dodd-Frank Act was passed, and he played a key role in shaping the legislation.

There was none of the Fuld-style shouting and ranting, but Frank, just like the former Lehman Brothers top executive had famously done, was taking to the phones to lament how authorities had unnecessarily shuttered the bank he helped oversee. Frank, to the surprise of some, landed on the board of Signature Bank, a New York-based lender that boomed during the pandemic. It was seized by regulators Sunday, making it the third US bank to collapse in just five days.

Richard “Dick” Fuld is a former American banker who is best known for his role as the CEO of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., a global financial services firm that filed for bankruptcy in September 2008 during the financial crisis. Fuld had been with Lehman Brothers for over 30 years, and he had been its CEO since 1994. He was known for his aggressive leadership style and for his emphasis on risk-taking and the pursuit of profits.

Fuld’s leadership of Lehman Brothers has been widely criticized for contributing to the financial crisis, which had a profound impact on the global economy. After the firm’s bankruptcy, Fuld faced a great deal of scrutiny and criticism, and he was even called to testify before Congress about his role in the crisis.

Barney Frank said , “I think that if we’d been allowed to open tomorrow, that we could’ve continued — we have a solid loan book, we’re the biggest lender in New York City under the low-income housing tax credit,” Frank said in an interview late Sunday night. “I think the bank could’ve been a going concern.”