Within a week of Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) unveiling his 2,200-page finance reform legislation, more than 750,000 articles had been published about it, pushing, prodding, and analyzing its provisions. The “Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010” has engendered venom and praise, and enough punditry to restock every cable network’s complement of talking heads. Is there really anything left to say?
Surprisingly, yes. We’ll focus on the corporate governance provisions and leave the consumer protection issues, the role of the Federal Reserve, and the attempt to minimize systemic risk to others—because most of the pundits misread the corporate governance implications ...