GAO: Are Financial Regulators Doing Enough to Prevent Another Crisis?

Reuters reports that the GAO is examining whether “financial regulators are doing enough to collaborate and share information to prevent another economic crisis.”  The investigation, six years after Dodd-Frank, will look at whether the current system addresses the “blind spots” that contributed to the crisis.  As part of the study, GAO will consider whether some regulators with overlapping duties should be merged – including the SEC and CFTC.  In areas where regulatory overlap may be helpful, the GAO will examine where there is risk that regulators will not share information or take responsibility to act.  For example, the FSOC’s Systemic Risk Committee may limit the information that its members can share with others.  Orice Williams Brown, the GAO’s managing director of financial markets and community investment, identified the lack of information sharing as a potential problem, asking “If there is something going on in some particular segment of the market, is that information then being shared broadly enough to know if it's a more pervasive issue?"