Since retiring from the Senate in January, Chris Dodd for months maintained a public silence about the landmark financial reform legislation that bears his name.
It shouldn't have been a surprise that Dodd was keeping a low profile on financial issues. After all, he's now the chief executive of the Motion Picture Association of America, and movie studios have little reason to weigh in on policy matters that don't affect their own bottom line.
Still, after the Dodd-Frank Act's first anniversary passed with nary a peep from Dodd, there were whispers in Washington that the former Democratic Connecticut senator was somehow unhappy with the reform law.
Those whispers have stopped, because Dodd has written a Washington Post op-ed piece forcefully rebutting the law's critics.
In the piece, Dodd identifies what he calls five myths about Dodd-Frank, including the claim that the law is hurting community banks and that it is deepening the economic slowdown,.
"In one of the recent GOP debates, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney said that Dodd-Frank is 'a killer for the small banks,' " Dodd wrote.
"In fact," he continued, "community banks, which were not responsible for the crisis, will pay lower premiums for deposit insurance and continue to work with their existing regulators. And in a nation with more than 6,000 banks, the bulk of the bill's new regulations apply only to a few dozen of the largest ones, each holding more than $50 billion in assets."
In other breaking news, Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank also supports the 2010 financial reform law.
