Standard & Poor's is skeptical of the Dodd-Frank Act's ability to completely eradicate the too-big-to-fail doctrine.
"Under certain circumstances and with systemically important financial institutions, future extraordinary government support is still possible," the ratings agency said in a press release.
"Time and time again, the U.S. government has found ways — many times reluctantly — to contain systemic risk and limit economic fallout when large financial institutions are on the brink of failure," Rodrigo Quintanilla, a credit analyst at S&P, said in the release.
S&P released further details in a report it issued Tuesday.
Regulators have maintained that Dodd-Frank — through heightened supervision of large firms, livings wills and other reforms — will prevent the need for government propping up of the banking industry in the event of an economic crisis, though some critics say it is too soon to determine.
"It's too early to tell whether Dodd-Frank will ultimately be successful in ending 'too big to fail,' and that success will be dependent on the market's perception of the effectiveness of the acts that are taken by [the Treasury Department] and the regulators now," Christy Romero, the acting special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, said at a House Financial Services Committee hearing last month.
