Dodd-Frank’s Impact on Small Business? Probably Slight: Caldbeck

"So what does designating some institutions as SIFIs mean for small businesses?" writes Forbes contributor Ryan Caldbeck of CircleUp, a crowdfunding site.  "While we don’t know the whole story yet, the answer, to date, appears to be very little."

First he delves into the great question of whether or not the "systemically important financial institution" designation ends too-big-to-fail policies. And by extension whether they put smaller banks at a disadvantage, which would in turn hurt small business lending.

He looks at credit default swap trends as good indicator on the SIFI issue.  These tools, which "provide insurance against banks defaulting on their debt, show that the large banks are viewed as less safe than they were pre-crisis, and some of the five biggest banks are viewed by investors are more likely to fail than others. This seems to discredit the notion that designating firms as SIFIs implicitly means they are too big to fail.”

For the full piece see "Too Big To Fail or Much Ado About Nothing? What Dodd-Frank Means to Small Businesses" (may require subscription).