Poll: Americans want tougher bank regs

Most voters believe regulators should do more to rein in Wall Street, according to a new poll released on the cusp of the fourth anniversary of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law.

Sixty percent of likely voters support “stricter regulation on the way banks and other financial institutions conduct their business,” reports the survey commissioned by the left-leaning group Better Markets and conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research.

{mosads}Seventy-four percent of Democrats, 56 percent of independents and 46 percent of Republicans favor tougher rules, the survey concludes.

Better Markets CEO Dennis Kelleher called the findings a “wakeup call” for lawmakers or anyone thinking of a congressional run.

“They should be required to answer this question: what have you done, or will do, to effectively regulate Wall Street’s too-big-to-fail banks?” he said. “As this survey confirms, American voters from every part of the political spectrum still correctly see that Wall Street’s too-big-to-fail banks remain a real danger to their jobs, savings, retirements and homes, and they want to be protected.”

Dodd-Frank’s enactment in response to the 2008 economic crisis required regulators to draw up hundreds of new rules for the financial sector, though many remain incomplete.

Business groups and many congressional Republicans say the rules have brought a mountain of new red tape that is hampering economic growth.

But the survey points to broad American distrust of the industry. Sixty-four percent of voters — and 62 percent of those who own stock — believe “the stock market is rigged for insiders and people who know how to manipulate the system,” according to the poll of 1,000 likely voters.