A number of stories last week – like this one – chronicled the fact that regulations stemming from Dodd-Frank on the OTC derivatives markets have begun to take effect.

These stories quite frankly come as a bit of surprise.  But it’s not because of what they say.  It’s because of what they don’t say.

Let us explain.

Over the past two years we have seen and heard countless times statements along these lines:

“Representative Barney Frank, who was the co-author of the Dodd-Frank Act, says the law will help prevent a repeat of the financial crisis.”  (New York Times)

“The Dodd-Frank financial reform overhaul last year aimed to curb the excessive Wall Street risk-taking that nearly leveled the financial system.”  (Reuters)

These statements reflect that financial regulatory reform globally, and Dodd-Frank in the US, was intended to be fundamentally about reducing systemic risk: making the financial system safer and more robust, ensuring financial institutions took risk and capitalized against it appropriately and ending bailouts of too-big-to fail institutions.

In the OTC derivatives markets, this mostly meant increasing the use of central clearing, ensuring appropriate margins for uncleared swaps and improving regulatory transparency.

Significant progress has been made in all of these areas.  More than half of the interest rates swaps market is now cleared. Regulators have transparency into market-wide and individual firm risk exposures. The vast majority of OTC derivatives positions are collateralized.

This has all been done in advance of the imposition of the new rules. As a result, the system is much safer and stronger than two or three years ago. Further progress is on the way, and it will be safer and stronger still.

Most of this remains unsaid. Much of the focus last week was instead on non-systemic issues that are not central to the fundamental goals of regulatory reform.