Republicans seek economic analysis of Dodd-Frank

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee will examine whether regulators are doing enough to analyze the economic impact of dozens of financial reforms.

Chairman Richard Shelby and nine other Republicans said they will conduct "in-depth briefings" with the internal watchdogs of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Reserve and other regulators, the Republicans on the committee said in a statement on Wednesday.

The Republicans' call for the review comes days after JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon publicly challenged Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke on the issue.

"Has anyone bothered to study the cumulative effect of all these things?" Dimon asked at a bank conference in Atlanta. Bernanke said that's not possible given how many changes have been made.

Republican lawmakers, along with those affected by the 2010 Dodd-Frank reform law, have accused regulators of emphasizing speed over deliberation in writing new rules.

They have been given ammunition by some of the regulators' inspectors general.

The CFTC's IG in April issued a 21-page report saying the agency rushed to meet arbitrary deadlines, and failed to sufficiently analyze the costs and benefits of new rules for swaps traders.

"We must continue to monitor and improve the amount and type of analysis that the financial regulators are conducting in implementing this far-reaching law," Shelby said on Wednesday.

The CFTC and SEC are required to conduct economic analyses of their rulemaking, and sloppy cost-benefit analyses could make reforms vulnerable to legal challenges.

Federal regulators are struggling to carefully write and publish the slew of new rules, and have consistently missed deadlines set out in Dodd-Frank.

(Reporting by Karey Wutkowski; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)