Former senator Chris Dodd—the “Dodd” in the Dodd-Frank Act—today called the financial reform legislation a major factor in propelling unemployment to its lowest level since the Great Recession.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has surged from 7,000 to 17,000 in that time.

Key to the resurgence, Dodd said during a seminar at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington D.C., was the law’s restoring public confidence in the safety and soundness of the financial system.

While calling the law imperfect, he cautioned that opening it up to worthwhile revisions (such as a single bank regulator-—which he favors) would lead to efforts to make wholesale changes that could put the economy at risk.

Four years after its passage, Dodd criticized the Securities and Exchange Commission and other financial regulators for slowing Dodd-Frank rulemaking to a “frustrating crawl.”