Amid all the minutiae of the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul, it is easy to lose sight of the big question: Will consumers, investors and the economy be safer?

That is why a recent speech by Paul A. Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve and a voice of reason on matters financial, is so timely and important. Presented last month to the Group of 30, an organization devoted to international economic issues, the speech outlined crucial work that still must be done to safeguard the United States' financial future. ``Three Years Later: Unfinished Business in Financial Reform'' was the title.

``By now it is pretty clear that it was faith in the techniques of modern finance, stoked in part by the apparent huge financial rewards, that enabled the extremes of leverage, the economic imbalances and the pretenses of the credit rating agencies to persist so long,'' Mr. Volcker said in this remarkably candid talk.

The real treasures were found in his to-do list for a further overhaul. That heavy lifting includes addressing capital requirements (make them tough and enforceable), derivatives (make them more standardized and transparent) and auditors (ensure that they are truly independent by rotating them periodically).

He also spoke of the perils of institutions that are too large or interconnected to be allowed to fail. Calling this the greatest structural challenge facing the financial system, he said we must shrink the risks these companies pose, ``whether by reducing their size, curtailing their interconnections or limiting their activities.'' He also saw other economic fault lines, which are worth highlighting because few in Washington or on Wall Street seem willing to discuss them. I asked him last week to elaborate on these hazards.

One is the potential for problems in the huge industry of money market mutual funds, which operates ``in the shadows of the banking system,'' he said. Although these funds are typically managed conservatively, he said, they are vulnerable to runs, as occurred when Lehman Brothers collapsed.

``Because they are not subject to reserve requirements and capital requirements, they are a point of vulnerability in the system,'' he said. ``It is really interesting that they did so much lending to European banks. They had to pull back a lot, aggravating the pressures on the European banks.'' Money market funds held $2.63 trillion as of last Wednesday, and, Mr. Volcker said, many people mistakenly think that these funds are as safe as bank accounts. But the safeguards on bank deposits -strong bank capital requirements and federal deposit insurance, for example -do not exist for most money market funds. There is also little official surveillance of the funds' investment practices.

David Fuller's view Commonsense solutions to manmade problems.

My concern: where and when will we find the next Paul Volcker?