Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told CNBC on Thursday the prospect of getting rid of the Dodd-Frank banking regulations has been a driver of higher stocks and would continue to be.

"If you get rid of Dodd-Frank, it's going to have a very significant positive impact on the economy," he said on "Squawk on the Street," from the sidelines of the IMF-World Bank meeting of finance ministers in Washington.

"In my judgment, that's where the surge in the stock prices has come from. It's very difficult to find anything other than that, which I find really positive," argued Greenspan, who served nearly two decades as Fed chairman from 1987 to 2006.

In February, President Donald Trump ordered the Treasury and other financial regulators to review the banking and consumer finance rules created under Dodd-Frank, the 2010 law crafted in response to the financial crisis two years earlier.

The tighter rules aimed at preventing taxpayers from having to bailout "too big to fail" banks in the future included higher rainy day capital requirements, which critics say stifle lending and hurt economic growth.