Wall Street and Republican lawmakers thwart US financial reforms

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jun/26/banking-us-regulators-dodd-frank

Only 30 rules have been finalised from 380 drawn up under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act

Dominic Rushe in New York
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 26 June 2011 15.50 BST
Article history

It's almost a year since Barack Obama signed the "strongest consumer financial protections in history." Thanks to the Dodd-Frank bill, drawn up in the aftermath of the worst financial crisis in living memory, America "would never again be asked to foot the bill for Wall Street's mistakes," the US president declared, back in July 2010.

A year later Dodd-Frank is looking less historic. Of the 380 rules that were supposed to have been written for the bill by the end of next month, only 30 have been finalised. And the biggest most contentious areas, including the regulation of derivatives and what makes an entity "too big to fail," remain in flux. Regulatory experts don't expect any resolution before mid-2012 and many expect a watered down bill to be further diluted by furious lobbying from an increasingly confident Wall Street.

Welcome to the New 3rd World Emerging America

and to many loophole avenues.

Hell, absent that the legislation was far too weak and industry friendly to prevent the last meltdown, much less any new shenanigans.

This thing had to be tight and quite sweeping, instead we got stuck not wanting to stifle capital and will have accomplished very little. We might get a little honesty in advertising but very little to actually curtail dangerous activity.

Fair warning is nice but not to be confused with defanging the predators.