[credit: Ted Rall]
The financial regulation package just signed by Forty-four may be the 'biggest change in bank regulation' since the Great Depression, but that is because the politicians on both sides have spent the last 70 years eviscerating FDR's regulatory reform. The law does not prohibit naked swaps trading by big banks (derivative trading is a $600 trillion market), does nothing to solve the insolvency of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae that many experts believe were central players in the financial panic of '07, does not impose a usury cap on consumer debt, fails to breakup the colossi of Wall Street banks, and does not reestablish the separation between investment and commercial banking that was the central pillar of post-Depression regulation of Wall Street. Just ask Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) if this is really reform.