I've been on my soap box for some time now saying that Congress' idea of financial reform is sorely lacking and could be called a joke.

As recently as last Friday, I wrote: "Congress is again showing their deliberate ignorance, controlled by their Wall Street puppet masters.

"The Democratic majority keeps passing watered down, ineffective legislation as they did with the health care bill and are now doing with financial industry regulation acting more and more like their GOP colleagues.

"Even after the housing bubble financial debacle with its disastrous consequences to regular Americans, Capitol Hill continues to stumble and bumble, intentionally it appears, in order to maintain the foxes in the hen houses, keeping their greedy Wall Street gazzilionaire crony crook contributors happy and wealthy.

"One question shows that Washington is corporatist not populist and not serious about passing strong, effective financial industry regulation:  Why haven't the Senate and House reinstated Glass-Steagall?"

Others like Paul Krugman are running alongside that hard hitting bandwagon because they are pulling their punches regarding Capitol Hill Dems and to the White House,  While questioning the effectiveness of upcoming regulatory legislation aimed at the financial industry, they are, in effect, begging Congress and the White House to "pretty, please" do the jobs for which the majority of regular Americans elected you.

Krugman writes at the NYTimes: "....how good is the legislation on the table, the bill put together by Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut?

"Not good enough. It’s a good-faith effort to do what needs to be done, but it would create a system highly dependent on the wisdom and good intentions of government officials. And as the history of the last decade demonstrates, trusting in the quality of officials can be dangerous to the economy’s health.

"....the current system doesn’t limit risky behavior by “shadow banks,” institutions — like Lehman Brothers — that carry out banking functions, that are perfectly capable of creating a banking crisis, but, because they issue debt rather than taking deposits, face minimal oversight.

"The Dodd bill tries to fill this gaping hole in the system by letting federal regulators impose “strict rules for capital, leverage, liquidity, risk management and other requirements as companies grow in size and complexity.” It also gives regulators the power to seize troubled financial firms — and it requires that large, complex firms submit “funeral plans” that make it relatively easy to shut them down.

"That’s all good. In effect, it gives shadow banking something like the regulatory regime we already have for conventional banking.

"But what will actually be in those “strict rules” for capital, liquidity, and so on? The bill doesn’t say. Instead, everything is left at the discretion of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a sort of interagency task force including the chairman of the Federal Reserve, the Treasury secretary, the comptroller of the currency and the heads of five other federal agencies.

"Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute, whose blog has become essential reading for anyone interested in financial reform, has pointed out what’s wrong with this: just consider who would have been on that council in 2005, which was probably the peak year for irresponsible lending.

"Well, in 2005 the chairman of the Fed was Alan Greenspan, who dismissed warnings about the housing bubble — and who asserted in October 2005 that “increasingly complex financial instruments have contributed to the development of a far more flexible, efficient, and hence resilient financial system.”

"Meanwhile, the secretary of the Treasury was John Snow, who ... actually, I don’t think anyone remembers anything about Mr. Snow, other than the fact that Karl Rove treated him like an errand boy.

"The comptroller of the currency was John Dugan, who still holds the office. He was recently the subject of a profile in The Times, which noted his habit of blocking efforts by states to crack down on abusive consumer lending, on the grounds that he, not the states, has authority over national banks — except that he himself almost never acts to protect consumers.

"The point is that the Dodd bill would give an administration determined to rein in runaway finance the tools it needs to do the job. But it wouldn’t do much to stiffen the spine of a less determined administration. On the contrary, it would make it easy for future regulators to look the other way as another bubble inflated.

"So what the legislation needs are explicit rules, rules that would force action even by regulators who don’t especially want to do their jobs..."

Another dangerously weak bill coming from a Democratic majority on Capitol Hill, again.  Definitely not a New Deal for the 21st century to protect everyone from another greedy financial industry depression.

I repeat: Where is the Glass-Steagall reinstatement?