What of the Senate's new financial regulation bill?

Writes Edmund L. Andrews at Capital Gains and Games:

I’ve been plowing through Senator Chris Dodd’s 1,300-page bill to overhaul financial regulation, and I’m surprised. At first glance, it is tougher and better than I had expected.

Readers beware: it’s not a pretty piece of work. Kids! Do not read this at home. It makes the prospectus for a subprime mortgage-backed security look like a model of clarity.

The bill is full of murky exclusions, exceptions and hair-splitting -- usually a red flag that our elected representatives have capitulated to big-money interests and disguised the bombshells behind eye-glazing boilerplate.

But there are a lot of genuinely tough changes, and the bill is a lot less ugly than it first appears. (continued)