How Much Regulation is Packed in the Finance "Reform" Bill?

As I have outlined below, the new bills passed by Congress with regard to healthcare and financial reform are likely to result in huge changes in life in America. Here's Mark Perry explaining just how physically big the financial "reform" bill is relative to other historically significant financial bills:

Now that Congress has passed the “Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act,” it might be a good time to compare the 2,319-page financial reform bill (245 pages longer than the healthcare bill) to the previous bills listed below (and see graph) that are considered among the most consequential legislative acts for banking and finance.


1. Federal Reserve Act (1913) - 31 pages.

2. Glass-Steagall Act (1933) – 37 pages.

3. Interstate Banking Efficiency Act (1994) – 61 pages.

4. Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (1999) – 145 pages.

5. Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002) – 66 pages.

Further, keep in mind that although this bill is 2,319 pages, in many places the actual instructions in the bill state, "the regulator shall determine...". This means the entrenched Washington D.C. bureaucracy will have enormous power to micro-manage the financial sector, coupled with the new interventionist, miro-management oriented heads, appointed by Obama to the new agencies.

This is an extremely dangerous bill, second only to ObamaCare. This bill will  kill off the old style way of doing things. It's going to be all about insider connections and political correctness. The insider connections are about eventual payoffs to bureaucrats in terms of jobs, as long as rules are interpreted a certain way by the bureaucrats for the insiders. The political correctness will come in the form of favorable rulings for politically connected groups that can deliver votes for the corrupt political class.

Innovation and economic growth will be severely damaged by this bill. The GDP numbers won't say so, but you will know and feel things are different, and not for the good.