It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood...

...but Felix Salmon is not impressed:

Meanwhile, a horrible little turd somewhere is gleefully if quietly celebrating his coup (I'm sure it's a guy) in leaking [David] Weigel's private correspondence to Fishbowl DC and the Daily Caller. Maybe he's genuinely disturbed in some way. But, to coin a phrase, this would be a vastly better world to live in if he decided to handle his emotional problems more responsibly, and set himself on fire.

...nor Barry Ritholtz:

What does [Financial Reform] mean for us?

It means that the same people who brought you these horrible changes — rising wealth discrepancy, massive unemployment and a crumbling infrastructure – have now further institutionalized the policies that will keep the causes of these problems firmly in place.

Meanwhile, all involved in the facade try to pretend that this should be considered a success because, gosh, real financial reform is just too hard and those crafty banksters will just outsmart us anyhow. Many in the media are either too complicit, too confused or too lazy to contradict this spin, but the rest of us shouldn’t buy that BS. Real and lasting financial reform is actually quite easy to implement — and the last time we had a crisis of this magnitude, we kept the banksters in check for 70 years.