Tighter financial controls?

The House just passed a major overhaul of how Wall Street gets regulated, complete with a new agency to oversee consumer lending - and it's probably way more than Washington is equipped to handle. From the very start of the financial meltdown, it seemed almost inevitable that lawmakers would shift from too little oversight to too much - and here we are. Well, not quite - the Senate is working on its own package that's believed to be quite a bit different than the House version. It'll be considered early next year. Who knows - out of all this legislating there might be something good that emerges. From the NYT:

The bill's principal provisions establish a process for dismantling large, failing financial institutions; set up a council to identify and regulate firms that are so big, interconnected or risky that they need heightened supervision to keep them from bringing down the whole financial system; create a new consumer financial-protection agency to squelch unfair and abusive practices; and for the first time, regulate over-the-counter derivatives markets. The bill also contains provisions on executive pay, investor protection, credit ratings, hedge funds and insurance.