Not so fast for the financial reform bill that was just finalized last Friday.

The bill’s been a work-in-progress for months and then last Friday congressional negotiators finally came to an agreement.The House passed it and the Senate was expected to sign so it as of last week, it was looking like the 2,319 page reform bill was on it’s way to passage before Independence day. But… the death of Sen.Byrd of West Virginia this week has created doubt that this Dodd-Frank version of overhaul will pass before mid July or even get the Senate vote at all.

The President believes the bill will pass the Senate but the Dems lost a key supporter when we lost Sen. Byrd. Byrd’s death left the Democrats one vote shy of the 60 needed to defeat a GOP filibuster of a bill reauthorizing extended unemployment benefits, (according to the Huffington Post).

I’m conflicted about whether this is good news or bad news for individual investors because I would like to believe in the fantasy that we could start all over again – that the sharpest minds in finance can weigh in and help create a much more simple bill but one that deals with so much of what has been left out of the Dodd-Frank bill. I’m talking about leverage – I’m talking about too big too fail, Fannie and Freddie and measures that will really prevent another similar crisis. Does this legislation truly get to the root of the financial system’s problems, or are the very same politicians who helped create the problems in the first place missing the true diagnosis of what caused the problems in the first place?

Can I just point out one little thing that really bothers me? This statement comes straight from the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and co-author of the bill. Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT),  (From the Washington Post):

“No one will know until this is actually in place how it works. But we believe we’ve done something that has been needed for a long time. It took a crisis to bring us to the point where we could actually get this job done.”

Okay. Call me crazy but that’s not what I want to hear after 50+ hours of public debate. Look, no question that the lack of enforcement of existing regulations and the lack of the effective rules has put our financial system at risk with the loss of $17 trillion dollars of household wealth and 8 million jobs wiped out. And I want the system fixed!  But Sen. Dodd’s comments make me wish I could just blink like Jeannie used to do on her I dream of Jeannie show when she wanted a “do-over.”  Can’t we just get to something that would receive bipartisan support? And the final draft might be more like 50 pages? I realize it’s a dream because this piece of work already had more than 70 republican and bipartisan amendments and the whole thing argued publicly for over several months. The Declaration of Independence was written on one page because I think they ran out of ink. Guess that answers my question.