This week will be a very important week for the future of any financial regulation or reforms to prevent future abuse by Wall Street of other people's money, prevent too big to fail banks, and hopefully prevent future devastating market crashes.

President Obama will head to New York on Thursday to kick off his administration's push for reform, while Harry Reid has promised to bring the Senate bill to the floor by the end of the week.  However, Republicans have put up a united front, signing a letter signifying their opposition to the Senate financial bill even though Judd Gregg (R-NH) said that the parties were relatively close to an agreement just this morning on MSNBC.

It appears as if both parties are jousting for position for the larger, public debate on financial reform, as we rocket toward the mid term elections in November.  Prior to health reform passing there was little hope for a strong financial bill to come out of Congress, as most analysts felt that Wall Street spent far too much money on lobbying for any meaningful legislation to be drafted, despite the fact that there is still wide spread anger towards the bank bailouts.

All of that changed on Friday when the SEC brought civil fraud charges against Goldman Sachs, prompting Barney Frank (D-Mass.) to say that the fraud charges would help them pass strong financial reform.  Granted there are people who don't want anything to change, claiming that any regulation will stifle the productivity of all of those highly paid bankers who gamble with your money, but it's pretty obvious from the global economic crash that they are simply trying to protect the status quo.  It will be even more evident when the other investigations on various banks lead to even more SEC charges in the coming weeks.

What I think is going to happen is that one or more centrist Republicans will eventually sign on to whatever Senate Democrats can fashion by way of legislation, all while trading barbs with each other for the sake of the media and the consumer.  The hope is to have a bill completed by Memorial day in the Senate, but that will be difficult depending on how hard Republicans push back against regulatory reform.  If it does get passed by the end of May we could see a final bill amalgamated between the House and Senate before the August break.

Here's hoping for a highly regulated world wide financial system to prevent the ever present threat of greed from screwing us yet again.