But more than two years later, it's still far from clear what Dodd-Frank in practice will actually look like. To give the law real teeth, it has to be turned into rules that federal agencies can enforce, and that process has become an even bigger struggle than the one that transpired in Congress in 2010.
In the summer of 2011 The Daily Show featured a hilarious parody of the cartoon "I'm Just a Bill" that showed what had happened to Dodd-Frank after it became law. From 2010-2011, the financial industry spent more than $200 million lobbying regulators to stop or weaken the rules, and there is no indication that the intensity of the battle is diminishing. (The industry has massively outspent and outlobbied the small number of consumer groups who are active on Dodd-Frank.) As of today, just 133 of the more than 400 mandated rules are in place, and many of them are likely to be challenged by the industry in federal court.
As with the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"), the struggle over Dodd-Frank is likely to play out over decades--in federal agencies, in the courts, and probably again in Congress, which will likely be asked to weigh in on the battle over financial regulation it has created.
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