Bottom line on the new Chris Dodd reform proposal: much watered down from his earlier proposal and maybe even weaker than the weak House bill.

Here’s the summary from A New Way Forward: “The bill contains no real solution to too-big-to-fail, no real enforcement guarantees, the bad guys are off the hook, the financial system will continue to be as big and dangerous and full of risk taxpayers will likely own. Dodd made a few good steps forward and major steps backwards”. The rest of their analysis is here.

From the Atlantic Wire, a solid roundup of assessments. The takeaway: Too many concessions to the big banks, and it is still faces many obstacles to passage. And who exactly besides Chris Dodd and Wall Street thinks it’s a great idea to house consumer protection within the Federal Reserve? Only last year, Reuters reminds us, Dodd was labeling the Fed “an abymsal failure."

But Elizabeth Warren, the congressional bailout monitor who has campaigned aggressively for strong reform, including an independent agency to protect financial consumers, offered a lukewam endorsement of Dodd’s plan.

I’ll give Alan Sherter the last word. When Dodd says that he doesn’t have the votes for an independent financial consumer protection agency, what he really means is that “lawmakers have more to gain by advocating the interests of banks than those of consumers.”