Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) signed on yesterday.  Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) signed on hours ago.  That's 60, and it means that the financial regulation bill will pass the Senate without filibuster.  It should be good news — installing Wall Street reforms to prevent another meltdown is the responsible sensible thing to do.  Unfortunately, I fear the bill has been watered down so much that it contains enough loopholes so that it doesn't necessarily prevent a recurrence of the cycle of asset price boom and busts leading to financial institution failures. 

But elements of the Dodd-Frank bill do hold out the possibility of coping with the aftermath of such failures in a politically and economically viable way, that avoids the moral injustice associated with “bailouts.”