Financial reform is now the law of the land. Let’s make it meaningful and end our support of Wall Street.

Laurie Anderson’s terrific performance of “Only an expert (can deal with the problem)” on The Late Show Wednesday night provokes thought on our current reliance on precisely the wrong experts to deal with the problems we face.

The final financial reform package has been dramatically watered down and is riddled with loopholes. But its supporters (and some critics) say that we shouldn’t worry because it at least allows regulators to get tough on the financial industry later — if they think it’s necessary. That is actually true. It does have such provisions.

The simple answer to the question, “why didn’t the Obama Administration propose a major jobs and economic recovery program for 2010?” is that the people who advise the President are incompetent, and he apparently doesn’t think that.

I understand that it’s a little goofy to draw lessons from a fictional movie, but I am going to proceed nonetheless. My wife and I were just watching Braveheart and there was one interesting element in there. In the movie, the nobles of Scotland keep betraying William Wallace who is fighting for the people of Scotland. And my wife asked me why the nobles continually stab Wallace in the back if he is fighting for their country.

John McCain said during the campaign that he would stop wasteful spending in government by naming names and making people famous. Well, that’s a pretty good idea. So, we’ve adopted it (call us bipartisan). Except we’re going to apply it to the bankers who took our money.

It seems the world’s G-20 economies just decided, over US objections, to resurrect Herbert Hoover, rebury Keynes and pursue another Great Recession, tanking their economies and putting tens of millions more out of work.

Join us on Monday, June 7th at noon in front of the Treasury building to demand our $13 billion back from Goldman Sachs. First job is to get Geithner to recognize that he should have never given that particular money to that particular bank for that particular transaction. Or to come out and justify his actions. Let him step out, greet us and tell us why it was such a smart idea to pay off AIG’s side bets with Goldman.

I have no idea what kind of Justice Elana Kagan is going to be, and almost no one else does either. She might be a terrific progressive or she might move the Court to the right, as some fear. My problem with her isn’t her stated positions, as she doesn’t have very many.

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother.