The financial debacle of 2007-2008 has clearly propelled financial regulation and its overhaul to a must-do topic for the incoming Obama Administration and the 111th  Congress. Unfortunately, financial regulation is still arcane.  And it is unbelievably complicated.  It encompasses a myriad of safety-and-soundness (prudential) regulatory provisions for banks, thrifts, credit unions, insurance companies, pension funds, and money market mutual funds; consumer protection provisions across the same spectrum; information revelation requirements for these institutions; financial statement revelation and corporate governance requirements for publicly traded companies; rules that apply to exchanges and to the financial instruments that are traded on those exchanges; and the list could go on. To paraphrase Rahm Emanuel, never allow a debacle to go to waste.