“The most ambitious legislative effort to reform the country’s financial system in nearly 80 years was just a few weeks old, and already the bill was in trouble.

"Members of the House Financial Services Committee, the bill’s first stop in the summer of 2009, were facing a barrage of complaints from hometown bankers and the industry’s army of Washington lobbyists. They wanted to block the creation of an independent regulatory agency aimed at protecting consumers from the risky financial products that had helped bring on the Great Crash of 2008.”