Among many advocates of the financial reform bill, Sen. Feingold’s opposition has been a source of frustration. It has forced Senate Democrats to curry favor with moderate Republican senators who’ve demanded a number of concessions. But in an essay published at Huffington Post, Sen. Feingold makes it clear that he intends to vote against it:

Shortly after I came to the U.S. Senate we considered a national interstate banking bill, the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Act of 1994, which accelerated the concentration of financial assets, and the creation of “too big to fail” firms. I was one of only four senators to oppose that legislation. Five years later, I was one of only eight Senators to oppose the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, the bill that repealed Glass-Steagall and paved the way for this disastrous recession, which has been an economic nightmare for so many Americans.
Those two measures — the 1994 law and the 1999 law — accelerated the trend toward increased concentration of financial assets, aggravating the problem of “too big to fail.” Before those two laws were enacted, the six largest U.S. banks had assets equal to 17 percent of our GDP. Today the six largest U.S. banks have assets equal to more than 60 percent of our GDP.

The overconcentration of financial assets has been a source of concern on the left as well as the right. I tend not to think that repealing Glass-Steagall was the root of the financial crisis, though there was certainly much to criticize in the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and Sen. Feingold clearly has a compelling story to tell, whether or not the course of action he recommends is the right one to pursue. He does make at least one compelling point:

Ultimately, it was the threat of the failure of the nation’s largest financial institutions that spurred the Wall Street bailout. I opposed that measure as well, in part because it was not tied to any fundamental reforms of our financial system that would prevent a future crisis and the need for another bailout. We could have had a much tougher reform package if the bailout had been tied to such a measure.

I’ll have more on this in the future. Sen. Feingold has attracted a formidable conservative challenger who is running within a few points of the three-term incumbent — I’m eager to hear about the Republican nominee’s view on how to reform the financial system.